F-47 Fighter Reveal Draws New Attention To USAF Stealth Tanker Plans

Yahoo

24-03-2025

The U.S. Air Force's selection of Boeing's F-47 as the winner of its Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) combat jet competition raises new questions about plans for new stealthy aerial refueling tankers. The service has said in the past that the two efforts are intrinsically linked, but also that it might not be possible to afford both aircraft. Extending the life of existing KC-135s could also now be on the horizon to help ensure there is sufficient aerial refueling capacity overall to meet current and future demands.
President Donald Trump, flanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, unveiled the F-47 at the White House last Friday. Readers can first get caught up with our latest in-depth analysis of what we know about that aircraft here.
The F-47 is part of the larger NGAD initiative that also includes Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones, as well as new jet engines, weapons, electronic warfare suites, sensors, network architectures, battle management capabilities, and more. The Air Force has also been working to refine its vision for a Next Generation Air-refueling System (NGAS) 'system of systems,' which could feature new stealthy and/or uncrewed tankers by 2040, if not before.
'I'll leave the findings alone. It's basically an Analysis of Alternatives [AOA] on what different options could look like,' Air Force Gen. John Lamontagne, head of Air Mobility Command [AMC] said in response to a question about the current state of NGAS from Defense One's Audrey Decker during a live interview last Thursday. The interview was streamed online as part of that outlet's 2025 State of the Air Force and Space Force virtual conference. AMC oversees the vast majority of the Air Force's current fleets of aging KC-135s and newer KC-46s, both of which are non-stealthy designs.
'We're putting the finishing touches on that with OSD. We've had an engagement with them, and we should have submitted that here by the end of the month or so,' Lamontagne continued. 'You know, if we look at what we did with NGAD, the NGAD AOA was a long time ago. We have not yet made a decision on whether we're going to pursue NGAD or not. We're just about to turn in NGAS. I don't anticipate that there'll be an NGAS, you know, in the next couple of days.'
The AMC commander's comments came just the day before the F-47 announcement. The Air Force had put the NGAD combat jet program on hold last year for a deep review. The service ultimately concluded that a new sixth-generation crewed stealth combat would be critical for achieving air superiority with the least amount of risk in future high-end fights.
As noted, Air Force officials had previously made clear that the NGAD combat jet decision would have ramifications for NGAS. Much remains to be learned about the F-47, including its unrefueled range, as well as expected concepts of operations that could impact tanking requirements. Tactical combat jets have historically been very fuel-hungry. A larger, longer-range NGAD aircraft would have less need for aerial refueling than a smaller and shorter-range one, but would also be more expensive. These are tradeoffs TWZ has just explored in detail in our most recent analysis of the Boeing fighter design.
The U.S. military's current tactical fleets present significant demands for aerial refueling support and, as a result, for tankers to be able to operate relatively far forward. At the same time, the air defense threat ecosystem continues to expand in scale and scope, presenting especially worrisome challenges for friendly non-stealthy tankers and other support aircraft that will be high-priority targets for any opponent in a future large-scale conflict.
'I'm convinced from the analysis that NGAD is necessary. That's my opinion, and I have an opinion, and I will, you know, offer that to the senior leadership, but I can see the difference that it makes. But it's not all on its own,' Gen. Allvin said in a separate virtual interview with Defense One's Decker last Thursday. 'It's great, but it also means that the supporting structure around it needs to have [a] defendable basis, needs to have, you know, sufficient refueling to where it stay on station longer.'
Fielding a fleet of new stealth tankers has long been presented as at least one option for addressing the need for more survivable air refueling support, a topic that TWZ has tracked closely. Years ago now, we laid out a detailed case for why it would not only make sense, but be critical for the Air Force to pursue such an aircraft. However, concerns have continually come up about the costs and complexities of developing an aerial refueling aircraft with significant low-observable (stealthy) characteristics, as well as resources that would be needed to acquire and field them in useful numbers.
Last year, former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall explicitly warned about whether his service could afford to pursue NGAS, as well as planned fleets of NGAD combat jets and CCA drones. Aviation Week reported earlier this month that the decision to proceed on NGAD could call NGAS's future into question. At the White House press conference last Friday, Secretary of Defense Hegseth noted that the NGAD combat jet program had almost been scrapped and described the F-47, in part, as being 'cheaper,' but did not elaborate and it is unclear how any affordability assessments may have changed. Air Force leadership has consistently highlighted potential alternatives to stealth tankers for NGAS.
'It's interesting because the NGAS is almost been like NGAD, it's been reduced to an aircraft. It's [NGAS] not necessarily an aircraft, it's [an] air refueling system. And so there are other ways that you can enhance survivability of air refueling aircraft,' Gen. Allvin said just last week. 'You can do it through electronic warfare. You can do it through, you know, escort support. There are different ways that you can do that, and so this is all part of the entire NGAS evaluation.'
'In a broad brush, there's a variety of ways to survive. We can continue to upgrade the [existing tanker] fleets and put defensive systems on it, just like we've upgraded the navigation [systems], engines, and more over the past decades,' AMC's Gen. Lamontagne also said last week. 'We can also team up with other partners in the joint force, and have them defend us. And so a variety of ways to do it, even if we don't pursue NGAS.'
