Tankfly til USAF - Setter USAF/Boeing rekord i sendrektighet? - 17 år and counting..... - AW&ST

KC-46 Tanker Inches Toward Delivery Date Jen DiMascio  The U.S. Air Force and Boeing may have agreed on an October 2018 delivery date for the first KC-46A aerial refueling tanker, but the service is still trying to resolve deficiencies and testing software fixes. Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the Air Force’s top military acquisition official, says issues could come up in testing, but he is hoping to speed up delivery: “We believe [the schedule] is aggressive but achievable.” The agreement on a delivery date represents the next step in a saga two decades long to replace the service’s Eisenhower-era KC-135 tankers.  Tests of Remote Vision System are ongoing Boeing has nearly three dozen aircraft in various stages of production Just getting to the agreement has been typical of this program. It was more difficult than anyone thought possible for what might have been a simple retrofit: adding a refueling capability to the long-produced Boeing 767 commercial aircraft. The U.S. government started looking for new tankers shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York. But it was not until 2011 that Boeing landed the eventual contract award for $3.5 billion for 18 tankers. And now Boeing and its customer, the Air Force, finally have agreed on a path forward. “As a result of months of collaboration, the Air Force and Boeing KC-46A teams have reached an agreed joint program schedule to get to the first 18 aircraft deliveries. This includes the expectation that the first KC-46A aircraft acceptance and delivery will occur in October 2018, with the remaining 17 aircraft delivered by April 2019,” Air Force Undersecretary Matthew Donovan says. “While the KC-46A flight-test program is nearly complete, significant work remains. The Air Force is looking forward to KC-46A first delivery and will continue to work with Boeing on opportunities to expedite the program.” The feeling is mutual. Boeing now has more than three dozen KC-46s in the production flow, from nearly complete to the early stages of being built, and is eager to begin deliveries. “We’re also very excited to start getting the aircraft in their hands,” says Leanne Caret, the president of Boeing Defense, Space and Security.

After nearly two decades, the Air Force appears months away from receiving KC-46A tankers to replace its aging fleet of KC-135s. Credit: Boeing

The pace of deliveries of about three per month is consistent with what the Air Force said it wanted in April. But getting to this moment of agreement has not been easy. Boeing already has incurred more than $3 billion in pre-tax charges on the program, which was awarded as a fixed-price contract to shield the government from cost overruns. However, it did not help with schedule delays. According to the Government Accountability Office, the original development contract mandated that Boeing would deliver the 18 aircraft by August 2017. In addition to scuffling over the schedule, Boeing and the Air Force have been at odds over many technical issues, most recently about the need to fix the Remote Vision System sensor that enables the fuel-delivery boom to be operated from the tanker cockpit. The Air Force was concerned the boom could accidentally scrape the receiver aircraft during certain flight conditions; Boeing said its system met the service’s requirements. As of April, Boeing had agreed to upgrade the software in time to deliver the first aircraft. The work is ongoing. Boeing and the KC-46A program office are still trying to find ways to resolve deficiencies, and the Air Force is testing Boeing’s software fix for the Remote Vision System. “Boeing and the KC-46A program office agreed to incorporate additional test points to assess military utility of the current design,” the Air Force states in an email. “Laboratory testing of Boeing’s hardware and software fixes to the Centerline Drogue System also continues. Flight-test verification of the fixes is now forecasted for September 2018.” And though Bunch says he would like to streamline the process and receive the aircraft before October, “It will all depend on how we get through the remainder of the test program.” Asked to reflect on what could be learned from the program, Caret says, “I think that there are clearly lessons on both sides.” She notes that such complicated programs require that all parties speak the same language. “I do think though that when you have a tough program like this, it’s easy for relationships to get strained over time—especially one that goes on for as many years as this has,” Caret says. “That’s not atypical for Boeing or any other contractor, they’re just hard. . . . We all had a shared destiny, which was getting this capability in the hands of the warfighter, and when you clear all the other mud away and you focus on that—the line of sight to getting through—any resolution becomes a lot easier.”