That says it can only carry the AMRAAM.

Weapons stations 1-4 & 8-11 are perfectly capable of employing Sidewinders although in practice you would never see them on any but 1, 2, 10 & 11.

However, I doubt you will see the E/A-18G Growler carrying Sidewinders. EW assets aren’t meant to get close enough to the enemy to require WVR missiles. The typical loadout including two AMRAMM should be sufficient.

USN already has a overwhelmingly powerful long strike capability with tomahawks. In theory, X47 can be cheaper, but i really doubt it.

as i said before x47b and it´s next gen UCAV:s will make f-35 obsolite in some roles earlier than later….

Cruise missiles, UCAVs & manned strike aircraft supplement/compliment each other. None is a replacement for either or both of the others.

A stealth AoA fighter would have fitted better in USAF than F-35.

No, the F-22/F-35A high/low fighter mix fits the USAF quite well.

It is possible that it won´t be much heavier, more of a problem will be the ground clearance. And then you would not want to have your engines skimming the ground at a forward operating location either. 030m difference in the fan diameter between CF6-80E1 and the GEnx-2B-67 is not that easy to compensate, but surely possible. However one has to ask if it is worth the eoffrt, because it would mean that the uSAF would operate a special subvariant of the KC-767 and would not benefit form the many users of the CF6 in the airline business. While the version of the GenX might not become that popular.

Come on!

Many 767s are fitted with PW4000 (4060 or 4062) which have a 94″ fan. The GEnx-2B67 is a 104″ (actually 104.7″ to be specific) fan.

But the Trent 600 (672) & Engine Alliance (joint GE and P&W) 7100 (7172) proposed for the 767-400ERX are/were 102″ fans.

GEnx-2B FAN DIAMETER IS NOT A PROBLEM!

And what are those other reasons? Why does the USAF prefer the boom over the probe and drogue?

Greater safety & reliability.

Higher fuel transfer rates.

Less training on the part of fighter pilots.

Plus the advantage of ‘multi-point’ drogue/probe refueling is only of significance during anchorpoint tactic refueling, during track tactic refueling the advantage is minimal if present at all.

Aomething else to consider…With the USAF eventually becoming essentially an ‘all F-35A’ force in terms of ‘tactical’ combat aircraft & the F-35As’ fuel capacity implying a fuel receive rate at least as high as the F-15, fuel tranfers rate with booms are likely to (fleet/theater/operations wide) increase thus making the theoretical advantage of ‘muiti-point’ drogue/probe refueling even less significant.

Thanks for those interesting figures…

It does beg the question tho’…is even the KC-767 too big for the actual task…

Let me explain.. if as you make clear the average fuel off load is relatively low compared to total capacity and the hypothesis is that its due to the number of boom airborne would it not make sense, a priori, to provide a greater number of booms each with a lower capacity in order to boost the overall fuel offload capacity, (rather than a lower number of high capacity tankers).

So the A320/737 airframe become more interesting…aside from the reality that the 737 airframe cannot be a boom tanker due to clearance issues on rotation. The A320 does not appear to suffer from this.

So….the USAF, being forced to have an ‘open competition’ has to consider what is actually possible in reality in defining its specification.

Boeing cannot offer a 737 based tanker with a boom without major (new design u/c) revisions… the 757 is out of production….the 767 is still in production and ‘avaliable’… the 777 is too booked up with commercial orders to allow the USAF order (at the time.. things do change) and the 787 has not flown.
The 747 is too big and has already ‘lost’ one tanker competition.

So…in order for an American product to be selected it had to be based aornd a 767 airframe.

On the EADS side the 320 was possible (but too small for the developed spec.) the 310 is ideal but out of production…the 330 offers capability and capacity beyond the spec, as you have pointed out. A340.. no chance no advantage and the 380.. too big…

So regardless of the which is better/ best the ‘competition’ is 767/330…neither of which is in reality the optimal solution to replacing the 135 (regardless of version).

You are not the 1st to propose the possibility of a smaller 737/A320 based tanker. Two problems with such a proposal though.

1. The maximum lifting weight (i.e. maximum theoretical fuel capacity) of the 737 & A320 is less than 100,000 lbs and while careful planning & basing may allow them to meet the average fuel offload per sortie, the average is made up of sorties that require less (sometimes quite significantly) & sorties that require more (sometimes quite significantly).

