I am referring to the procurement fiasco that began, as I recall, with an plan to lease the airplanes in 2002. This was followed by claims of impropriety in the bid process, a protest by Boeing and some assistant sec of the AF being cashiered. The details are murky but the whole of the replacement program has been delayed by this program mismanagement and we hang by a thread for sufficient tankers.
The -46 is a reasonable airplane and should do the job it needs to do to replace the 135 and -10 but it was needed long ago. The failure is that aircraft, much needed years ago, have not yet been supplied.
This excerpt from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X
The current KC-X program follows earlier attempts by the USAF to procure a new tanker. A 2002 plan had the USAF leasing Boeing KC-767 tankers, followed by a 2003 modification where the USAF would buy most of the KC-767 aircraft and lease several more of them. Corruption investigations revealed wrongdoing in the award of the contract and the contract was canceled in 2005, setting the stage for the KC-X program.
Oh, I get what you are saying; the program bidding process was flawed, not the actual program (tanker) itself.
The lease was a crime, worked out between very senior Boeing execs (went to jail) and a corrupt AF Sec trolling for a Boeing job for her, her daughter and her daughter’s husband.
The Sec was prosecuted, the daughter fired (woefully incompetent recent college grad hired at a senior executive level), but the husband is a good engineer and remains with Boeing.
The crime was discovered when internal Boeing people turned in the leadership for the violations.