More Corruption

For Boeing's KC-46 Pegasus tanker, they promised a revolutionary new system of cameras that would allow a boom operator to refuel an aircraft while sitting in the cockpit.

It did not work.

So the US Air Force "got tough" on Boeing, and claimed that the defense contractor would fix the problem at their own expense.

Boeing will not pay.

Why am I not surprised?

Weeks after the Air Force issued a statement claiming that Boeing would pay for changes to the KC-46 tanker’s panoramic suite, the service has reversed course and now says the Air Force itself will pony up the cash for new panoramic sensors — a major and potentially costly element of the fix.

Meanwhile, service officials remain seemingly unable to lay out how much the repair will cost taxpayers to allow the tanker to do its one key job: refueling American jets mid-flight.

On April 11, the Air Force officially closed the preliminary design review for the KC-46’s Remote Vision System 2.0 after striking a deal with Boeing on a fix for the panoramic suite.

When Breaking Defense first reported the agreement on April 19, the Air Force stated on the record that Boeing would be responsible for paying for all elements of the RVS fix, including upgrades to the panoramic system used to detect and identify aircraft approaching the tanker for fuel.

However, the service now says the initial statements provided to Breaking Defense inaccurately portrayed the nature of the agreement on the panoramic suite fix, and that taxpayers are, in fact, on the hook for associated costs.

Under the terms of the KC-46’s fixed price development contract, Boeing is held financially responsible for resolving all problems that exceed the contract’s $4.9 billion ceiling, including longstanding technical issues with the Remote Vision System used to steer the tanker’s refueling boom into an aircraft needing gas.

………

At the time, Boeing and the Air Force believed a new “image processing approach” could fix longstanding issues with the panoramic system’s performance and that there would be “minimal performance improvement” if the panoramic sensors were upgraded without modifying the displays, said Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Samantha Morrison said in a May 2 statement. (For this story, Breaking Defense relied on Air Force statements in response to written questions, dated April 20, April 22, May 2 and May 3.)

However, operators found the image processing fix to be “insufficient,” and the panoramic system presented as part of the preliminary design review “did not adequately address the shortfall in panoramic imagery performance,” she said.

When Smedley Butler said that war is a racket, he was not kidding.