No military solution to Ukraine conflict, country’s president concedes

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko conceded Monday that his forces are unable to militarily defeat separatists backed by Russian mercenaries and armaments, and he called for a new attempt at negotiating an end to the fighting at an international summit on Jan. 15.

The meeting to be held in the Kazakhstan capital, Astana, will include Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Poroshenko and his Western allies accuse of instigating the rebellion in eastern Ukraine, and the leaders of France and Germany.

President Barack Obama has also been asked to join in the negotiations, Poroshenko said, referring to the meeting as under the “Normandy format” established on June 6, when the newly elected Ukrainian president met informally with Putin, Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on the sidelines of the 70th anniversary commemoration of the D-Day invasion.

Though Poroshenko’s tone at a news conference in Kiev, the capital, sounded conciliatory, he reiterated that his government demands recovery of all Ukrainian territory occupied by the separatists as well as the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in March.

The former chocolate magnate, who has been in office for six months, also signed into law a measure passed by the Western-oriented parliament last week renouncing Ukraine’s nonaligned status.

Russian media and officials denounced the measure that rescinds Kiev’s 2010 pledge to refrain from joining any military alliance. They said it was a provocation orchestrated by NATO that threatened to turn Ukraine into a “frontline of confrontation.” A new military doctrine adopted by the Russian Security Council and signed by Putin on Friday identified NATO as the chief threat to Russia’s national security.

Poroshenko essentially reiterated his accusation that the Kremlin is behind the separatist violence in eastern Ukraine in saying that his cash-strapped government can neither afford to take on the Russian armed forces nor prevail in such a confrontation.

“There’s no military solution in Donbas,” the Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted Poroshenko as saying, referring to the war zone in the heavily industrialized basin along the Don River. “If someone wants to play that way, taking up weapons and fighting the Russian military machine — the strongest on the continent — we’ll see how that ends.”

The Ukrainian leader’s pursuit of another diplomatic intervention follows a fruitless gathering last week in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where Kiev government representatives and envoys from the separatists’ proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk failed to make progress toward shoring up a widely ignored Sept. 5 cease-fire.

The government and separatist leaders also conducted the largest exchange of prisoners of war last week since armed conflict broke out in April. The two sides released 368 prisoners — 146 government troops held by the separatists and 222 captured insurgents — on Friday. The prisoner swap was supposed to be on an “all for all” basis, but at least four government troops and three rebels promised by the opposing sides were absent from the exchange.

Kiev’s Ukrinform news agency reported Monday that at least 400 fighters from the government side remain captives of the separatists, a claim it based on the contention of Semen Semenchenko, commander of the irregular militia calling itself the Donbas Battalion.

Many of the fighters on the government side have been volunteers in units that have mostly operated outside of the Ukrainian army chain of command, often with financial backing from industrial magnates whose fortunes are at risk in the protracted conflict that has ravaged the economies of the eastern regions.

More than 4,700 people have been killed, many of them civilians, since the government moved in early April to oust the separatists from the institutions they occupied in Donetsk and Luhansk regions after Moscow annexed Crimea.

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©2014 Los Angeles Times

Afghans decry economic and security woes

KABUL, Afghanistan - A day after a NATO-led coalition formally ended combat operations after 13 years of war, Afghanistan's government continues to struggle making basic governance decisions amid a worsening security and economic situation. Ordinary Afghans are increasingly becoming fed up.

At a solemn ceremony at NATO headquarters in the capital Kabul on Sunday - which was kept secret to prevent Taliban attacks - coalition officials announced the handover of security to the Afghan government and its 350,000-strong military.

However, a NATO force of 12,500 - dubbed "Resolute Support" - will remain in Afghanistan. "Today marks an end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Resolute Support will serve as the bedrock of our enduring partnership with Afghanistan," said US Army General John F Campbell.

Nearly 3,500 foreign soldiers have died in Afghanistan, including about 2,200 Americans, since 2001. Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed in the war, along with more than 4,600 Afghan army and police who died in Taliban attacks in 2014 alone.

The Taliban, meanwhile, responded to the handover ceremony with disdain, accusing NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) of failure and pledging to fight "so long as a single foreigner remains in Afghanistan in a military uniform".

"Today ISAF rolled up its flag in an atmosphere of failure and disappointment without having achieved anything substantial or tangible and transitioned to a new mission by hoisting the meaningless flag of Resolute Support. We consider this step a clear indication of their defeat," a Taliban statement said.