2. Far too many want tankers to be airlifters as well & for that the 737 & A320 are lacking.

That is not to say that a smaller 737/A320 tanker would not be of any falue &/or would not work as part of a fleet consisting of 737/A320 tankers & larger but contrary to what EADS/KC-30 Kool-Aid drinkers want people to think the USAF didn’t ‘pick’ the 767 & then develope its requirements/criteria around the 767, the USAF developed its requirements/criteria around what it needs/wants based on its decades of tanker experience & found that the 767 was the best fit.

The ‘advantages’ of the 767 increase in size/ capacity over the 135 do appear to have been touted as ‘valuable’.. and in truth they are.
And this is where the issue becomes more difficult. If this additional capacilty is ‘valuable’..which clearly it is, then more could be deemed ‘more valuable’. Now with either 767 or 330 179 booms will be avaliable and potentially 358 wing pods. So the number of refuelling points will not change (in theory)…the amount of money is ‘broadly’ the same…in ‘big picture’ terms…so to what do those refuelling points attach? Both options are bigger than optimal…so do you get more potential for the same money.. more ‘political’ mileage (and sadly military procurement is primarily political) or do you go ‘home grown’?

What you are missing is that there is value in the size/capacity of the 767 over the KC-135 because its size/capacity comes with rather minimal cost since the existing infrastructure (much of whish was built around the KC-135) is able to accomodate the size & weight of the KC-767. The KC-30 OTOH is larger & heavier than the KC-10, the C-17, the B-52 et cetera – in fact it is larger & heavier than every aircraft in the US inventory except for the C-5s & a handful of specialized 747-based aircraft. Despite its very good runway performance, the KC-30’s even greater capacity over the KC-767 is not of value because it come sat too much of a cost (total life-cycle), size (footprint) & weight (ACN) AND requires billions of dollars of infrastructure improvement (when using real world data the KC-30 could not even complete the IFARA missions because its size & weight was such that you could not get enough tankers in the air).

None are right or wrong. If we agree with the complaint that the analysis was not carried out in accordance with published criteria then one can legitimately state that the entire competitive process was not carried out according to overall published criteria for governement spending and competitions…for instance the fuel dumping issue. The way the spec is worded it is clear that only the 767 can meet the spec. It is so tight that the 330 cannot meet the spec. But the spec ignores other strategies that may be avaliable to meet the safety parameters. This creates a ‘bias’ that is not in keeping with the competition…

Its called altering the requirements/criteria to acccomodate the noncompetative & previously rejected A330 platform for the sake of having a competition since you can’t just give the contract to Boeing.

But I digress…neither is optimal.. both are too big…so at what point does bigger=better become bigger = too much?

But the KC-767 is mcuh closer to optimal.

And bigger = too much when the smaller offer meets or exceeds all of the key requirements & is in fact itself bigger/more than necessary. And/or when what is suposed to be a ‘medium’ KC-135 replacement is bigger & heavier than the ‘large’ KC-10.

***

When we see the average fuel offload amounts, you have to wonder is the USAF using its tankers to maximum efficiency and does it need so many? These are fuel offload amounts but what they don’t say is how much gas the tanker has taken out. Not every mission is going to use all the fuel.

Its called the real world. In war things rarely go according to plan.

And what you need to realize is that the average fuel offload per sortie is so low not only do to inefficiency but the simple fact that the need for fuel is much more deictated by the number of booms needd to refuel all the receivers than it is the amount of fuel each tanker can offload.

But as I said, even if improved efficency were to double the average fuel offload (ignoring if in fact half as many tanker could possibly efficiently/effectively meet the need for numbers of booms), the KC-767AT has enough capacity to to have gotten the job done during ODS & OAF at ~1500nm, OIF at ~1,000nm & OEF at almost 500nm.

last but not least don’t forget that for those sorties that actually do require comparatively large amounts of fuel load is what you have the ‘large’ KC-10/KC-Y for.

Could we be going to see the amounts increase as probe aircraft can use the new tankers as well.

