Aerial refueling is tough, but the US Air Force is making it even more difficult with its new
aerial tanker joining the fleet. The unhappy boom operators want the tip of their booms back,
but the reason is not what you think! Aerial refueling can be compared to
sticking a thread into a needle … in front of a fan! And if that’s not tricky enough,
try doing it blind folded. Because that is exactly what boom operators on these
new fuel tankers have to deal with at times. This multi-billion-dollar over-engineering failure, or
shall I say under-engineering failure, depending on how you look at it, started with a big BOOM!
There are two ways to do aerial refueling: the flying boom method and the probe and drogue
method. The flying boom method consists of an aerial tanker fitted with a rigid telescopic tube,
or boom, which terminates with a fuel nozzle. The receiver aircraft flies in a fixed position behind
the tanker aircraft. Some say approaching the tanker is the most dangerous part. Lining up in
3-dimensional space while matching up the speed is not that easy, and that’s not even considering the
turbulence that both aircraft create. The larger the receiving aircraft, the more dangerous it is.
But once both airplanes are lined up, the boom operator can move the boom side to side or up
and down using a joystick that controls that V shaped airfoil. The boom operators sit or lie
down at the rear of the tanker, while looking through the window as they operate the boom.
This is a highly skilled job, although boom operators could be as young as 18 years old.
This method is primarily used by the US Air Force,
because it can transfer fuel at very high rates which is beneficial for refueling
larger planes such as B-52s and large cargo planes which fly for extended periods of time.
In contrast, the Probe and Drogue method is primarily used by the US Navy. That’s because a
tanker equipped with the boom is just too big to operate from an aircraft carrier. In the drogue
method, the tanker aircraft releases a flexible hose which terminates in a conical-shaped drogue
that trails behind it. The purpose of a drogue is to stabilize the hose and to act as a funnel for
the probe. The receiver aircraft is fitted with a probe protruding from the nose of the plane
terminating in a nozzle. The pilot of the receiver aircraft brings the aircraft into position and
carefully maneuvers the probe into the drogue. This establishes contact, and the fueling begins.
The biggest benefit of probe and drogue is its relative simplicity, and the ability
to refuel multiple aircraft at once, which is why NATO members also use this method.
Additionally, drogue-equipped “buddy pods” can be attached to non-tanker aircraft,
like F/A-18s, which turns them into tankers.
I know, full-time fighter, part-time tanker. Like most Uber drivers! Doing it as a side job!
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The United States currently has 456 operational tankers,
majority of which are boomers! And I’m not referring to their refueling method. I’m
talking about their age, which averages around 60 years old! Of those 456 tankers, 398 are KC-135s,
produced from the mid 1950s to mid 1960s, and the remaining 58 are the newer KC-10 model,
produced in the 1980s. Both models of tankers are old and expensive to operate and maintain. One of
the reasons being shortage of aircraft parts as they are no longer produced. To combat the parts
shortage, the US Air Force’s newest aerial tanker, the KC-46 Pegasus, dubbed “Peggy”, is based on
the Boeing 767 airframe, so there would be no shortage of parts for the foreseeable future.
Here comes the confusing part: The fleet of KC-135s are 60 to 70 years
old. KC-10s are about 40 years old. Which fleet should get replaced by the modern KC-46 Pegasus?
Obviously, it’s the KC-10s that have to go … Let me explain!
See, it’s not all about the age, but also about the maintenance complexity. It is very expensive
to maintain two different fleets of older airframes, each requiring their own parts and
maintenance schedules. Because there’s almost 7 times as many KC-135s as there are KC-10s,
by eliminating the much smaller fleet of KC-10s, an entire maintenance ecosystem for that airframe
goes away, which significantly reduces costs. Now, some of the oldest KC-135s will also have to go,
but the early retirement of the entire fleet of KC-10s, means that KC-135s will stay in service
at least until they are in their 80s. Now that’s a wholesome life!
The KC-46 aerial refueling and strategic transport aircraft was developed from the Boeing KC-767
aerial refueling tanker that was canceled in 2003, because of corruption allegations due to a leasing
scheme. It ultimately resulted in the jailing of a procurement executive. Since 2013, out of the
179 tankers ordered, 56 have been built to date. Peggy has two wing refueling pods at each wingtip,
as well as a centerline drogue system under the rear fuselage. Peggy also has a refueling boom.
But the flying boom and the drogue are at best partially operational. In other words,
they can’t be reliably used for refueling compared to the older KC-135s and KC-10s. You see,
Peggy is plagued with problems, major problems. According to the Government Accountability Office,
Peggy has 7 critical deficiencies that could cause death, severe injury,
or illness, or otherwise cause loss or damage to the aircraft.
But let’s focus on the most critical problem.
