Originally Posted by
SLXOwft
Theoretically a '46 could fly unrefuelled one way from California to new South Wales, granted with out fulfilling it's primary mission, but taking on fuel from other tankers was even part of the KC-767 vision. Like all DoD program(me)s, it's all up for grabs until the pork gets allocated by Congress, as was reflected in the voting when members of the HASC failed in their attempt to get a mandatory full and open competition for the Bridge Tanker written into the fy23 DoD budget last June; those in favour promised to be back for another go this year. Those with Boeing supply chain constituents outvoted those with potentionally LXMT supply chain constituents.
From what I understand the Boeing offer for the Brige Tanker would be an enhanced and higher priced (i.e. profitable this time round) KC-46"B".
https://www.travelmath.com/distance/.../to/California
7,635 miles / 12 287 km flying
https://www.raf.mod.uk/aircraft/voyager/
Maximum range with maximum fuel: 8,000nm (14,816km)
RVS is dumb as dirt. Boom operators using natural vision have done a great, low risk job for over half a century. RVS is a bad solution to a non-problem. Barring return to using natural, full color, 3D vision, autonomous boom operation would be a better path than RVS.
Interesting that the supplier for KC46 hasn’t found a way to successfully match the performance of the MRTT. Or perhaps they did and it’s still not satisfactory.
meanwhile....
In 2020, Airbus joined with the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) to develop the A330 SMART MRTT – providing the company’s A330-derived Multi Role Tanker Transport with such capabilities as Automatic Air-to-Air refuelling and enhanced maintenance.
Airbus has begun flight testing for the development of the A330 SMART MRTT. The newly evolved aircraft will be the world's first to integrate the fully Automatic Air-to-Air Refuelling (A3R) capability. Using a converted tanker from the Republic of Singapore Air Force for the campaign, the SMART MRTT will also bring other innovations such as an enhanced vision system for night-time covert operations and improved sensors to capture more data and move towards predictive maintenance.
https://www.airbus.com/en/products-s...330-mrtt#smart