Actually that would tend to decrease the overall average as you would then be your tankers more & relying less on ‘buddy tankers’.

Do you really think we could be looking at 3 separate tankers coming into service? I thought they wanted to cut it down to 1 and have to find the best compromise between large and small.

Given the date for which KC-Z is planned it is all but guaranteed. It is unlikely that what is selected for KC-Z is anything flying today. We are talking about 1st delivers in 2036!

Anybody got any of the revised dates for the new competition?

Last I heared the ‘new’ solicitation is not going to begin until the fall.

on a note about smaller tankers one would think it would be worth starting up a 737/757 or A310 production line again with 179 tankers on order. Also for the cost you could probably buy more than the 179.

You would think that.

***

USAF studies have long shown that retrofitting newer fighters, & building all new ones with probes, would be cost-effective. It’s bizarre that the F-35A has a receptacle.

Actually several studies have been done. The more complex/accurate the study the less of an advantage drogue & probe. That and of course all the studies only looked at the cost-effectiveness based on the number of tankers needed to refuel a given number of receivers. AAR is about more than just cost-effectiveness…the USAF prefers boom & receptacle for reasons other than cost-effectiveness.

I wonder when can LM give prospective export customers a fixed price contract and a definitive export specification? 2012?

Never.

The US DOD sets the foreign sales price (& specification), not the manufacturer.

No I am not pro or anti F-35, I just think a lot a countries are interested but need to see the above settled first so they can make a proper decision.

The US DOD did so for partner nations in early 2006.

For non-partner nations it is a different story…

I take it from your response that you haven’t read the information out there.

No it is you who hasn’t read the information that is out there.

If you had you would have read this Despite its modernity, the
KC-767 only carries 1 percent more fuel (2,000 lbs) than the KC-135.

Wrong. Yes I know full well where you got that ‘information’ from but it is not the only ‘fact’ from said document to be incorrect.

For the benefit of you & other I will explain the tue facts.

The KC-135E has a fuel capacity of 188,000 lbs.
The KC-135R has a fuel capacity of 202,000 lbs.
But because of more fuel efficient engines the KC-135R can actually offload ~50% more fuel than the KC-135E.

The KC-767A/KC-767J & the KC-767 offered for the tanker lease has a standard fuel capacity of 160,000 lbs (the same as the commercial 767-200ER they are based on) but can be fitted with an auxilery fuel tank which brings the total capacity up to “over 200,000 lbs” (I have seen reports that it could be as high as 209,000-210,000 lbs) The auxilery fuel tank is standard on the 767-200LRF/KC-767AT & while Boeing has be rather coy as the the exact capacity it is generally assumed to be the same of very similar to the 202,000 lbs of the KC-135R.

The complaints about the KC-767 lease tankers not having as much fuel offload as the KC-135R is based on the standard fuel capacity of 160,000 lbs.

But the KC-767AT is another story. It can offload as much or more from a 7,000′ runway as a KC-135R can from a 10,000′ runway. That is why it was assested as having meet the 7000′ runway OBJECTIVE even though as some so like to pint out the KC-767AT propably can’t actually operate from a 7,000′ runway at MTOW (of course they neglect/ignor that with a full load of ‘202,000 lbs’ of fuel the KC-767AT is 20,000-25,000 lbs below it MTOW). And from the same 10,000′ runway as the KC-135R, the KC-767AT can deliver >25,000 lbs more fuel than the KC-135R at a given range or deliver a given amount of fuel at >500nm further than the KC-135R.

Some food for thought…

average fuel offload per sortie
Operation Desert Storm: 47,500 lbs
Operation Allied Force: 48,700 lbs
Operation Enduring Freedom: 75,400 lbs
Operation Iraqi Freedom: 60,800 lbs

But lets say though improved planning & efficiency we are/were able to double that (much hard than it sounds because the limiting factor is the number of booms per reciever rather than amound of fuel per tanker). The KC-767AT would be able to have done ODS & OAF sorties at ~1500nm, OIF sorties at ~1,000nm & OEF sorties at almost 500nm.

Ss stop the nonsense that the KC-767AT is inadequite otr that the greater capacity of the KC-30 is necessary.

