Seattle – For the group of airmen selected to test the Air Force’s next generation tanker, the assignment is bigger than once in a career.
With the KC-46A Pegasus expected to rival the lifespan of its predecessor, the almost 60-year-old KC-135, it is once in a generation.
“When they have no hair left and they’re sitting there talking to their grandchildren, they will say ‘Hey grandpa, what did you do when you were in the Air Force?’ ” said Lt. Col. James Quashnock, commander of the 418th Flight Test Squadron Detachment 1, stationed at Boeing Field in Seattle. “Every single guy here will answer, ‘I was the first to work on the KC-46.’ “
The 418th Flight Test Squadron Detachment 1 includes 27 airmen and civilians, working in a nondescript office right off the flight line at Boeing Field, about 6 miles south of downtown Seattle. The group, about half military and half civilian, are tasked with overseeing the test and development of the next generation tanker and ensuring that it is safe to fly, along with creating the procedures that will govern the future flight of the Pegasus.
“This 46 will be around here for decades, and decades, and decades,” Quashnock said. “Our great grandchildren will probably be able to fly this aircraft. It’s going be an Air Force legacy for a long time.”
Fly when ready
The detachment serves as the lead developmental test organization for the Air Force on the new tanker. The team is made up of pilots and boom operators from the Air Force, along with mostly civilian engineers who work with Boeing to make sure testing is accurate, and that it is being done safely, Quashnock said.
For now, that means mostly simulation testing, with the aircraft’s real equipment set up to computers to work on how the systems will operate. The first aircraft in the developmental lot, a modified Boeing 767-2C, has not finished production. That aircraft will be flown and maintained by Boeing and certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. Once that is done, it will receive the boom and other military-specific equipment, and that’s when the detachment’s pilots and test boom operators will step in.
“We want to make sure they are doing the right tests and doing it safely, to collect the data that the program office needs to then approve the full purchase of the aircraft,” he said.
The first contract includes four test aircraft. These will be put through the paces mostly at Boeing Field, along with other tests at Edwards Air Force Base, California; Eglin Air Force Base, Florida; and Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. The initial 767 variant is expected to fly in the next month or two, with the modified variant to fly several months later.
Boeing and the program office work the schedule, Quashnock said, and the airmen on-site are concerned with actually flying the aircraft when it is ready.
“We fly when the aircraft is ready, not necessarily on the schedule,” he said. “Boeing is focused on the schedule. We’re here to provide the support when the aircraft is ready.”
The detachment’s pilots come from the service’s other tankers — the KC-135 and KC-10, along with those who have flown the C-17, C-40 and B-2. All have graduated test pilot school.
“What that wide mix of aircraft does is allows us to bring in a breadth of experience across all those different types of aircraft,” Quashnock said. “Because all aircraft are built a little bit different. … Having that broad spectrum allows eyes that have different backgrounds to look at something and go, ‘That looks like something I know about,’ or ‘That’s something I have seen before. Let’s talk about it and make it better.’ “
Air Force Materiel Command hand-selected every member of the team, including the “best boom operators in the Air Force,” he said. The operators come from a mix of KC-10 and KC-135 backgrounds, and have all done test work at Edwards. Their experience will be needed to lay the groundwork for how new operators will work on the jet.
“We want to look through every situation and every scenario, and account for what this 18-year-old boom operator straight into the Air Force is going to encounter and what is he going to do,” said Chief Master Sgt. Ernest Burns, superintendent of the detachment. “Because there is a tremendous amount of responsibility that a boom operator has. To connect two airplanes going 400 miles per hour is not an easy chore.”
The KC-46 is the No. 1 acquisition program in the service — the Joint Strike Fighter is the No. 1 Defense Department-wide — meaning it is the top priority for people, and the program’s funding is protected.
“When that happens, you kind of get the ability to do certain things like by name request the right people you need into your program,” Quashnock said.
The biggest change will come for the boom operators. In the KC-135 and the KC-10, operators looked out through a window at the rear of the aircraft to connect with the jets receiving fuel. In the KC-46, the operators will sit near the front of the jet and use 3-D cameras to operate the boom.
“This is completely new,” Burns said. “We’re doing this through [the remote visual system] and we’re up front. We are running through every scenario to think of what a brand-new, 18-year-old boom operator could encounter.
That’s why developmental testing is so important. … We don’t want to leave anything uncovered. We don’t want to let any operational guy learn something for the first time.”
The Air Force is using lessons learned from the Japanese and Italian tankers, along with the KDC-10 used by the Netherlands. Test boom operators are using a simulator system before the actual KC-46 can begin flying to determine test protocols.
“It’s a huge test. A huge leap and there are a lot of things we’re going to figure out as we go,” he said. “However … we’re going to be able to do things much safer. Especially at night.”
No owner’s manual
The KC-46, while based on Boeing’s 767, is pure tanker. Italy’s and Japan’s version of the 767 tanker is mostly a freighter-built 767 ripped apart and rebuilt for refueling, Quashnock said. The KC-46 is all new, meaning most of it is unproven and unflown. That will be the job of the detachment.
“You want to look at, where could this plane go and what can it do?” he said. “What failure modes are out there that anybody else who could climb in this aircraft are going to go see and go find.”
Test pilots and boom operators will have to fly through hundreds of scenarios that operational fliers could run into and develop the checklists and procedures to work through it. The jet is new, and there isn’t a manual yet, Burns said.
“It’s not a freighter that’s converted,” Burns said. “From the initial spar, it is built as a tanker. Obviously, there are engineering obstacles to figure out as part of the development. Boeing’s mantra is ‘zero cuts.’ They do not have to cut or modify anything.”
Boeing has done a lot of work on its 767s, with Japan and Italy doing additional work on their tankers, but the Air Force has a “more robust process” to work through.
“That’s what a robust test program does, that’s why we have to do it first before we pass it off to the Air Force,” Quashnock said. “At some point, somebody has to be first.”
Taking the ‘hero’
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh announced in February that the service had given the KC-46 its official name: the Pegasus. It’s a name with plenty of history in the Air Force, Quashnock said.
The name and Pegasus imagery can be found on dozens of squadron patches throughout the service over the years. The original Greek mythology is a fit for the aircraft, he said.
“The Pegasus is what took the hero to go kill the demon,” he said. “Without the Pegasus, the hero would not have been able to succeed. That’s almost exactly what the KC-46 is. Without tanker gas, the JSF is not going to get anywhere, the F-22 is not going to do anything.
We can’t go anywhere in the world without the tanker.”
