Posted on 06/20/2024 2:30:32 PM PDT by hardspunned
One of the components of American strategic projection has been the world’s most prodigious and sophisticated aerial refueling fleet. There are currently approx 400+ KC-135s capable of refueling two receiver aircraft at the same time in the current USAF fleet. The first operational flight was 1956. The last KC-135 was delivered to the Air Force in 1965. Of the original KC-135As, more than 417 were modified with new CFM-56 engines produced by CFM-International. The newest KC-135 air-frame is 59 years old. Fifty nine years old. The retirement of the KC-135 has been anticipated and the replacement has been the disastrous KC-46A Pegasus Tanker Modernization Program which has had significant problems to include video control of the fuel boom difficulties and believe it or not, a refueling system that leaks fuel and the usual circus of missing deadlines so typical of DoD programs.
(Excerpt) Read more at libertarianinstitute.org ...
I’ve heard similar stories. Your brother was in capable hands.
Yep, this is all his fault.
Yeah, but property values in Northern Virginia are holding up, so who’s complaining?
Oh, and Boeing built a really cool soccer field complex right by Pentagon City.
The Boeing engineers wanted to model the boom controls after the KC-10 which had the boom operators sitting up instead of lying down. They also want everything to be operated via video displays instead of eyeballing the aircraft directly through the rear pod. The boom operators hated that because of the delay that is inherent with any type of video display, and to date the engineers still haven't remedied that problem, and they probably never will. Blasted engineers are probably using Windows 10. LOL
The Boeing engineers still won't listen.
I’ll see the KC-135 demonstration this weekend at the Fairchild AFB airshow, home of the 92nd Air Refueling Wing.
KC-135s equipped with the Multi-Point Refueling System (MPRS) can refuel two aircraft simultaneously.
“The contract was originally awarded to the proven Airbus product, to be built in Alabama.”
Yes. This is when that genius Senator Patty Murray made this statement:
“I have stood on the line in Everett, Washington, where we have thousands of workers who go to work every day to build these planes,”
Murray said in a Dec. 7 interview
with National Public Radio. “I would challenge anybody to tell me that they’ve stood on a line in Alabama and seen anybody building anything.”
Airbus is currently constructing their third expansion at their assembly plant in Mobile, Alabama. Coincidentally very near where Austal builds Navy ships.
This all started with the two 737 MAX jets - and four Muslim pilots - that went down in Ethiopia and Indonesia.
The 737 MAX flew 60,000 flights in Europe, North America, Japan, Aus-NZ, and the Persian Gulf, without even one incident report concerning the software that allegedly crashed the planes in Africa and east Asia.
Spent almost 40 years working on and around 135, great airplane
Actually there is a model with refueling pods on wings that allow multi aircraft refueling. Pods have baskets for aircraft with probes, plus still has boom
Facts are irrelevant. Groupthink and engineered panic are in full swing.
I saw a C-130 refueling two Pavehawks (USAF version of the Blackhawk)using a system like that. It was south of Albuquerque, and Kirtland AFB has the Pararescue School.
Thank you. Only morons view things differently, and there are plenty of those on FR.
Why are they doing that?
I’ve never seen one, nor were there any at the base I worked at.
They are a wonderful plane, and the aircrews still swear by it.
I’ve never seen one, nor were there any at the base I worked at.
“Why are they doing that?”
I’m not sure I understand your question. The short answer is so they can assemble more aircraft.
So Airbus is building aircraft here in the US, in Alabama? I didn’t think that would happen when they lost the refueler contract.
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