This is the latest and most advanced tanker in the United States. It is improved from Boeing 767, numbered KC-46, nicknamed "Pega". It combines the accumulation of aerial refueling technology in the United States for more than half a century. It can be called the "No. 1 tanker in the United States" and is known as the "combat power multiplier" of the US Air Force.
However, this model that the US military attaches great importance to and announced it to be put into service as early as 2019 has been plagued by technical defects. Recently, new negative news has even been exposed. The most core technical defects of the aerial refueling system are expected to be postponed until 2025.
[KC-46A's hard tube refueling system]
According to the US Air Force, the new remote vision system (RVS) 2.0 used to operate the aircraft refueling arm on the KC-46A refueling aircraft will be delivered before October 7, 2025. This system is actually an upgraded version of the RVS 1.0 system currently in use, but RVS 1.0 has a serious bug.
In actual operation, the display interface of RVS will have screen distortions. For example, under direct sunlight, the picture in the display will fade or even turn black, which will directly cause the gas arm operator to misjudge the distance between the gas pipe of the gas receiver and the oil receiver, and eventually the gas arm will scratch the body of the oil receiver. If it is just a fourth-generation aircraft like F-15 and F-16, it would be fine. It would be fine if you brush more paint. However, now there are more and more stealth aircraft in the US Air Force sequence. Their expensive stealth coatings cannot withstand such repeated scratches. In the larger part, it will affect the stealth performance, and in the smaller part, it will greatly increase the maintenance cost.
[The B-2A stealth bomber that is receiving refueling services, its stealth coating cannot withstand the repeated scratches of the refueling pipe]
The US Air Force reached an agreement with Boeing in 2020 to solve this bug in early 2024. As a result, Boeing is now "dove", and it will be postponed until October 2025, because of the supply chain problems caused by the new crown pandemic. The US Air Force has no choice.
In fact, KC-46A is an "old ace pigeon" in the US Air Force project. It has been troublesome since the US military received the first aircraft in 2019. There are problems with line problems, fuel leakage and bugs in the fuel arm operating system, which makes the KC-46A fleet unable to form complete combat effectiveness for a long time. The biggest problem among these problems is the operating system of the fuel arm. The KC-46A was only used as a cargo plane for a time, and was not until recently approved by the US Air Force to deploy it globally.
As a veteran American aviation enterprise, Boeing has developed and produced a variety of aerial refueling machines. In addition to the KC-46A, it also includes the KC-135 in the 1950s and the KC-767 in the 2000s. Among them, the output of KC-135 is as high as 803, which is the most successful aerial refueling machine in human history. Logically speaking, Boeing should be able to make a tanker project easy, why does the KC-46A have problems?
[KC-46A is developed based on Boeing 757, making full use of the huge warehouse]
This is what we need to introduce the most proud remote vision system of KC-46A.
Conventional hard-tube refueling machines require a gas arm operator sitting at the back of the cabin, facing away from the head in the operating room, visually observing and operating the gas arm through the porthole. Although this design is simple and reliable, the operator stays away from the cockpit, not only does the flight experience poorly, but also requires the aircraft to add an additional booster and environmental control system. The remote vision system of
remote vision system solved this problem. The two operators of the refueling arm were directly set in the cockpit of the nose and were with other crew members. The operator only needed to remotely control the refueling arm to complete the air refueling through the screen provided by the multi-spectral camera distributed around the aircraft. Simply put, the operator can remotely control the refueling arm by watching the monitoring, rather than using the naked eye to measure it with the naked eye as before.
[Close-up of the refueling tube of KC-46A, you can see the camera on the abdomen of the body]
This advanced operating system can be said to have redefined the hard tube refueling machine. As a result, since the test flight, this advanced remote vision system has had frequent problems and has only been put into use after several rounds of repairs. The RVS 2.0 system currently under development plans to use a brand new camera and full-color high-definition screen to alleviate the problem of picture distortion.
[KC-46A's fuel pipe operator interface]
To be fair, although conventional hard pipe refueling machines judge distance through the operator's naked eyes and do not have the problem of monitoring screen distortion, the emission scratches of the refueling pipe and the oil receiver are still common, and the gas pipe does not enter the gas refueling port of the oil receiver many times also happens from time to time. After using remote remote control, the pilot misjudgment of distance caused by screen distortion is actually normal. The new technology must have a period of continuous correction, but the biggest point of this is the attitude of Boeing .
KC-46A was originally able to defeat the KC-45 jointly developed by Northrop Grumman and Airbus in the second round of bidding. As a result, the initial contract of US$4.9 billion finally rose to US$5.85 billion, which only included the first 4 orders.
[As a tanker that began to be developed in 2011, it is hard to imagine that the most critical camera of KC-46A is actually black and white]
Boeing also has serious drag on the production and improvement of KC-46A. The design of the tanker arm is based on the mature design of KC-10. In fact, the most difficult one is the RVS system, and RVS has become the biggest problem. Now, Boeing proposed that RVS 2.0 is not difficult to upgrade compared to 1.0, but it has been delayed until now after reaching an agreement with the US Air Force in 2020 and has not been resolved. It has to be delayed until 2025 In the words of senior US military commentator Taylor Rogway, the one who defeats the KC-46 is not necessarily the enemy air-to-air missile , but is more likely to be an "inner disease" that has been delayed.
At present, the US Air Force has received 60 KC-46As. The R&D costs are shared, and the average cost of one aircraft is as high as US$240 million. In addition to occasionally poking the oil-receiving machine, the operators' evaluation of it is actually OK, mainly because the KC-135 is too old. You should know that the last KC-13 was delivered to the Air Force in 1965. These " master aircraft " have aged more than most pilots who drove them.
[KC-46A Elephant Walking, In addition to the United States, Israel and Japan have also purchased this kind of tanker]
KC-46A's current unreliable means that the KC-135 fleet will have to fly longer to retire, which invisibly increases maintenance pressure and flight safety.
After the Chinese Air Force entered the strategic era, the importance of tankers has been highlighted. Currently, tankers such as H-6U, Il-78 and oil transport-20 are still hose tankers. Compared with hard pipe tankers, there are problems such as slow fuel delivery speed and long refueling time. Therefore, there are also many calls for the development of hard pipe tankers like the US military.
Putting aside the necessity of hard tube tankers, the development experience of the KC-46A project can be said to remind us that if we want to transcend the conventional layout like KC-135 and centrally arrange the operator and pilot in the cockpit of the nose, we must focus on the reliability of remote monitoring and remote control systems. Our Air Force is also increasing the number of stealth aircraft, and it is more likely to be equipped with stealth strategic bombers in the future. The scratching of the refueling arms and stealth coatings is also an issue that needs to be considered.
[The oil receiving port of this C-130 was terrible by the refueling pipe]
hard pipe refueling machine has high efficiency and fast refueling speed, which is more suitable for strategic bomber and transport aircraft . In the future, there are more and more large aircraft in my country, and there is also a demand for equipment for hard pipe refueling machines.Therefore, it is worth studying to fully learn from the lessons learned by the United States in this field and avoid taking the detours of the United States.
my country is a rising star in the field of electronic security monitoring . It has now reached the world's first echelon in technology. It has a complete industrial chain from R&D and manufacturing to operation and maintenance services. The front-end perception and related algorithms are also quite mature. These technologies can play a good role in the future research and development of hard pipe refueling machines in my country. We don’t need to go through the detours that Boeing takes in software subsystem development and integration.