The KC-767’s cargo and aeromedical capabilities, for example, are second order issues for consideration, lease opponents say. These aircraft are being acquired to provide fuel, It then goes on to talk about the merits of cargo and aeromedical loads.

As it should be. Tanker 1st, airlifter 2nd.

But even when it comes to airlift the KC-767AT can carry as many pallets (actually one more) as a C-17 or as many troops or patients as two C-17s – which is a huge improvement over the KC-135R.

If am i rewriting history someone better tell the USAF why they bought the KC-10. Because they have that the original reason for buying the KC-10 was that it could get from the US to Europe refuel aircraft and get home again without landing. That was the requirement. also part of it was the cargo carrying capacity was a big advantage. I suggest you contact the USAF if you want confirmation of this.

See, already you are adding reasons…

The USAF did look at buying up surplus DC-10’s instead of the boeing lease deal put found the commercial fleet to be so varied in quality and airframe hours that it wasn’t worth it.

You would know this if you did any research or had been part of any tanker purchase deal.

I did know that & so much more. You have years of research to do before reaching my research/knowledge level.

Since you have done some much research can you provide what the weight of each aircraft is and how this is distributed through the landing gear/wheels. Also you will be able to tell us all how much of an impact this has on runways and provide how many more runways the 767 can use because of the excess weight of the KC-30.

I can provide close proximities based on the commercial 767 & A330 (that data at least is publicly available) but the actual numbers for the KC-767AT & KC-30 are going to be a bit different (& at this point ‘classified’). Not major but I can tell already by the tone of your post that anything I or anybody else can realistically provide will not be good enough.

The US is only wanting to buy 1 tanker so is needing to get a compromise to get the best from a large and medium tanker. I admit if they did purchase a large and medium it would make things simpler.

BS. The US is looking to buy at least two (most likely three with the current planning) tankers. The 1st is the KC-X which is to replace the alredy all but gone KC-135Es & some KC-135Rs. The 2nd is the KC-Y whcih is to replace the KC-10. The 3rd is the KC-Z which is to replace the remaining KC-135Rs.

The USAF has decades of tanker experience (including with both the ‘medium’ KC-135 & the ‘large’ KC-10) & has developed its tanker recapitalization plans, requirements & criteria based on that experience. Among the things gain from said experience is that ‘medium’ tankers are better at some missions than ‘large’ tankers & vise versa and just as importantly that a tanker fleet made up of both ‘medium’ & large’ tankers is much more effective & efficient that an all-medium or all-large tanker fleet.

In terms of the USAF’s ‘medium’ tanker requirements & criteria the KC-135R has more than enough fuel offload capability but more modern platforms promis significantly better efficience. In fact it can be said that even the KC-767/A310 MRTT are more than sufficient but without going to a purpose built platform there is quite a large gap between the 737/A320 & the 767/A310 with the 737/A320 most likely not being enough tanker so the 767/A310 is the best existing commercial platform(s) available.

Orders for the 767 slowed partly because it is old technology and there are better aircraft out there for the COMMERCIAL MARKET. If Boeing hadn’t of introduced the 787 it would have lost out on the market completely airlines wouldn”t have bought the 767 instead.

BS. The 767-400ER was every bit as ‘new’ as the A330-200 & just as the later 737NG (737-700, 737-800 & 737-900) newer versions of the 767 could have been developed but Boeing chose to take a risk & “change the game” with the 787 instead. And from the day that Boeing announced the 787 orders for the 767 which were already slumping due to market forces – not the A330 slowed even further as customers looked to buy 787s much more profitable instead.

One last thing What the F is Kool Aid i’ve never even heard of it. Most of the British drink tea, coffee or Irn-Bru, coke, robinsons diluting juice, fresh fruit juice or water.

I am sorry the cliché is lost on you. Search ‘Jim Jones People’s Temple cult Kool-Aid’ or similar to educate yourself as to where the cliché originates from.

When I or someone else (there are others that use it) make reference to EADS/KC-30 Kool-Aid drinkers it is playing on the cliché & refering to some people’s religious-like acceptance of anything & everything pro EADS/KC-30 &/or anti Boeing/KC-767 despite reality (like the Kool-Aid) being something quite different even though those “feeding” them the ‘Kool-Aid’ make it appear ‘good’.