'The acquisition community, I think, has done a nice job of trying to develop the technology associated with a new [NGAS] platform. They did that with NGAD, starting to do it with NGAS,' Lamontagne continued. 'And I'm hopeful that that will continue to happen across a family of systems, both in the Air Force and across the joint force. But [it is] too early to tell what that looks like here in the very near term.'
It's interesting to note here that the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have confirmed that multiple demonstrator aircraft were flying in secret for years in support of the NGAD combat jet program, as you can read more about here. In 2023, the Air Force publicly announced it had hired JetZero to build a highly efficient blended wing body demonstrator that could help inform future tanker and cargo aircraft. TWZ has also previously documented a litany of other known work related to stealthy tankers or related designs. What relevant research and development has been occurring in the classified realm is unknown.
'We are absolutely considering it, and companies are developing autonomous air refueling capability as we speak to where a, you know, one platform could go refuel with no humans in the loop, using technology from the tanker and technology from the receiver,' Lamontagne added in response to a question about the potential for uncrewed platforms to be part of a future aerial refueling force. 'And so yes, I think this is all very much in the realm of a possible.'
The Air Force is also known to be at least exploring boom-equipped podded aerial refueling systems that fighter-sized aircraft could carry as another way to help address future tanking needs.
Work is also ongoing to expand the capabilities of existing tankers, to include new defensive systems, as well as communications and data-sharing capabilities.
'The next couple upgrades need to be that beyond-line-of-sight connectivity, tactical data links, so we have good S.A. [situational awareness] on our environment,' Gen. Lamontagne told Defense One's Decker last week. 'We can sense and make sense of the threats, and protect ourselves and exploit some opportunities.'
Testing has already demonstrated that tanker crews can act as aerial controllers for drones, which they could then use to help protect against oncoming threats.
Lamontagne also highlighted the potential for CCA drones, specifically, to be air-launched from AMC aircraft, but it is unclear whether he was referring to tankers or cargo planes. The command has been looking into using KC-135s as motherships for other uncrewed aerial systems.
The Air Force also has a broader need for more aerial refueling capacity overall. In the interview last week, Lamontagne acknowledged continued strains on existing tanker fleets even when it comes to meeting peacetime requirements. The forthcoming B-21 Raider stealth bombers are set to significantly add to the existing capacity demands on tanker fleets, as well. All of this has been exacerbated by the decision to divest the service's KC-10 tankers, as well as continued technical and quality control issues that have limited the operational utility of new KC-46 Pegasus tankers and slowed deliveries of those aircraft.
TWZ was the first to report on the latest halt in Pegasus deliveries due to cracking. The root cause of those cracks, which have also been found on at least 11 previously delivered KC-46s, has yet to be determined. Once that is done, the Air Force and the manufacturer Boeing will have to agree to a remediation plan, after which deliveries of new tankers can resume.
There are still plans for the Air Force to acquire an additional tranch of new tankers after its current orders for KC-46s are fulfilled. Though there has been talk about just buying more examples of the Pegasus, Gen. Lamontagne said that no formal decision had been made and that his command remains 'agnostic' about future purchases of more traditional tankers citing the availability of other options on the open market. Airbus has notably pitched its A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT), which is in use with many air arms globally, to the Air Force multiple times over the past few decades. In 2023, the European aerospace conglomerate said it would continue to do so alone after the dissolving of a partnership with Lockheed Martin.
A life extension program for the KC-135s, which the Air Force already expects to keep flying into the 2050s, could now be on the horizon, especially if there is an additional lag in the NGAS plans. The last KC-135 rolled off Boeing's production line in 1965, though the remaining examples in Air Force service have been substantially upgraded multiple times over the years, including with new engines, avionics, navigation systems, and communications suites.
'Recapitalization of the tanker fleet is absolutely the priority. The [KC-]135 fleet, as I just outlined, [is] not getting any younger,' AMC's Lamontagne said. 'We may need to look at a service life extension potentially of the 135 if it's going to take a really long time [to acquire replacements] and continue to upgrade it, just like we have over the past several decades.'
The Air Force has been testing whether flying tankers with reduced crews, as well as leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, could be feasible paths to increase aerial refueling capacity without more airframes or personnel. Lamontagne also highlighted how private contractors are increasingly helping to meet some of the capacity gaps now, a still-growing trend that TWZ has been closely covering over the years.
'On any given day, our requirements are about right here, but our supply is down here, so we can't meet all the requirements. And so a lot of this happens on the training side of the house, because we prioritize the operational requirements, and the training requirements are usually at the bottom of that, and often the first things to lose,' the AMC commander explained. 'So some of the services and some other areas of the joint force will use their own resources to go out and contract air refueling and to provide them that capability when we can't meet it because of all the other operational requirements.'
'We are completely supportive of that,' he added.
With the F-47 now unveiled and an initial review of options for NGAS wrapping up, the Air Force's future aerial refueling vision, and whether or not it includes stealth tankers, may start to become clearer.
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