Think that no matter what the rights and wrongs of PFI are, fact is there is no cash in the bank for a capital outlay. That was given up years ago when they decided there was no requirement for AAR.
Southbound.
I think you may be confusing a few issues with that statement. AAR is the primary role of FSTA (note strategic TANKER aircraft). What I think you are confusing is that fleet sizing for FSTA never took into account the AT role. FSTA was fleet sized on the UK military AAR requirement. The beancounters (DCRS - not sure what they are called today) always stipulated that the AT role would be done by FSTA if "value for money" could be proven but couldn't be used for fleet sizing. This was when certain woolley thinking within 2 Gp/DSTL and MOD assumed that AT would always fly into benign environments and therefore could be chartered......Doh!!
When the Govt decide that AAR could be PFI'd the funding line for a purchased replacement was diverted to other programmes - Doh! So now there is no chance that we could procure a replacement unless there is a MASSIVE increase in Defence spending. A procured replacement of 17 KC30s is circa £2.5B!!!!!!!!!!