The 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis AFB, Calif. became the sixth operating base for the Boeing [BA] KC-46A Pegasus tanker on July 28, as the wing received the 70th KC-46A delivered by Boeing.
The U.S. Air Force has 68 and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force has two.
Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s president and CEO, said in a July 26 company earnings call that Boeing did not deliver any KC-46As to the Air Force during the second quarter, but he also said that the company has completed rework on production aircraft and has resumed deliveries (Defense Daily, July 26).
In March Boeing received a $184 million contract for Block 1 advanced line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight communications anti-jamming/encryption upgrades for the KC-46A, which “is built to integrate cutting-edge capabilities directly into the DNA of the aircraft as the needs of the mission evolve,” James Burgess, Boeing’s KC-46A program manager, said at the time.
The Air Force has requested reprogramming $17 million of advanced communications funding for the KC-46A in fiscal 2023 (Defense Daily, July 18).
“Funds are available because they are early to need due to contract award delay within FY 2023 for the KC-46A Pegasus Advanced Communications Suite program,” according to the reprogramming document. “The contract did not award until March 2023. The schedule delay was driven by prolonged negotiations regarding data rights. The re-phase of funding will be addressed in a future budget submission.”
Boeing said in April that the Air Force had picked the company to aid the service’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) Airborne Edge Node concept through studying how to integrate new forward edge processing on the KC-46A.