Boeing KC-46A tankers - General discussion

The Air Force said Friday that Boeing’s initial KC-46 air-to-air refueling tankers will be delivered six months later than the contractual deadline — and they’ll not be fully operational until nine months after that.

Brigadier General Duke Richardson, who heads the Air Force tanker program, attributed the delays to “technical challenges.”

Boeing and the Air Force now say the first tanker delivery will move from March to August next year, and the Air Force now anticipates receiving its 18th tanker in January 2018.

However, those first tankers will be incomplete. They won’t have the capability to dispense fuel to two aircraft at once using a hose-and-drogue system attached to pods on the wings.

The initial 18 aircraft delivered will have the capability to dispense fuel through the boom and through the fuselage drogue system, but not through the wing pods.

....Air Force doesn’t require all of its tankers to have wing pods and that only half of the initial 18 aircraft are intended to have that capability.

So in October 2018, Boeing will deliver nine wing-pod sets, he said.

Ramey said the hose-and-drogue refueling systems, both on the wings and on the fuselage, have performed as expected in flight tests, but “It’s taken longer than we anticipated to get through qualification and certification” of those systems.

The delay news upends recent pronouncements from Boeing Chairman and Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg. A month ago, on an earnings call discussing the latest tanker write-off, he insisted Boeing was sticking to its original schedule commitment.