I've posted previously that the 767-2C/KC-46 was, by far, the worst managed program I was involved in during my 39+ career at Boeing (with the disclaimer that I wasn't on the 787 program
).
When Airbus was awarded the tanker contract in 2008, I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved - both the 787 and the 747-8 were in development (I was heading my group for the 747-8 and we were already shorthanded) and I knew we didn't have the bandwidth to do another program.
A couple years later, when were asked for work statements for the revised proposal, we were told to "assume success", and not to pad our estimates. I put in what I thought was a bare bones estimate yet still got grilled as to why we needed so many hours (a later, independent audit concluded my estimate was less than half of what was needed). Plus, while I don't know if this happened on the tanker, I know for a fact, that my work statement estimate for the 747-8 was unilaterally reduced by 30% by upper management after I submitted it (needless to say, we over-ran that estimate...).
While it was certainly true that the tanker program didn't get the 'A' team, the level of miss-management was really mind boggling. The wiring and EMI protection requirements were fully known up front, and
some groups took them into account early on. Perhaps it's because wire isolation and EMI protection have long been a major design concern for propulsion (engine to engine isolating being a FAR requirement), we were designing for them even during the proposal stage. It simply boggles the mind that some groups apparently remained completely ignorant of the USAF requirements until after the first tanker aircraft was basically built - to quote a great movie, "
What we have here is failure to communicate". EVERY manager who's group didn't properly incorporate the required wire isolation and EMI protection should have been demoted or fired for incompetence - but to the best of my knowledge nothing of the kind happened. In fact, quite the opposite occurred - I personally know several people who were very competent managers on the 767-2C/KC-46 program who got so fed up/beat up that they voluntarily left the management ranks and returned to engineering or simply retired.
FAA cert was another can of worms - and contrary to popular belief the Seattle Aircraft Certification Office (SACO)
doesn't do Boeing many favors (BTW FAA Part 25 cert was a USAF requirement, although it drove massive cost into the program with little tangible benefit). The FAA has something called "Changed Product Rule" (CPR) - which is used on a derivate aircraft to determine what systems can retain their original cert basis and what has to step up to the latest regulations. Many systems were blindsided when the FAA ruled them to be 'Changed Systems per CPR' due to small changes, resulting in tens of thousands of hours of non-value added work to show full compliance to regulations that were only slightly changed from the original cert basis (I personally got caught out by that one). My question as to why we had to certify a military derivative aircraft to a greater level of safety than it's civilian counterpart (that, BTW, has an enviable safety record) went strangely unanswered
I also grossly underestimated the additional effort required for USAF coordination (by roughly a factor of 10
) as this was my first exposure to a military program.