WASHINGTON \u2014 Although Boeing maintains it can deliver the first KC-46 by the end of the year, the Air Force now believes it will not accept the new tanker until late spring of 2018, the service announced Thursday.
The announcement of a projected delay is no surprise. The Air Force has been telegraphing for weeks that the risk assessment would conclude that Boeing would need more time to complete key milestones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday, Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the service\u2019s top uniformed acquisition official, told reporters that the Air Force was briefing lawmakers and would announce the September 2017 goal for first delivery would not be met, nor would it be likely that Boeing delivers the first KC-46 by the end of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Boeing is still committed, they’re putting resources [into it] and their drive is to get it done faster than what we believe they can,” he said. “We’re all for that. We would welcome that, and we will provide them the resources we can to make that happen.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that the service continues to explore options with Boeing on whether the pace of delivery could be accelerated to meet the current\u00a0RAA\u00a0date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
In an emailed statement, Boeing spokesman Charles Ramey acknowledges risk in the KC-46 test schedule. However, he asserted that the company can still deliver the first plane in late 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We expect to be much more efficient during the second half of testing now that the design has stabilized. The majority of developmental testing is complete, which reduces risk to the certification and verification testing. Additionally, we recently added a sixth aircraft (the second [low-rate initial production] plane) to the flight test program, which will help with test efficiency and improve our ability to complete ground and flight test points going forward,” he said. “We are not discovering any new technical risk.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Based on a schedule risk assessment, the service now believes Boeing will be late delivering the first tanker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":35445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":88,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[15,88],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3297],"class_list":["post-136156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-military"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"UAVZVP7XR5H47CWHIP3GDVIKFY","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2017\/06\/08\/us-air-force-predicts-first-kc-46-delivery-in-spring-2018-likely-not-this-year\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n