President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah have been unable to agree on a new cabinet after Ghani dismissed most ministers in November. The country is facing a governance deficit at time when the Taliban has intensified attacks on civilians, security forces, and the country's limited infrastructure, deadly moves that are also affecting the faltering economy.

Economic doldrums

Haji Sakhi bought a 75-square-metre two-bedroom house in the Soviet-era-built Macroryan apartment complex in northeast Kabul two years ago. He paid 6,800,000 Afghanis ($120,000) for the home, which he says became a financial burden after his dry fruit wholesale business began to slow down.

Three months ago, Sakhi decided to sell the house and pay off some of his debt, but by then the property market in Kabul, like much of Afghanistan, was on a downward spiral.

"Since I was desperate for cash, I decided to sell the house at the same price at which I had bought it for. But there was no buyer. I then slashed the asking rate by 25 percent. Still, no one turned up," Sakhi told Al Jazeera.

"Last week, I told real estate agents that I am willing to give up the house for even half of what I had paid. I am still waiting to hear from them. Buyers seem to have vanished from the property market."

Too scared to shop

About 15km from Sakhi's house, in the centre of Tanke Logar market, sits Khan Mohammad Zazay amid logs of cut wood, puffing hard on his hookah as he tries to stay warm in Kabul's harsh winter.

"Last winter, I sold 58,000 Afghanis [$1,000] worth of wood and coal every day. Now, I am struggling to make even one-tenth of that in a day. People are scared to step out of their houses because of the attacks," says Zazay.

Two shops away, Haji Nizam sits with his head buried in the pages of ANIS Daily, a Dari-language newspaper published in Kabul. Through his big, thick glasses, Nizam is trying to get some idea of where the Afghan economy is heading.

"My business has almost collapsed," says Nizam, an importer of electrical goods from China. "My business depends on the building and construction sector. But no one seems to be building houses or shopping malls anymore."

Deteriorating security and disagreement within the government over fundamental issues has hit hard the already fragile Afghan economy. Property prices are plummeting, businesses are shrinking, inflation is rising, and investment in critical infrastructure projects has come to a grinding halt.

'Failing the people'

All this is compounding the uncertainty in Afghanistan, even more so with Sunday's handover of security from ISAF to the unsteady Afghan government.

"I blame President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah for this uncertainty," political analyst Younas Fakoor told Al Jazeera. "They have failed to agree on a cabinet at a time when we are at war and the economy is fragile. Both the leaders have an enormous amount of expertise: one is a mujahid, the other is a technocrat, but both are failing the people."

Fakoor says the country's current political set up may be untenable, even if a cabinet is eventually agreed on. "But will these ministers be able to function? What if President Ghani fires a minister, will Abdullah accept?"

Earlier this month, Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of Afghan parliament, criticised the Ghani-led National Unity Government for failing to name new cabinet nominees, calling it a "tragedy".

Afghanistan's acting Finance Minister Mustafa Mastoor agrees the spate of recent attacks and the delay in cabinet formation is putting even more strain on an already-difficult situation.

"The government had set a revenue target of 132 billion Afghanis [$2.3bn] for 2014, of which we have managed to collect only 102 billion [$1.7bn]," Mastoor told Al Jazeera. "That means we have a $537 million deficit.

"We appealed to donors for help and we have got the money from the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and Italy. We are devising plans and strategies to recover the deficit in 2015," he said.

The Afghan parliament rejected the budget for 2015, calling it "unbalanced". The Finance Ministry is now working on a new budget, which will be presented to the parliament soon, Mastoor said.

According to Nazifullah Salarzai, spokesman for the Afghan president, the process of appointing the new cabinet is under way.

"It will be in place within the two-to-four week timeframe set by the president in early December," Salarzai told Al Jazeera. "There are differences but they are more about how to introduce a cabinet that can deliver and function."

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©2014 Al Jazeera (Doha, Qatar)

US airstrike in Somalia targeted al-Shabab leader, Pentagon says

(Tribune Content Agency) — The United States launched an airstrike against a senior al-Shabab militia leader in southwestern Somalia on Monday, a Pentagon spokesman disclosed.

