KC-46 developments

a reply to: Zaphod58
I just hope they get some new tankers some time within my lifetime. The services needed new tankers back when I was flying with the navy in Desert Shield first gulf war for the youngsters.

a reply to: Barnalby

The 777 was never an entrant to a competition, the 767 started this whole mess off and has consistently been offered in various forms.

The A330 is bigger, which was one of the points used to kill it in the protest. The GAO agreed too that bigger isn't necessarily better for this competition.

Hope tinker snags some, they'd be hitting the wing about the time we rotate back.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I know, I was more pointing out the lack of a K-777 proposal which led to the original "knife in a gunfight" battle between the 767 and the A330.

What IS surprising to me, however, and what I was trying to get at with the whole KC-135/367-80/707 bit was that this first procurement battle was happening right as the first 787 prototypes were being readied for their first flights.

Now in the 1950s, the USAF was willing to take a gamble on the then-revolutionary 367-80 as the future of their tanker/cargo fleet. At the same time, Boeing was confident enough in their new airframe to put their reputation on the line by selling this cutting-edge airframe for such a high-visibility, high-risk role.

The fact that they had the 787, their potential(on paper) ace in the hole against the A330 ready to go, and instead chose to save the 767 tooling from the scrapper's torches for one last production run and serve up the KC-46 instead speaks volumes about their confidence (or lack thereof) in 787.

What does Boeing know about the 787s durability and airframe longevity (and what does the USAF know about maintaining composite airframes) that they're keeping on the DL? What would keep them from putting their best foot forward (as they have in the past), especially when billions are on the line?

a reply to: Barnalby

In the 1950s, when the 707 family first flew they had orders for almost no aircraft. When the 787 first flew there was already a two plus year backlog. So Boeing would have to piss off their bread and butter and delay commercial orders for years to build less than 200 aircraft for the Air Force, invest billions to build a new line for less than 200 aircraft, or build 767s, which had a line ending and open slots in production.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Although, iirc wasn't one of the reasons why the USAF chose the KC-30 the first time around was because it was seen as a way to "punish" Boeing for their relatively underwhelming KC-46 proposal?

a reply to: Barnalby

No, because Boeing offered the Frankentanker. It was a mash of different model 767 and 787 technologies. They saw it as too much of a risk.