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The KC-46 program has not gone swimmingly. I'm curious how they think they're going to get a demonstrator flying in 5 years when they can't get a tanker that's

• chrisseaton 4y ago
  Maybe working off an existing design is harder than greenfield?
  • bombcar 4y ago
    If that were true why did we get the 737 MAX?
    • RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
      Actually, the 737 MAX as a new plane would have been fine. The MCAS software was used to try to give it the same flight characteristics as the 737 so that existing 737 pilots did not have to get additional certification for it.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        Yeah, but they didn’t just build a new plane (pilots perhaps?) and instead always seem to try to modify existing designs, which would argue that is cheaper than greenfield.
        • ledauphin 4y ago
          a new plane would not have been eligible for the same type certification, thus forcing all pilots who flew it to obtain the new type rating. This training is very expensive for the airlines. in other words, Boeing's thesis was, because we (heavily) modified the 737, it's the same basic plane. The FAA accepted this argument. The FAA would never have accepted the argument that a totally new design was "actually a 737 ".
        • SomeHacker44 4y ago
          Modifications to old certifications are subject to older certification rules. They can be flown by pilots with existing training. Thus saving money at the cost if safety and decades of improvements in technology and regulation. End of story ... And of lives.
        • mandevil 4y ago
          It wasn't Boeing that was trying to save money themselves- it was Boeing trying to save airlines money. There are hundreds of thousands of people today who can fly a 737, and mechanics who can fix a 737, etc. The airlines wanted to get the better fuel efficiency from modern engines on a plane that everyone already knew how to fly and fix. Boeing actually started with a clean sheet design, tried to pitch it to airlines, the airlines didn't bite, so Boeing gave them what they wanted- the same plane but more fuel efficient. It was a huge fiasco, but it was about leveraging the advantage Boeing had in users, not saving on development costs.
          • KerrAvon 4y ago
            “Give us a 737 but more crashy” is also not what their customers really wanted. There were surely more possibilities available than just the two extremes of “737 but crashes more” and “tiny Concorde.”
            • Aloha 4y ago
              Had the software worked as intended, no one would have noticed.
              • actionfromafar 4y ago
                That's the problem - it's not clear to me that it could have worked as intended. But you can easily get that impression in high level meetings I imagine.
                • Aloha 4y ago
                  I think it could have, but perhaps without the safety factors needed, because of insufficient redundancy in the AOA sensors.
            • tadfisher 4y ago
              American Airlines ordered 130 330neos and 100 "re-engined 737s" while Boeing was still pitching their "smaller 787" design. Note that this was the first time AA had ever ordered a non-Boeing plane. Everything stems from Boeing taking this deal. Within the constraints of the 737 type certification: more efficient engines are larger, larger engines must move forward, forward engines change flight characteristics, flight characteristics must be augmented to maintain certification. So you are correct that Boeing had choices other than "crashy 737", but that choice was between throwing billions away to Airbus and the crashy 737.
    • waste_monk 4y ago
      Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'll bite: The 747 MAX that killed 346 people in two separate accidents and was grounded for nearly two years and cost Boeing 10's of billions of dollars in fines, cancelled orders, etc.? It is perhaps not the best example of modifications to an existing design.
      • walrus01 4y ago
        All because they didn't want to completely redesign the landing gear, to give it a higher ride height, which would allow the engines to be put at a normal position under the wing, thereby permitting a normal center of thrust axis. Just to keep the existing faa certification.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
      • sidewndr46 4y ago
        Don't you mean 737 MAX or is that some other plane?
        • waste_monk 4y ago
          I did - thanks for picking that up, but I am no longer able to edit my post.
    • chrisseaton 4y ago
      Aren’t you answering your own question? The 737 was harder than a new design - that’s why it went wrong.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • Rebelgecko 4y ago
      IIRC part of the problem with the Max was that since it was based on the 737 it bypassed a lot of processes that a brand new design would've had to go through. Both on the regulatory and pilot training side (eg a pilot who was already qualified on other 737 variants would get a fast tracked and probably inadequate training)
  • mannykannot 4y ago
    I am ready to consider that proposition as soon as I see quantitative evidence. It seem it is possible to write specifications that cannot easily be met by incremental change, and that might be one reason why the British aircraft industry ended up creating technically competent aircraft with little sales potential.
