Boeing KC-46 Pegasus

Despite progress on some defence deals, such as Apache helicopters, critical procurements remain stalled, with officials warning that operational capability gaps are already being felt amid the growing Iranian threat.

Among the most critical purchases under consideration are the seventh and eighth aerial refuelling aircraft, the Boeing KC-46 Pegasus.

These aircraft are vital for extending the range and operational capabilities of Israeli fighter jets.

as demonstrated by American refuelling aircraft during Operation Roaring Lion, underscoring the need for Israeli-owned refuelling capacity for future independent campaigns against Iran.

Mm-hmm

... it's taken them I don't know when the KC-46 was first contracted for, but-

2005, I think

... something like that.

Again, my name is Chica Alcor.

I am currently a product support engineer at Boeing working on the KC-46 tanker.

I am also a student at University of Southern California getting my master's in astronautical engineering.

So a lot of what you do is going to be me.

And quite frankly, I don't know how you solve that problem, but it is probably something that several of you are going to have to solve at the right time.

I think that that is so critical because I think about the work that I do on the daily.

Again, I work on a KC-46 anchor, which is I like to call the flying gas station because it fills other planes while it's in the air.

But on that front, we have multiple customers who all want different things on their aircraft based on country, based on their mission type, the military space that they have, and being able to protect something that critical because you don't want them in the system for somebody else, so you don't want that data being collected or being looked at by just any you know any other person and I think that that is so critical because when you start trying to narrow it down to what should be prioritized or what should be protected then you start getting into this but everything is important and everything needs to be prioritized and we need to be careful um on that front so I think that is definitely thank you both for for sharing that information and I'm really excited about this you know us going to the moon, I was like, I'm hoping I build the rocket for that.

We've seen that in the news between the 737 Max.

I do hit on the KC-46, the 767 variant that the Air Force procured as its new tanker.

It's taken quite a while to take a platform that has been around for three decades, and to be fair, there was some back and forth and contesting on the contract, which slowed it down, as well as some new technology that went into the KC-46 that's still being sorted out that delayed it.

But the fact that you have basically a, what I would say, a copy-paste platform, and it's taken over twenty years to get it to a functioning capability, that might be a challenge.

It's at least a flag we need to address when we're looking at this.

That's what I told him.

I said, I'm used to sitting in the left seat for my KC-46 time.

I can do it if you want to.

And he said, yeah, absolutely go for it.