Silks Level 0.5 (beginners)- A true beginners’ class.Now that Kendall and company have advanced the vision of a stealthy refueler, the concept is unlikely to disappear because it is driven by threats in the Pacific that will only grow worse with time.New Classes (including lots of daytime classes!) Having lost its bid to develop a new engine for the increasingly ubiquitous F-35 fighter, GE will be focused on next-gen airframes as its biggest military opportunity going forward. That includes the engine makers, where Pratt & Whitney (a contributor to my think tank) currently leads the industry in providing powerplants for stealthy aircraft, and rival General Electric GE Aerospace is straining to establish a beachhead. The one thing that Air Force leaders are insisting on is that when engineering begins ramping up in 2032, all of the key technologies to be incorporated in the tanker must be reasonably mature-technology readiness level six, as the Pentagon puts it.Ģ032 may seem like a long way off, but it’s a safe bet that all the prospective industry players are devoting resources to thinking through how they can offer the preferred solution for a stealthy refueler. Once these inputs are received, the service will commence a formal “analysis of alternatives” in October to review all the possibilities. They are waiting to hear from industry what is feasible. It might be bigger or smaller than existing tankers. Kendall and Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter appear to have no firm preconceptions how NGAS will be configured.
Like the service’s new B-21 bomber and its next-generation air dominance fighter, the future tanker will be a case study in what is possible using the latest innovations. That is hardly a surprise, since Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall is an aerospace engineer by training, and has insisted that his service operate on the leading edge of the digital revolution. In other words, no drawing board, no paper. A request for information from industry issued in January stated that NGAS must be developed using digital engineering and model-based prototypes. So, it’s back to the drawing boards-although that is a figure of speech left over from a previous generation of aircraft design. Unfortunately, there is no practical way to reduce the radar or infrared signatures of a Boeing 767, on which Pegasus is based, to the level the Air Force is seeking for the third increment of tankers. That’s in addition to the extensive self-protection and defensive features already incorporated on KC-46-a plane that can withstand everything from chem-bio attacks to the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear weapon. And it wants a tanker that is impervious to advanced cyberattacks. It wants a tanker that is seamlessly networked with the rest of the joint force. It wants a tanker that can refuel unmanned aircraft-drones-in flight. But enhanced survivability isn’t the only thing the service is seeking. Much of the commentary to date has focused on a “blended wing body” that would generate minimal radar returns to bolster survivability.
Some company-probably Boeing or Lockheed or Northrop Grumman NOC-will have to provide a completely different kind of airframe for the third increment in the tanker recapitalization saga.
This drastically alters the competitive landscape. But now the Air Force says it will cut the second increment in half to about 75 aircraft before moving on to NGAS, and it seems inclined to stick with KC-46 for that reduced buy. In fact, Lockheed Martin LMT (another think tank contributor) intended to offer a larger tanker based on the Airbus A330 that it argued was better suited to Pacific operations. It was never a foregone conclusion that the second increment of 140-160 tankers would be KC-46s. The expectation was that Boeing (a contributor to my think tank) would build 179 of these “Pegasus” tankers, and the service would then move on to a similarly-sized second increment consisting of improved commercial derivatives. This isn’t how the Air Force envisioned tanker modernization in 2011, when it selected Boeing’s BA KC-46 to provide the first of three increments in a multi-decade recapitalization plan.
0 kommentar(er)
