Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) finally won the U.S. Air Force contract to replace the KC-10 and KC-135 refueling tankers in 2011 after nearly a decade of wrangling with both the Air Force and Airbus. Now, Boeing has to contend with an even more obstreperous antagonist — the U.S. Congress.

The National Defense Authorization Act was enacted earlier this month and negotiators from both houses of Congress agreed to insert language in the bill that prohibits any fiscal 2015 funds being used to “transfer, divest, or prepare to divest any KC-10 aircraft.”

The prohibition could be lifted 60 days after the Secretary of Defense submits cost-benefits analyses for the transition. According to Defense News: “Those analyses include a five-year force structure plan for the tanker fleet, a breakdown of current and future air refueling and cargo transportation requirements, and a risk assessment and mitigation strategy.”

Mackenzie Eaglen, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, notes the “makeup of Congress — controlled by Republicans hostile to the sitting president, many of whom have been in Congress less than a decade and who are used to telling the Pentagon “no.” She told Defense News:

[Congressional Republicans] are not going to give an early tanker retirement in the next two years of this presidency. It doesn’t matter who is secretary, it doesn’t matter the compelling case.

The Air Force said that if it can’t retire the KC-10s in the fleet it will begin retiring the KC-135 tankers. Unless of course someone like Senator John McCain, who will become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee next year, intervenes.

Along with the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and a new long-range bomber, the KC-46A was one of three top Air Force priorities. Boeing is developing the plane on a fixed-price development contract that was worth about $4.9 billion. So far the company has spent about $1 billion more than that and those overruns will not be reimbursed. The first four tankers are scheduled for delivery by August 2017 and the full order calls for 179 new tankers by 2028.

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