Rear Adm. John Kirby did not name the target of the strike near the town of Saakow, northeast of the militants’ stronghold of Kismayo, saying only that security officials were “assessing the results of the operation” that would be made public when appropriate and as details become available.

No civilian casualties were known to have resulted from the airstrike, Kirby said.

A U.S. airstrike in early September killed al-Shabab’s top commander, Ahmed Abdi Godane, as he traveled in a convoy south of the government-controlled capital, Mogadishu.

In October, Navy SEALs raided the home of another al-Shabab leader, Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, in Baraawe, south of Mogadishu, in a failed attempt to capture the militant also known as Ikrima.

Godane, 37, was considered responsible for steering al-Shabab into closer alignment with al-Qaida and its more global, anti-Western direction after taking over the militia in 2008. The group had previously focused its insurgent operations on Somali government forces.

Under Godane’s leadership, al-Shabab gunmen conducted summary executions, amputations and other extremist acts against those who didn’t share their harsh interpretation of Islam, alienating more moderate Somali Muslims and accelerating the flight of refugees and asylum-seekers. Internal resistance to the militia intensified after al-Shabab gunmen blocked Western humanitarian aid to the country during Somalia’s 2011 famine.

Al-Shabab in recent months has claimed responsibility for attacks on neighboring Kenya’s coastal tourist resort areas, as well as a Dec. 3 suicide bombing of a U.N. convoy near Mogadishu’s airport.

The militia was also behind the 2013 siege of the upscale Westgate mall in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, killing at least 67 people.

The airstrike that killed Godane and the attempt on the unnamed militia leader on Monday demonstrated intensified U.S. resolve to contain the violent insurgency that threatens the U.S.-allied government in Mogadishu.

©2014 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Veterans look back on Afghanistan, Iraq odyssey with strong emotions

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — In the rings beneath his steely eyes lies the toll of Army helicopter pilot Steven Martin’s 10 years at war.

The chief warrant officer 2 is no longer the eager, untethered 25-year-old he was when preparing for his first deployment. Idealism has been replaced by pragmatism; the excitement of battle has given way to the imperative of making it home to his twin girls.

“I’ve changed dramatically. What once was a romantic, naive idea of going to war to defeat terrorists has disappeared,” the veteran of four Afghanistan deployments said in his unit’s planning room at Bagram Air Field. “And now I know my responsibility is just to my brothers in arms and to my family.”

RELATED: Stars and Stripes special report: Leaving Afghanistan

With pride, weariness, nostalgia and some bitterness, veterans are looking back at a 13-year odyssey of war. Those deployed in Afghanistan have a front-row seat to a transition from a campaign that, along with Iraq, defined the post-9/11 military generation and permanently altered many veterans’ lives, for better or worse.

On Sunday, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, an amalgamation of dozens of NATO and allied nations, announced the end of its mission in Afghanistan. From Jan. 1, the military mission will be known as Resolute Support, focusing on training, advising and assisting, though that last term leaves a lot of wiggle room. Whatever the details of the new mission, there will be far fewer international troops in Afghanistan under Resolute Support and, if it goes according to plan — as little has in Afghanistan, there will be no foreign troops in the country by the end of 2016.

Like the war itself, though, the end of Operation Enduring Freedom is ill-defined and hard to pin down. Despite White House rhetoric, U.S. troops will likely see combat next year and beyond, and the feelings of veterans watching combat fade are equally complex.

At the height of the U.S. troop surge in 2010, 100,000 Americans were fighting across the rugged mountains and yawning deserts of Afghanistan, and roughly 2.5 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. The war in Afghanistan has left more than 2,300 American troops and nearly 1,200 international allies dead. While the U.S. effort is significantly scaling down, there will still be about 11,000 American troops in the country Jan. 1 — about 1,000 more than President Barack Obama originally announced. Casualty figures could continue to rise.

The war has cost troops friends, limbs, marriages; they’ve missed birthdays and Christmases, and they’ve formed bonds beyond most people’s comprehension — all in a place that is still little more than a vague notion for many of their loved ones. Many grew up in war, spending most of their adult life on deployment or waiting for the next tour. For some, it is surreal to think they may be forever leaving a country that has so profoundly altered their lives.

“I hope that sometime in my life I can return,” said Army Maj. Rose L. Smyth, a 3rd Infantry Division medical administrator at Bagram. “To walk away from this — it will be a desire to show my children where I was and what I did and why it mattered.”

