The Air Force opened the door to contract aerial refueling operations and Omega Air stepped on through. Omega beat the deadline for responses to USAF’s request for information by announcing June 9 that it would serve up 60 modified DC-10s to fill the service’s tanking requirements, reports Dow Jones Newswires. This is not a new field for Omega, which currently provides contract refueling for Navy and Marine Corps aircraft using a Boeing 707 airframe. As far as we know, Omega is the only company that has offered to provide refueling service vice selling or leasing tanker aircraft to the Air Force.
The Air Force is leaning toward a less-sophisticated autonomous aircraft in the second increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the services chief futurist said. He also suggested that the next increment of CCA may be air-launched, a la the "Rapid Dragon" experiments conducted by the service in recent years.