Wichita ? Even if Boeing Co.’s contract to provide the Air Force with 100 new refueling tankers eventually passes muster in Washington, it might not mean many new hires at the aircraft giant’s Wichita plant.

“There’s no easy answer,” Boeing spokesman Paul Guse said. “It’s a factor of where you are in time.”

What is clear, though, is that losing the deal would hurt. “We’ll have challenges” to maintain employment levels if the Pentagon cancels the contract, said Bob Gower, head of Boeing’s tanker program.

The Air Force tanker program would entail the purchase and lease of 100 modified Boeing 767s, with the modification work to done in Wichita.

Three reviews of the contract — being conducted by Pentagon general counsel, the Defense Science Board and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces — are expected to continue through at least May. The Defense Department has said the Air Force can’t proceed with the contract until they are completed.

The various reviews of the contract began after questions arose about ethical issues surrounding the way Boeing pursued the multibillion-dollar project, including concerns the company might have received improper information that allowed it to beat out its European rival, Airbus.

If it goes through, Boeing officials say the contract will sustain about 1,000 jobs in Wichita. However, the company already has about 900 employees, most of them engineers, working on various tanker projects. About 100 of those work specifically on the Air Force project.

Others work on a tanker modification program for the Italian air force, and some perform general work in the tanker program.

If the Air Force project gets the go-ahead, Guse said, the company’s need for workers will shift from design and development engineers to those with structural and manufacturing skills. Peak production would be reached about five years after the start of the program. It is difficult to project exact job figures that far out, Guse said.

When the engineering phase of the tanker project winds down, many of the engineers currently working on the project will move on to other assignments.

“As you would go into multiple aircraft and multiple customers in the modification line, obviously the employment on that side increases,” Guse said. “As development work ends on a specific program … fewer numbers are assigned to that side of it.”

Because the Wichita plant works on multiple projects and programs for commercial and military customers, Guse said, there are always programs in various stages.