As the U.S. military was stretched between two wars after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, deployments became so regular that troops started penciling the next deployment into the calendar as soon as they arrived home from a tour.

“It’s like a home away from home,” said Air Force Tech Sgt. Richard Bennett, a flight-line ramp supervisor on his fifth Afghanistan tour, along with two in Iraq.

Those who served in the early days of Iraq and the pre-surge period in Afghanistan often look back fondly to that time of little or no Internet access, military rations and simple canvas tents. As the wars dragged on, blast-wall-encased bases grew, with such amenities as smoothie shops, massage services and even a TGI Friday’s to serve the increasing numbers of troops and contractors.

With each new unit, there were more rules. Large installations, like Kandahar Air Field and Bagram, started to resemble stateside garrisons without the traditional nod to certain rules being relaxed in a combat zone. God forbid you were caught without a reflective belt.

“It was simpler and it was more Army back then,” said Army Staff Sgt. Junior Casillas, a veteran of the 2003 Iraq invasion and three tours to Afghanistan. “Then you had (Military Police) handing out speeding tickets (at Kandahar Air Field) and you’re like, ‘What?!’”

Casillas, a 36-year-old flight engineer instructor, says he cherishes his time with his wife and 9-year-old son, time that has been limited by steady deployment that has spanned more than a decade. Still, like many troops, Casillas has found life in combat seductive and says it will be tough to adjust to life without the next deployment just over the horizon.

“I don’t mind it. You get used to it — sadly enough, you kind of miss it,” he said. “You get home and things are kind of complicated.”

Many Afghanistan veterans have seen what resembles two or three different wars, from the initial invasion and the relatively peaceful aftermath, to the violent years of the U.S. troop surge sent to quell a resurgent Taliban, and finally the slow pullback to a largely training-and-advising mission that has marked the past two years.

“All we worked for the past 13 years is happening since (the Afghan security forces) can stand on their own,” said Army Command Sgt. Maj. Christopher Gilpin, based at Baram with the 3rd Infantry Division.

Many troops, however, fret about the state of the Afghan National Security Forces, who are largely on their own to combat an insurgency that has shown no sign of subsiding, albeit backed by coalition air power, intelligence and logistics help. Afghan casualties are rising sharply — troops and civilians — and many experts doubt the ability of the ANSF to hold its own long-term without continued support from international forces.

For those who served at the height of the fighting in Afghanistan, it is the controversial counter-insurgency operations — battling insurgents with one hand while trying to win over the population with the other — that have defined the war, for better or for worse.

On his first deployment in Afghanistan, Martin, the helicopter pilot, served as a psychological operations soldier. He would sometimes find himself fighting his way through ambushes to deliver medical supplies and other humanitarian aid. In that microcosm of the war, troops were killing and getting killed just to drop off a box in hopes of winning the ever elusive “hearts and minds.” The results of such operations were murky.

Martin is proud of his service and his commitment to his fellow soldiers. What it all means, though, that’s for politicians thousands of miles from the dying to decide, he said.

“The idea that the war is over, mission accomplished? After 10 years in Afghanistan I’m still not sure what the mission is.”

druzin.heath@stripes.com

Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes

Lost AirAsia plane's request to change course was denied

SURABAYA, Indonesia — The pilots sought permission to climb above threatening clouds. Air traffic control couldn't say yes immediately — there was no room. Six other airliners were crowding the airspace, forcing AirAsia Flight 8501 to remain at a lower altitude.

Minutes later, the jet carrying 162 people was gone from the radar without ever issuing a distress signal. The plane is believed to have crashed into Indonesia's Java Sea, but broad aerial surveys on Monday turned up no firm evidence of the missing Airbus A320-200.

Searchers spotted two oily patches and floating objects in separate locations, but it was not known any of it was related to the plane that vanished Sunday halfway into what should have been a two-hour hop from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore. The area is a busy shipping lane. Officials saw little reason to believe the flight met anything but a grim fate.

Based on the plane's last known coordinates, the aircraft probably crashed into the water and "is at the bottom of the sea," Indonesia search-and-rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo said. Still, searchers planned to expand their efforts onto land on Tuesday.

The last communication from the cockpit to air traffic control was a request by one of the pilots to climb from 32,000 feet (9,754 meters) to 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) because of the weather. The tower was not able to immediately comply because of the other planes, said Bambang Tjahjono, director of the state-owned company in charge of air traffic control.

