A KC-46 Pegasus assigned to the 22nd Air Refueling Wing, McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas, lands at Yokota Air Base, Japan, Nov. 7, 2022, in support of Exercise Keen Sword 23. (U.S. Air Force/Yasuo Osakabe)
REAGAN NATIONAL DEFENSE FORUM — One of the House Armed Services Committee’s top Republicans is skeptical that Boeing’s replacement for the KC-46’s troubled vision system will pan out, and wants the Air Force to hedge its bets by holding a competition for its next tanker variant.
Next year, the Air Force is set to decide whether to hold a competition for its follow-on to the Boeing KC-46 — a program interchangeably called KC-Y or “bridge tanker” — or to simply continue buying KC-46s beyond the 179-aircraft program of record.
Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., believes the Air Force needs to consider alternatives to the KC-46, a program that he said “infuriates” him due to continued technical problems.
“I do think [Air Force] Secretary [Frank] Kendall needs to compete KC-Y. I still think that they need to compete it. Why? Because of all the issues we’ve had with KC-46A,” Wittman told Breaking Defense during the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday.
Wittman, who is currently the top Republican on the HASC’s seapower and projection forces subcommittee that has oversight over US Air Force refueling assets, is seeking the chair of HASC’s tactical air and land forces subcommittee next year. (While stressing that the decision would be up to incoming HASC chair Rep. Mike Rogers, Wittman said the new role is “where we’d like to end up.”) Though his role within HASC may be shifting around, Wittman will remain on the projection forces subcommittee as a member, and is a hugely influential voice on defense matters for his caucus.
The KC-Y program has already engendered impassioned debate by the entire committee — one expected to become more heated this year after the Air Force makes its decision on whether to sole source the KC-46.
During the markup of the defense policy bill this June, HASC members agreed to hold off on an amendment that would force the Air Force to hold a competition, giving the service a year to complete its analysis and make its recommendation. But if the service does decide to forgo a competition, lawmakers such as Wittman could — once again — step in and try to compel it.
If a KC-Y competition takes place, it could pave the way for a Lockheed Martin-Airbus team to capture sales of anywhere from 140 to 160 tankers. Their offering, the LMXT, is a variant of the Airbus A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport with US-specific modifications that will give the aircraft additional communications and data fusion capabilities.
Behind Wittman’s concerns about just buying more KC-46s are two lingering technical problems associated with the beleaguered tanker. For one, its current boom is not able to refuel the A-10, which has forced the Air Force to fund development of a new boom actuator. Still, Wittman noted, “You’re not going to be doing as much A-10 tanking [in the future], so that is probably something you can still be able to get around” by refueling A-10s using legacy tankers like the KC-10 and KC-135.
A bigger problem, according to Wittman, is the KC-46’s Remote Vision System, a series of cameras and sensors that provides imagery to the boom operator so that he or she can safely steer the boom into a receiver aircraft’s fuel receptacle without damaging it.
Boeing is currently developing a successor to the original RVS system after complaints that imagery looked warped or washed out in certain lighting conditions. However, Wittman noted that it’s unclear how the redesigned RVS — nicknamed RVS 2.0 — will perform in testing.
RELATED: The replacement for the KC-46’s troubled vision system is delayed by more than a year
“You still haven’t figured out whether the fix to the RVS is really the fix. So now you’re taking on that risk. We’re going into the next tranche of aircraft production where you may not have fixed the problem,” he said.
Although the KC-46 technically won’t meet the milestone for initial operational capability until RVS 2.0 is fielded, over the past year the Air Force has approved the tanker to be tasked for operations around the globe. In September, Air Mobility Command head Gen. Mike Minihan cleared the KC-46 to refuel US military aircraft in combat, excluding the A-10.
“I am extremely straightforward with Boeing in my concerns about quality, timelines, and costs. But if I can put an incredibly capable tanker in the fight, then why wouldn’t I?” Minihan told reporters then. “It’s the most capable aircraft in my inventory right now. … There are 60 of the fleet. I would not for one second, play politics with the defense industry when it comes to the mission of my command or the lives of the Americans I support.”
Despite recent operational successes, the KC-46 program still faces myriad technological hurdles. In October, the Air Force acknowledged that RVS 2.0 would be fielded 19 months late due to related to supply chain and FAA testing. The service now projects RVS 2.0 will be ready in October 2025, not March 2024. There is no additional cost to the taxpayer as a result of the delays, as they were not caused by an Air Force-directed design change.
Those continued struggles are a source of frustration for lawmakers such as Wittman.
“You’ve got all these aircraft out there that are mission limited. As much as the Air Force says, ‘Oh, they’re great aircraft and we fly them on all these missions,’ they’re still mission limited. And it just really infuriates me as to the time delays that we continue to see on RVS,” Wittman said.
“I think that the Air Force has the ability to be able to get it right, but I think there have been so many hiccups on the tanker — from the initial award with Airbus and then the recompete and then Boeing thinking that it was going to be just as simple as taking a civilian aircraft and painting it gray,” he said. “There have been all those hiccups there.”
