U.S. Air Force Captain Cody Donahue, 344th Air Refueling Squadron mission pilot, prepares to takeoff Aug. 29, 2022, during Employment Concept Exercise 22-08 at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. Donahue and the rest of the aircrew completed the KC-46A Pegasus’ first combat sortie, refueling two F-15E Strike Eagles assigned to the 335th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, the Air Force said. (U.S. Air Force Photo)
By Frank Wolfe |
1 year ago |
04/18/2023
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The U.S. Air Force would like to field the Remote Vision System 2.0 (RVS 2.0) fix for the Boeing [BA] KC-46A’s original RVS sooner than the start of fiscal 2026, but the service told Congress on Apr. 18 that the original RVS still allows the tanker to refuel all service planes except the A-10, which the KC-135 refuels.

“It’s been a bit troubling to watch the KC-46’s problems with the Remote Vision System,” Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.), the chair of the HASC seapower and projection forces panel, said at an April 18 subcommittee hearing on Air Force projection forces’ aviation programs in the fiscal 2024 budget request.

Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter testified that “we did run into issues with the supply chain” for RVS 2.0 “in getting the necessary equipment, both in terms of displays, but also some of the boxes that end up transmitting the signal that have pushed back the schedule.”

The Air Force and Boeing agreed on the RVS 2.0 redesign of the original RVS on April 2, 2020 to fix faulty RVS depth perception, a shortfall that may lead to scraping of the boom on aircraft being refueled–damage that can be especially perilous for low-observable aircraft, such as the F-22 and F-35 fighters.

Unlike the KC-135 but like the KC-10, the KC-46A, a modified Boeing 767 airliner, also has a hose-and-drogue system to refuel U.S. Navy and NATO planes.

The Air Force has said that it foresees fielding RVS 2.0 for the KC-46A in October 2025 at the start of fiscal 2026–a delay of 19 months (Defense Daily, Oct. 7, 2022). In 2020, the Air Force said that by 2023 it planned to field RVS 2.0, which is to have 4K color cameras, operator stations with larger screens, a laser ranger for refueling aircraft distance measurement and boom assistance augmented reality.

The Air Force’s planned fiscal 2026 RVS 2.0 fielding “is later than we would prefer,” Hunter said on Apr. 18. “Having said that, Air Mobility Command has set the parameters under which the platform is able to operate today, and they are successfully refueling aircraft with the system they are currently using.”

Boeing said on March 31 that it has delivered 69 KC-46As to the Air Force out of a planned buy of 179.