(Tribune News Service) — A prototype for Boeing’s Air Force refueling tanker program made its first flight Sunday, taking off at Everett’s Paine Field and landing at Boeing Field in Seattle three and a half hours later.
The jet, a 767 with modifications that include a 787-style cockpit and extra fuel tanks but no military systems, is one of two planes to be used for initial Federal Aviation Administration certification. Military systems will be installed later.
Two additional planes with the full array of refueling systems will be the first true KC-46 tankers.
Boeing’s Air Force contract calls for delivering 179 tankers for $51 billion, starting with 18 aircraft by 2017.
The Air Force general in charge of the program estimated this month that the initial phase of Boeing’s fixed-price contract will go $1.5?billion over budget.
The first flight came six months behind Boeing’s original schedule. Causes for delay on the initial plane included complex new wiring that was repeatedly removed and reinstalled in order to meet Air Force specifications.
Boeing termed the flight “successful” but provided no details.
The KC-46 design includes an advanced refueling boom that can be hooked up to some jet fighters by an operator sitting at a station behind the tanker’s cockpit. Using a 3D video display, the boom operator will navigate the telescopic tip of the refueling tube toward the receiving fighter’s fuel receptacle.
Other jet fighters will be refueled via drogues extended from refueling pods on the wings and the tail.
Integration of the complex software systems that control this military hardware is a major challenge.
To meet its delivery schedule for 2017, Boeing must hand over the first tanker for the Air Force to test and evaluate in the fall of 2016.
Despite the program glitches this year, Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s vice chairman and chief operating officer, said at a Dec. 3 investor conference that company management is “feeling very good about where that program is at now.”
“We’ve got some of those technical issues behind us,” Muilenburg said. “We’ll now focus on executing the flight-test program under development, and then getting the program into production.”
Material from Seattle Times archives was included in this report.
———
©2014 The Seattle Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
No comments:
Post a Comment