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• Author: Carberry, Sean

AURORA, Colorado --The Air Force is abandoning its KC-Y and KC-Z approach to developing and procuring refueling tankers and is instead moving to a next-generation aerial refueling model like its program to develop a sixth-generation fighter, according to a senior Air Force official.

The Air Force's plan had been to procure 17s "KCY" tankers, also referred to as a "bridge tanker," to replace the retiring KC-13SS and fill the gap until the KC-Z tankers come into production in the 2040s, said Andrew Hunter, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics.

"We have come to the determination that the kind of KC-XYZ strategy that was established in the 2009-2010 timeframe is no longer fit for purpose," he told reporters at the Air & Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium.

The service has struggled for years with the procurement of tankers, and the KC-X program--which resulted in the KC-46A Pegasus produced by Boeing--hasn't kept up with the planned retirement of KC-10s and KC-135S.

As the service was conducting a business case analysis for the KC-Y program, officials determined that a competitive KC-Y program would deliver too little capability improvement too late, Hunter said.

"Our assessment was that if we competed KC-Y, we get tankers back in the case of Boeing in 2032, in the case of Lockheed in 2034," he said, adding that the last of the current KC-46 buy of 179 aircraft will be delivered in 2029. "So, we were looking at a gap of capability, gap of tanker production, under a competitive approach to KC-Y."

And the threat environment now calls for all aircraft, including tankers, to be more survivable and capable, he said.

"We have to have an approach that allows us to address those threats and still refuel the Joint Force and allow it to engage in all of the critical operations that are required for high intensity conflict," he said.

Thus, the service has initiated an analysis of alternatives to determine Next-Generation Air-Refueling System, or NGAS, program requirements, he said. Like Next-Generation Air Dominance, which is expected to be a suite of manned and unmanned aircraft, NGAS will likely involve a mix of craft rather than one single airframe, he added.

It will start from a clean sheet of paper and not be tied to any existing commercial aircraft, he said. The analysis will examine "the ability to go deeper into contested airspace, more advanced self-protection type capabilities, more advanced...