KC-46 uses the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System,
or MCAS, the same one used on Boeing 737 MAX which resulted in two deadly crashes
and the worldwide grounding of the entire 737 Max fleet for over a year and a half. But for Peggy,
the biggest problem wasn’t MCAS. It was the lack of windows! No, not Windows, I mean these windows.
KC-46 has one major design change. Instead of sitting at the back of the aircraft and looking
through a window while maneuvering the boom, the operator sits in a remote station in front of
the airplane and looks at a screen. And it’s been challenging to perfect this remote vision system,
or RVS. You would think that camera technology would be pretty good in this day and age,
but that proved to not be the case as RVS was being developed and tested.
Under certain atmospheric conditions, like certain sun angles and its reflection off the water,
the cameras would wash out or black out for periods of time. On multiple occasions,
boom operators were unable to see the receptacle in the receiving aircraft. At times,
boom operators couldn’t even differentiate between the tip of the boom and receiver aircraft. This
lack of visual clarity has on occasion resulted in undetected contact with receiver aircraft,
and even damage to the receiver aircraft’s body coatings. No wonder the airforce doesn’t yet feel
comfortable refueling its F-35s and F-22s with the KC-46 Pegasus because the wonky boom system could
scratch the stealthy coatings on these expensive fighters, and that’d be just “plane wrong”.
Additionally, Peggy cannot refuel A-10 Warthogs because of the … stiff boom deficiency! And
unfortunately, there is no pill for that! The issue is that A-10s have a difficult
time disconnecting after refueling since they are lighter and slower aircraft. As of May 26,
2021 KC-46 is only able to refuel F/A-18s without restriction using its drogue system.
The original RVS, version 1.0, includes two regular vision cameras and two infrared cameras
for night refueling. But it seems like Boeing forgot the most basic thing that all modern
cameras have. An exposure compensation control dial. Another point of frustration is that the
screen is “black and white”. Yep black and white video feed! Boeing is currently developing a new
system which will use Ultra High Definition cameras and 4K screens, connected with fiber
optic cables to reduce latency. More importantly, the displays will be upgraded from black and white
to color. Makes you wonder why they didn’t do that from the start. The RVS 2.0 is due in 2023 or
2024. In the meantime, the RVS relies on software fix 1.5, a short term solution, that mitigates the
problem until the new hardware arrives. The boom operators describe the current system as a black
and white piece of … technology! or in politically correct terms, they find it “hard to use”!
So the RVS is bad, and it appears that some boom operators want the legacy systems back.
Their biggest complaint is the lack of depth perception. This problem is going to be addressed
in RVS 2.0 with the addition of a laser range finder that will show the accurate distance
from the tip of the boom to the recepteable. But the operators also miss seeing the tip or
their boom! The camera feed does not show the tip, which in my opinion, is the best part to look at!
But for some reason, about a foot and a half of it is missing from the video feed, which means
boom operators with no windows now have to rely on shadows! And if there’s no shadow on a cloudy day,
they rely on experience and guesswork rather than technology. According to the operators,
the current RVS works best at night, and that’s simply due to the lack of glare.
The good news is that Boeing is developing RVS 2.0 on their own dime, I mean, it’s their own mess.
The KC-46 Pegasus program is in fact losing money for Boeing,
having lost $5.4 billion dollars on the jet, to date. Peggy was supposed to be
a next generation aerial tanker that would offer better mission planning,
more advanced data sharing, and better protection against electromagnetic pulses. It was supposed
to be ready for action. But the 56 tankers built so far are not yet fully operational.
This raises the question, why would they throw away something that works, something as simple
as a window, in favor of a remote vision system. The answer appears to be that the
RVS is a transition step to a fully automated refueling system, ultimately eliminating the
need for a boom operator. All that needs to happen is to translate the geometric data of the aerial
refueling process into algorithms which will allow a computer to do the refueling job on its own.
Infact, Boeing already developed a refueling drone, the MQ-25, which is capable of refueling
fighter jets automatically. According to Boeing, in the future autonomous refueling,
the computer will fly the tanker and air refuel the receiving plane all by itself. Meanwhile,
the Air Force agrees, citing that if something could be automated and become uncrewed,
it should. The Automated Aerial Refueling Program started back in 2004,
with the first successful tests conducted in 2007 by DARPA with help from NASA.
In 2020, the Air Force submitted a proposal to Boeing, to develop autonomy algorithms
and install them on KC-46 tankers at a cost of up to $55 million dollars.
But only after Boeing finishes RVS 2.0.
But is this remote vision system an over-engineered blunder? Or did Boeing
make the mistake of under-engineering it? And if automated aerial refueling is the future,
was RVS really a necessary step, especially if you could transition from looking through windows
to an automated system in one go. Let us know what you think of robots taking over the skies!