Washington's congressional delegation is a diverse group that doesn't agree on much, whether it's who's waging a “war on women” or what's the right policy on taxes, budget cuts, health care reform or immigration.

But they managed to rally around one favorite topic this morning: Putting the first new KC-46A tankers at Fairchild Air Force Base.

OK, so it's kind of a no-brainer that planes assembled in the state at a Boeing plant would stay in the state at Fairchild. Still, all nine representatives and both senators signed on to a letter today to Air Force Secretary Mike Donley and various generals that Fairchild would be a really great spot for the first '46As because it has both Active Duty and Air National Guard units that fly tankers, an improved runway, and is close to the Asia-Pacific theater. That plus the federal government has spent about $400 million on a wide range of improvements over the last few decades. (Stuff that we assume the secretary and the generals already know, but hey, they're busy guys so it probably doesn't hurt to remind them.)

A copy of the full letter is inside the blog.

The Air Force released the criteria today for deciding which of its bases will get the first new air refueling tankers, and Fairchild will be among about 60 bases being considered.

That means the Air Force won't limit those first KC-46As to a base that already serves as a current home for tankers, but will look at most facilities in the continental United States. The main criteria for making this first list for consideration?

“A runway,” a spokeswoman for the officer of the Secretary of the Air Force said after a short description of the criteria was released. That's essentially all bases with airplanes, although not every Air Force base has planes, Ann Stefanek said.

From that most basic of necessities for a jet patterned after the Boeing 767 commercial airliner, the Air Force will consider other important details, such as the capacity of the fueling system, available space on the runway, size of hangars, proximity to planes needing to be refueled, airspace availability, environmental considerations and costs.

The Air Force expects to have scores for all the potential bases sometime this summer, Stefanek said, and narrow the list further to a small group of top scorers from which the preferred site and reasonable alternatives will be chosen late this year.

The Air Force began briefing members of Congress and posted the criteria briefly on its website this afternoon. It later removed the criteria, even though it kept a link with a picture of a prototype of the new tanker refueling a cargo plane that promised information about the criteria.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said she believes the criteria puts Fairchild Air Force Base in a ” very competitive position” to be an early home for the new planes, which will be built in Everett: “I'm confident that Fairchild's long tanker history, strong community support and joint operations between the Active Duty and Guard place it in an ideal position to succeed.”

The West Plains base has a new runway and a new wing headquarters under construction, Murray said in an e-mail. A letter from the state's congressional delegation to Air Force leaders on how the base stacks up to the criteria could be sent as soon as Tuesday.

To read the Air Force announcement of criteria for the first two new tanker bases, and the tanker “formal training unit, click here to go inside the blog.

The Air Force’s top aerial act, the Thunderbirds, will perform at Fairchild Air Force Base next July.

Fairchild announced today the Thunderbirds put the Skyfest 2010 event on their schedule, which was released yesterday at a convention in Las Vegas.

Maj. Angela Oconnell, a base spokeswoman, said this may be the earliest an announcement of an upcoming Skyfest has ever been made.

“We found out and we thought we’d put it on everybody’s calendar,” Oconnell said late this morning. Skyfest will be July 24 and 25.

Think you saw Air Force One flying low over the West Plains this afternoon? Well, you weren’t hallucinating.

One of two planes used by the president as Air Force One did land at Fairchild Air Force Base Thursday afternoon. It’s at the base for two days for an operations maintenance check after having depot maintenance elsewhere, Lt. Casey Osborne said.

Osborne said that was sort of like taking your car out for a spin after it’s had a tune up, to see if everything’s running properly.

The plane, an Air Force version of a 747-200, will be landing and taking off from Fairchild through Saturday, so you might see it overhead in the next two days.

President Obama is not on the plane, so technically it’s not Air Force One. The plane only carries that designation when the president is on it.

It’s basing at Fairchild has nothing to do with Obama’s trip to Bozeman, Mont., and Yellowstone National Park on Friday and Saturday, Osborne said.

Spokane residents should not get too jumpy in the coming weeks as a couple of different groups run a couple of exercises here abouts.

Later this week, the U.S. Army Rangers will be conducting night time exercises at Fairchild Air Force Base. West Plains residents living nearby, and motorists driving by on Highway 2 or other byways, are likely to hear lots of low-flying aircraft — airplanes and helicopters — as well as gunfire. The ammunition isn’t live.

There won’t be anything to see, off-base, but it will be kind of noisy, from Thursday night through Monday night.

Then on Aug. 4, the Spokane Police Department will be holding a SWAT team demonstration involving a school bus, in a Riverfront Park parking lot north of the river off Washington Street. They’re hoping folks in the park and downtown workers don’t mistake it for the real thing.

Air Force officials told a Senate subcommittee they still don’t like the idea of “splitting the baby” on the new refueling tanker.

That’s not a surprise, because the Pentagon has been saying to anyone who will listen that they want to have one version of the replacement for the aging KC-135s. They want to take bids from Boeing and Lockheed/Grumman/EADS and do a winner take all. Problem is, certain members of Congress, particularly the head of a House military appropriations committee, don’t much want to listen.

Sen. Patty Murray — who is a big supporter of Boeing (it’s a mutual kind of thing) — wants just one contract, and took a Capitol Hill visit by Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Norman Schwartz to get them to reiterate what they’ve been saying all along about a single contract.

They also got to repeat that they support a “fair and open” competition for the contract, which could be worth about $40 billion. This is hardly news, although it would be news if they would own up at some point to supporting a “rigged and secretive” competition, right?

So what about sending the new tankers — should they EVER get built — to Fairchild?

Answer inside the blog.

Sen. Patty Murray will be asking questions of Air Force honchos about that pesky tanker replacement contract they have thus far been unable to run to ground.

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Gen. Norman Schwartz will appear before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that controls their budget, and the Washington Democrat will take that opportunity to ask some of her favorite questions about replacement tankers, staff said.

Among them: Shouldn’t U.S. money for U.S. war planes go to U.S. companies when the U.S. is in the middle of a recession? And, where exactly are you going to put the first new planes that roll off the assembly line…a base that starts with “F” and ends with ”-airchild”?

Whether she’ll get definitive answers from Donley, Schwarts and company remains to be seen. Hearing starts at 7:30 a.m. Pacific, but is watchable on the subcommittee’s Web site.