OFBSLF, I'm sorry - I didn't mean you
personally! I meant 'if you were an assessor' in a generic manner. My apologies for the unintended denigration.
It will indeed to be interesting to see how the 767NoGo fares. Some years ago, we set a simple competition for tanker comparison. Take off from a 10000ft balanced field at sea level/ISA/still-air and what is your max fuel on board? Whereas the A310 and A330 could comfortably take-off with max fuel, the 767 was limited to something like 76 of its 91 tonnes. The first request from the US representative was for a 12000ft balanced field....which was refused.
So I will be most interested to see how the KC-46 performs under hot/high conditions; the Italians have already had to extend Pratica de Mare for their more basic 767-200 derivative but that still means that the MTOW is field-limited during the Mediterranean summer.
Back when the RAF's FSTA competition was between the A330 and B767, I asked the Boeing representative about the poor brochure runway performance figures for the 767-200ER at high weight. "That's where Airbus has the edge", he admitted..... Later some fighter General quoted 767 runway figures, but, having not a clue about scheduled performance, he quoted take-off ground run figures rather than balanced field figures...
Perhaps the KC-46 will have much bigger engines and brakes than the 767-200ER, but with that wing loading they'd need to be
much bigger/thirstier engines.
Maybe it's also going to be fitted with anti-gravity systems? Or will it simply rely on Ol' Bubba Boeing's hot air and spin to get it airborne at max fuel?