  • throw0101c 4y ago
    > Maybe working off an existing design is harder than greenfield? Except that Boeing has already one it: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-767 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-767 And Airbus (who originally won) didn't seem to have a problem: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330_MRTT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330_MRTT
• dirtyid 4y ago
  Maybe NGAD rapid development cycles can be applied.
  • topspin 4y ago
    That's what I thought as well. Then you read this[1] and all the NGAD "record breaking" starts to look like smoke and mirrors. Who knows? Maybe a tanker could happen that fast since it won't integrate a bunch of weapons. They're only promising a full scale test by 2027. [1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/next-gen-air-dominance-fighter-still-being-competed-drones-farther-out https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/next-gen-air-dominance...
    • dirtyid 4y ago
      Pretty much. Roper's Digital Century pitch for iterative 6G fighter(s) seemed like powerpoint bullshit. But a relatively clean sheet tanker much less complex integration demands seems feasible, more comparable to how B21's development is going, apparently on time and under budget.
• adolph 4y ago
  P8 went pretty well. Blended wing isn’t sci-fi, B2 and plenty of ucav are full flying wing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_P-8_Poseidon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_P-8_Poseidon
  • InTheArena 4y ago
    Boeing was a very very different company then. I’m bullish on blended wing body, but I would have much more confidence if it were Lockheed or someone emulating the SpaceX, rapid development cycles working on this.
    • edrxty 4y ago
      As someone in industry, I can assure you Boeing is still a disaster. I know a fuckload of good people who have turned down working there because the culture is shit and management is braindead even by defense contractor standards.
      • socialismisok 4y ago
        I worked at Boeing on both the p8 and the kc46, and it's unreal how poorly leadership let things run. Handing thumb drives with excel sheets around, waiting years to provision vms. Etc.
      • rjsw 4y ago
        I'm working with Boeing people on a project, having their email system randomly fail to deliver incoming messages doesn't help.
    • 6stringmerc 4y ago
      I am up the road from Lockheed and know quite a few employees there and I'm pleased to hear a better reputation - I've heard the issues with Boeing leadership for years now as well. There's nothing like watching their airstrip for some really cool machines coming and going.
    • adolph 4y ago
• nradov 4y ago
  No one is expected to really believe that schedule. It's just an imaginary number so that they can get Congress to allocate enough money to start the development program. Just the way the game is played. And I don't even blame the Air Force for deliberately underestimating. They have a legitimate need for this aircraft and the existing fleet has been worked to death.
• bamboozled 4y ago
  Corrected the title for you: "Air Force Plans New Blended Wing Body Cargo/Tanker Aircraft by 3027"
• skhr0680 4y ago
  Wow, what's a TL;DR of the problems? The KC-767 seems to be working fine, one has been flying over my house at least once a week since I was a teenager
  • nradov 4y ago
    The KC-46 uses a different refueling boom control system than the KC-767 which is overly complex and makes to hard for operators to see what they're doing. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40821/kc-46as-long-troubled-vision-system-cant-even-reliably-show-the-end-of-the-refueling-boom https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40821/kc-46as-long-tro...
• skunkworker 4y ago
  With the ACCA being designed in 5 months and flown in 20 months from the go-ahead, I would say 5 years is definitely possible. I wouldn't be surprised if its got a heavy use of composites as well, in order to reduce he number of total parts. For the ACCA, they had 300 structural parts vs 3,000 metallic and 4,000 mechanical fasteners vs 40,000 otherwise. https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/history/acca.html https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/history/a...
  • gateorade 4y ago
    To be fair, there’s a pretty massive difference in scope between a 50 mil Afrl tech demonstration program and what this would be. If/when this materializes, it’s likely to be a capital A Airforce program worth at least a billion dollars with a goal to produce at least one demonstrator that can be directly followed by LRIP and then IOC probably only a couple years after the demonstrator first flies. For that level of effort, five years probably isn’t impossible, but it’s definitely unlikely.
• sofixa 4y ago
  > The KC-46 program has not gone swimmingly That's what happens when protectionism gets involved. The Boeing design (based on an existing plane, but with some new systems and a combination of components from different generations of 767s) was chosen over the proven, already in production A330 MRTT. Delays and cost overruns are to be expected. Same thing with ships, in the end US Navy had to accept it's not that special and it ended up ordering an RFP based on existing off the shelf designs (with the Franco-Italian FREMM winning).