The US Air Force (USAF) is wrapping up analysis meant to determine the service’s need from a future tanker aircraft.
That evaluation includes factors such as runway requirements, fuel transfer capacity and observability signature, according to the air force general in charge of tanker and transport platforms.
Speaking at the Air & Space Force Association’s Warfare Symposium in Denver on 5 March, General John Lamontagne of Air Mobility Command said an analysis for the Next Generation Air-refuelling System (NGAS) programme is nearly complete, and will be submitted to the Secretary of Defense within two months.
“It effectively looks at the trade-offs between how big… the runway [needs] to be, how much fuel can you deliver at range, and the signature management for how far we can go forward into the threat environment,” Lamontagne noted.
Known formally as an “analysis of alternatives”, the process is meant to assess the operational effectiveness, suitability and life-cycle cost of other means to achieve the capability goals of a proposed procurement effort.
The air force conceived of the NGAS as a purpose-built, low-observable tanker aircraft capable of surviving in a high-threat environment. It now appears those ambitions may have been tempered.
The result of the 2024 US presidential election and subsequent change of government led former air force secretary Frank Kendall, prior to leaving office, to defer all decisions about key acquisition programmes to the administration of Donald Trump.
Kendall had personally championed modernisation efforts like NGAS and a new sixth-generation fighter, but in December said such programmes’ fate will be decided by his replacement, who has yet to be confirmed by the US Senate.
Trump nominated Troy Meink to fill that role. Meink is a former Boeing KC-135 navigator and acquisitions official at the agency managing the USA’s spy satellites.
While Meink has not indicated his opinion about a new stealthy tanker, other air force officials have. Major General Joseph Kunkel, USAF director of force design and integration, recently suggested the service could perhaps achieve a survivable aerial refuelling capability with a “systems-based approach” rather than a bespoke stealth tanker.
This could involve using electronic warfare to better conceal a conventional refuelling aircraft, perhaps combined with advanced air-superiority capabilities like in-development uncrewed fighters or a future sixth-generation aircraft.
Notably, Kendall had previously indicated the final NGAS design would not be a modified commercial aircraft, as has been the case with previous USAF tanker designs.
If the air force is now looking at a more-conventional approach to developing an new tanker, a substantial new opportunity would arise for existing manufacturers, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Brazil’s Embraer.
Embraer has seen increasing success selling its KC-390 Millennium twinjet, which offers a combination of tactical airlift and aerial refuelling capability. The type has notched orders from 10 global customers, with operational examples already in service with the air forces of Brazil (7), Hungary (1) and Portugal (2), and signed contracts with Austria (4), the Czech Republic (2), the Netherlands (5) and South Korea (3).
The Brazilian airframer is keen on securing its first US contract for the Millennium, and a revised NGAS proposal could present an opening.
Lockheed is also in the mix, both for the original stealthy NGAS concept and any revised alternative that may yet emerge. The US defence giant had offered an Airbus A330-based solution dubbed the LMXT for the USAF’s now defunct KC-Y tranche of “bridge tanker” aircraft.
When Lockheed withdrew its LMXT offer in 2023, the company said it still planned to compete for NGAS.
Those bridge tankers were meant to serve as a stopgap between NGAS and the in-service Boeing KC-46 tanker, which the air force is currently procuring to replace the ageing Cold War-era Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers.
The KC-46 was selected by the air force for that role in 2011, with plans to field 179 examples. The service is also considering the purchase of additional KC-46s with survivability upgrades to fill the bridge tanker need.
Although 89 of the 767-derived Pegasus jets are now in service, the KC-46 programme has been plagued by technical challenges, most recently the discovery of structural cracks in newly assembled aircraft.
While Boeing executives have signalled reluctance to take on costly (and potentially risky) new fixed-price defence development programmes, openness by the USAF to another commercial-derivative tanker design could present another opportunity for Boeing, whose defence business has struggled for years with money-losing military programmes like the T-7A trainer jet, VC-25B presidential transport and the KC-46.
Under Kendall, the air force had hoped to field the first NGAS aircraft as soon as the early 2030s. Whether that time horizon can be maintained, or perhaps even accelerated, will depend on which concept the new political appointees at the Pentagon – and budgeters in Congress – choose to adopt.
Separately, the USAF is also undertaking a capability assessment to develop requirements for a new transport aircraft to eventually replacing its Boeing C-17 jets, Lamontagne says. “We need to figure out what those next requirements look like before we fly the wings off the C-17.
“The good news is, I think we have a lot of time,” he adds. “There’s a healthy amount of life left in the C-17, but we want to stay in front of that so, if necessary, we can replace it before we need to.”
In 2024, the Air Force Research Laboratory issued a formal request to industry, seeking concepts for a new regional airlifter that would not require traditional ground infrastructure like a maintained runway.
That project has been dubbed Runway Independent Mobility/Next Generation Intra-theatre Airlift.
