Lawmakers on the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee are seeming skeptical of some the Air Force’s future tanker plans and want to put guardrails in place, as they unveiled their markup of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act on June 12. The markup ...
Lockheed Martin is pitching its Airbus A330-based LMXT tanker as a “mothership” for the Air Force’s planned fleet of small, stealthy tankers—a rationale company officials hope will overcome the service’s reticence to open its so-called “bridge tanker” buy to competition.
As near-peer adversaries have increased their reach and lethality, the U.S. Air Force is accelerating the tanker fleet recapitalization and aggressively pulling forward the Next Generation Aerial Refueling System (NGAS) to meet the threat. Globally operating the KC-46A has advanced mission...
As the Air Force embarks on what is likely to be a lengthy process of developing the Next Generation Air Refueling System (NGAS) to help recapitalize its aerial refueling fleet, the service is placing more and more of a “premium on survivability” for future tankers, ...
Among the new aircraft programs the Air Force included in its fiscal 2024 budget request are uncrewed, autonomous wingmen for its fighters, a next-generation tanker program, a fast-as-possible replacement for its aged E-3 AWACS air battle management jets, and a new airborne command post. It ...
The Air Force will reduce its next buy of aerial tankers and push on toward development of a new, stealthy system that will be operational in the 2030s-2040, service acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said. He told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium that the Air ...
The Air Force has officially launched its Next-Generation Air-Refueling System, a stealthy tanker to begin operations circa 2040. A Request for Information put out to industry said USAF will consider all manner of novel and innovative ideas for the next tanker, but the technologies it ...