NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.–The U.S. Air Force has projected that it will finish an Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) this fall on the Next Generation Air Refueling System (NGAS) to succeed the service’s Boeing [BA] KC-46 tankers, and on Friday the service released a request for information (RFI) on NGAS mission systems.
Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter told reporters on Monday at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space, and Cyber annual conference in National Harbor, Md., that the goal of the NGAS RFI is “to get industry engaged in our programmatic efforts sooner.”
“We do not yet have a requirement for NGAS,” he said. “We are in the requirements formulation/AoA part of the process. We have been getting to the notion of what an NGAS might look like, what kind of a system it might be…Engaging industry early in requirements setting is critical.”
“It is very much my objective in formulating plans for future tanker acquisition to approach it in a way that lets industry sell us the best tanker they can provide,” he said. “One of my lessons learned from some prior tanker acquisitions is at times we were working so hard to maintain competition that it was, ‘What is the tanker that is most absolutely sure to generate competition?”–versus giving companies the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, sell us the best tanker you can make?’, and then we’ll do a ‘best value’ approach to determine what is the best value for the Air Force.”
As the U.S. Air Force develops systems to operate from austere locations and counter adversary attempts to disrupt U.S. military supply chains, the service is seeking “revolutionary” ideas on the future teaming of NGAS and the Next Generation Airlift (NGAL) platform (Defense Daily, Oct. 25, 2023).
An NGAS/NGAL lower radar cross section design, such as Blended Wing Body, could enable the aircraft to accompany the stealthy F-35 and future B-21 Raider bomber on missions.