Title: Air Force’s Tanker Aircraft Continues to Struggle
Headings: Air Force’s Tanker Aircraft Continues to Struggle
Air Force’s Tanker Aircraft Continues to Struggle
The KC-46’s Troubled Design Undermines Its Mission
“Fill ‘Er Up!” Why It’s Taken the Pentagon Nearly Two Decades to Buy a New Aerial Tanker
Risky Contracting Strategy and Blown Budgets
Historically High Pentagon Spending Creates a Hollow Force
The KC-46’s Needless Complexity
Conclusion
Help us shine a light on government waste, corruption, and abuse of power.
Center for Defense Information

Content: It is certainly not the long-wished-for “ stealth tanker ” that could accompany other radar-evading aircraft into defended enemy airspace. Still, by August 2019, the program’s growing pains caused Boeing’s expenses to nearly double, increasing beyond the original budget by $4.6 billion. Because the Air Force awarded the company a fixed-price contract, those costs are supposed to be covered by the Boeing Corporation. However, the taxpayers, as always, will likely end up footing the bill. Boeing’s expenses during the early phases of this program will be made up during production of the KC-46 fleet and through costly sustainment contracts because the company is engaging in one of the most pernicious practices of the military-industrial-congressional complex: Boeing is deliberately creating a weapons program that only its employees can support in order to secure long-term, noncompetitive sustainment contracts. The KC-46’s Troubled Design Undermines Its Mission
The development costs for the program continue to rise because Boeing engineers have yet to solve significant problems with the basic onboard systems that make the KC-46 a tanker. The program currently has three open “ Category I deficiencies ” related to its primary mission, design flaws so severe that they “may cause death, severe injury, or severe occupational illness; may cause loss or major damage to a weapon system; critically restricts the combat readiness capabilities of the using organization;