The twin-engine, single-aisle plane was last seen on radar four minutes after the final communication.

A storm alone isn't going to bring down a modern plane designed to withstand severe weather. But weather paired with a pilot error or a mechanical failure could be disastrous. It's like a car driving on a highway during a thunderstorm. Plenty of vehicles get through bad weather safely but one that gets a flat tire or takes a turn too fast might crash.

Pilots rely on sophisticated weather-radar systems that include a dashboard display of storms and clouds, as well as reports from other crews, to steer around dangerous weather.

"A lot more information is available to pilots in the cockpit about weather than it ever was," said Deborah Hersman, former chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. But the technology has limits and sometimes information about storms "can be a little bit stale."

The air search resumed Tuesday morning, with more assets and an expanded area, said Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo.

He said at least 30 ships, 15 aircraft and seven helicopters were looking for the jet. Most of the craft were Indonesian but Singapore, Malaysia and Australia contributed to the effort. Aircraft from Thailand planned to join Tuesday's search.

The search area has been widened, with four military helicopters dispatched just after sunrise near Pangkalan Bun on the western part of Borneo island and to smaller islands of Bangka and Belitung, Bambang Soelistyo said.

"Until now, we have not yet found any signal or indication of the plane's whereabouts," Soelistyo told The Associated Press, adding fishermen from Belitung island were also helping.

The U.S. Navy said it had agreed to an Indonesian request for help by sending the USS Sampson, a destroyer. It was already on an independent deployment in the Western Pacific and will arrive in the area later Tuesday.

Jakarta's air force base commander, Rear Marshal Dwi Putranto, said an Australian Orion aircraft had detected "suspicious" objects near an island about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off central Kalimantan. That's about 700 miles (1,120 kilometers) from where the plane lost contact, but within Monday's greatly expanded search area.

"However, we cannot be sure whether it is part of the missing AirAsia plane," Putranto said. "We are now moving in that direction."

Air Force spokesman Rear Marshal Hadi Tjahnanto told MetroTV that an Indonesian helicopter spotted two oil patches in the Java Sea east of Belitung island, much closer to where the plane lost contact. He said oil samples would be collected and analyzed.

An Associated Press photographer flew in a C-130 transport carrier with Indonesia's Air Force for 10 hours Monday over a large section of the search area between Kalimantan and Belitung. The flight was bumpy and rainy at times. It flew low, at 1,500 feet, easily spotting waves, ships and fishermen, but there was no sign of the plane.

The suspected crash caps an astonishingly tragic year for air travel in Southeast Asia, and Malaysia in particular. Malaysia-based AirAsia's loss comes on top of the still-unexplained disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March with 239 people aboard, and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July over Ukraine, which killed all 298 passengers and crew.

"Until today, we have never lost a life," AirAsia group CEO Tony Fernandes told reporters. "But I think that any airline CEO who says he can guarantee that his airline is 100 percent safe is not accurate."

Nearly all the passengers and crew are Indonesians, who are frequent visitors to Singapore, particularly on holidays.

Ruth Natalia Puspitasari, who would have turned 26 on Monday, was among them. Her father, Suyanto, sat with his wife, who was puffy-eyed and coughing, near the family crisis center at Surabaya's airport.

"I don't want to experience the same thing with what was happened with Malaysia Airlines," he said as his wife wept. "It could be a long suffering."

Few believe this search will be as perplexing as the ongoing one for Flight 370, where what happened onboard remains a total mystery. Authorities suspect the plane was deliberately diverted by someone on board and ultimately lost in a remote area of the Indian Ocean. Flight 8501 vanished over a heavily traveled sea that is relatively shallow, with no sign of foul play.

The captain, Iryanto, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, had more than 20,000 flying hours, AirAsia said.

People who knew Iryanto recalled that he was an experienced military pilot, flying F-16 fighters before shifting to commercial aviation. His French co-pilot, Remi Plesel, had been in Indonesia three years and loved to fly, his sister, Renee, told France's RTL radio.

"He told me that things were going well, that he'd had a good Christmas. He was happy. The rains were starting," she said. "The weather was bad."

Mason reported from Jakarta. Associated Press writers Ali Kotarumalos, Niniek Karmini and Robin McDowell in Jakarta, Joan Lowy in Austin, Texas, Scott Mayerowitz in New York, David Koenig in Dallas and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.

