Originally Posted by
Smythe
I find the last sentence interesting, although mis-spelled... angle of attack vane AND inertial gyroscope? The unmanned drones use the inertial system for AoA...
This is not new. It has been covered e.g. by Mentour Pilot in his 737 MAX Q&A video (sorry, can't post links yet, look it up on Youtube under Mentour Pilot - Five questions about the Boeing 737 MAX).
Key thing is that the MCAS built into the KC-46 was meant to counter a slightly different phenomenon than in case of the 737 MAX. It was designed specifically to counter CoG shifts from the moving fuel as opposed to countering the aircraft's nose-up tendency in high AoA conditions in case of the 737 MAX MCAS variant. That being said, the KC-46 potentially could have used a different selection of sensors.
However, the fact that the KC-46 did make use of sensor redundancy as well as introduced a simple manual override by the pilot's column movement, points pretty clearly to the fact, that these good engineering practices were once present at Boeing and their absence in case of the 737 MAX MCAS design constitutes a gross negligence. It should now be the role of authorities to determine, why this has been the case.