KC-46A Pegasus arrives at Yokota in support of Keen Sword 23

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. (U.S. Air Force photo by Yasuo Osakabe)

AIR WARFARE SYMPOSIUM — Goodbye, KC-Y. Adios, KC-Z. The Air Force is officially moving away from its long-held strategy to upgrade its tanker fleet.

Instead of those long-planned competitions, which were originally laid out as the master plan to recapitalize the Air Force’s aging refueling fleet with a series of new tankers, the service is moving ahead with a truncated tanker buy — now almost certain to be 75 more KC-46s — and a next generation air refueler, which the service plans to compete and field by the mid-2030s.

The reason for ditching a competitive KC-Y process is directly tied into industry responses, according to acquisition chief Andrew Hunter.

“We have come to the determination that the kind of KC-X, -Y, -Z strategy that was established in the 2009-2010 timeframe is no longer fit for purpose for meeting the aerial refueling needs of the joint force in the 2030s and beyond,” Hunter said.

The Air Force previously believed that additional capabilities featured in KC-Y requirements “would not necessarily be a big stretch,” Hunter said. That changed when the service determined that if the KC-Y contract was competed, Boeing could deliver a tanker by 2032 with competitor Lockheed Martin following two years later, a delivery timeline that risked opening a gap between the end of KC-46 deliveries and fielding a follow-on KC-Y.

In January, the Air Force launched early analysis of alternatives work for the Next-Generation Air Refueling System, or NGAS, eyeing an initial capability in 2040. Hunter said with the end of KC-46 deliveries in 2029, a buy of 75 tankers could get the service to an “initial increment” of NGAS now planned for the mid-2030s. 

“We are looking at what is going to get us NGAS. We think we will need about five years of tanker production from the current end of deliveries of KC-46 to get to increment one,” he said, adding that NGAS would evaluate commercial derivatives and clean-sheet designs to achieve greater stealth and connectivity for the new tanker.

Hunter said he expects the NGAS program to be “fully competitive.” 

The next round of refuelers will still be a bridge tanker of sorts to get to that point — as KC-Y was supposed to be for KC-Z — though Hunter said the planned procurement will feature “a more modest requirement” than what KC-Y was asking for. 

“We do expect based on the information that industry previously provided that that may lead us towards KC-46 as the answer for that,” he said, cautioning that officials were still waiting to hear from vendors to make a final decision planned for the middle of this year.

“I think [it] shows a great amount of confidence that the Air Force has in the KC-46,” Boeing Defense Space
and Security Business Development Senior Manager Mike Hafer said on the sidelines of the AFA convention floor when asked about Hunter’s comments.

“We’ll build them as long as the Air Force wants KC-46s, and we’ll look to grow and enhance those KC-46s,” he added. 

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Larry Gallogly, Lockheed’s LMXT campaign director, said in an interview that the LMXT “still has an integral part to play in the NGAS family of systems,” emphasizing that the company would be ready to deliver NGAS capabilities by 2031.

Gallogly said the company’s current master schedule was to deliver two engineering, manufacturing and development LMXTs by 2029, which he acknowledged as an “aggressive” timeline. “We don’t know where that came from,” he said regarding the Air Force’s much later estimate of 2034. 

The possibility of sole-sourcing the next planned tanker buy to Boeing is not all-too surprising given that Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said last year that the likelihood of a KC-Y competition has come down as the service evaluated requirements. Still, the plan needs congressional buy-in, where some legislators have been pushing for a KC-Y competition

Hunter said he briefed lawmakers on the new approach, though he did not share how it was received. 

“If Congress doesn’t like the plan I just described to you, they will have something to say about it,” he said. “So we’re gonna make our best case and see how it performs.”