Change of course: Army couple asked to move wedding for Obama golf game

HONOLULU — A couple getting married near President Barack Obama's vacation spot in Hawaii learned the hard way that the big day rarely goes exactly as planned.

Natalie Heimel and Edward Mallue Jr. — both U.S. Army captains stationed in Hawaii — were scheduled to tie the knot Sunday at Kaneohe Klipper Golf Course, a military course with ocean views near Obama's rented vacation home in Kailua.

But after their rehearsal on Saturday, they were told they'd have to move their wedding away from the 16th hole because Obama and his friends planned to golf, Heimel's sister, Christie McConnell told The Associated Press.

"They're both pretty even-tempered and planners," McConnell said of the couple, who met in 2011 while stationed in Germany. "I'm sure it was a little bit of stress, but they seemed fine."

The ceremony relocated to another part of the course that offered better views than the 16th hole, she said, adding that some guests even caught a glimpse of Obama as he golfed.

After the ceremony was done and members of the bridal party were taking photos, Mallue got a call from the wedding planner asking permission give the president his cellphone number, said McConnell, a bridesmaid. Then, Obama called and Mallue put the call on speakerphone.

"We all hovered around, all excited, listening," McConnell said. Obama asked how long they had been "going out," chatted about golf and apologized for disrupting their plans. "He was really funny and nice on the phone."

Typically, when Obama is involved in recreational activities like golf or hiking, the events are considered "unofficial" and not announced beforehand on his public schedule. Keeping the events a secret until they take place allows the Secret Service to minimize the costs and disruption involved in securing a location for Obama's arrival, but it also makes it harder for the public to anticipate when a presidential visit might throw a wrench in their plans.

In this case, the White House didn't know in advance that the couple was being told they had to relocate, said a person familiar with the chain of events, who wasn't authorized to be identified publicly and requested anonymity. The White House declined to comment on the record.

This isn't the first time Obama has faced questions about the timing of his frequent golf outings. In August, Obama golfed on Martha's Vineyard just after speaking to the nation on the Islamic State's beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley. Obama later conceded he "should have anticipated the optics."

For the newlywed couple, at least, there were no hard feelings about the change in plans, which was first reported by Bloomberg. McConnell said the phone call from the president made the wedding all the more memorable.

"There were no hard feelings about the move," she said. "It was all a good thing."

Boeing calls tanker prototype's first flight successful

(Tribune News Service) — A prototype for Boeing’s Air Force refueling tanker program made its first flight Sunday, taking off at Everett’s Paine Field and landing at Boeing Field in Seattle three and a half hours later.

The jet, a 767 with modifications that include a 787-style cockpit and extra fuel tanks but no military systems, is one of two planes to be used for initial Federal Aviation Administration certification. Military systems will be installed later.

Two additional planes with the full array of refueling systems will be the first true KC-46 tankers.

Boeing’s Air Force contract calls for delivering 179 tankers for $51 billion, starting with 18 aircraft by 2017.

The Air Force general in charge of the program estimated this month that the initial phase of Boeing’s fixed-price contract will go $1.5?billion over budget.

The first flight came six months behind Boeing’s original schedule. Causes for delay on the initial plane included complex new wiring that was repeatedly removed and reinstalled in order to meet Air Force specifications.

Boeing termed the flight “successful” but provided no details.

The KC-46 design includes an advanced refueling boom that can be hooked up to some jet fighters by an operator sitting at a station behind the tanker’s cockpit. Using a 3D video display, the boom operator will navigate the telescopic tip of the refueling tube toward the receiving fighter’s fuel receptacle.

Other jet fighters will be refueled via drogues extended from refueling pods on the wings and the tail.

Integration of the complex software systems that control this military hardware is a major challenge.

To meet its delivery schedule for 2017, Boeing must hand over the first tanker for the Air Force to test and evaluate in the fall of 2016.

Despite the program glitches this year, Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s vice chairman and chief operating officer, said at a Dec. 3 investor conference that company management is “feeling very good about where that program is at now.”

“We’ve got some of those technical issues behind us,” Muilenburg said. “We’ll now focus on executing the flight-test program under development, and then getting the program into production.”

Material from Seattle Times archives was included in this report.

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©2014 The Seattle Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC