Air Mobility Command has re-scrubbed the requirements for the KC-X tanker program, and they now lie in the hands of the Pentagon leadership, AMC chief Gen. Art Lichte told reporters Thursday at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando. The previous tanker competition was undone by too many requirements—800 being the most-quoted figure—and AMC consolidated them by “an order of magnitude,” Lichte said. Nothing really changed, but in self-protection, for example, eight requirements were summed up under LAIRCM, the Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures program, Lichte observed. He’s hoping to have the tanker project back underway by the fall and a contract award next January.
The Defense Innovation Unit is gearing up for the first flight of its commercially developed hypersonic testbed as soon as the end of February—part of a larger project to quickly increase the cadence of the Pentagon’s hypersonic flight testing and field advanced, high-speed systems and components at scale.
