By Dan Catchpole
June 9 (Reuters) – The U.S. Air Force is confident a fix has been found for long-running troubles with a key system on Boeing’s KC-46 aerial refueling tanker, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.
Boeing and the Air Force have been trying for several years to fix problems with the tanker’s remote vision system, which is critical for midair refueling with the plane’s boom, a rigid pipe used to transfer fuel.
“I think the good news is that we believe we’ve fixed and have tested the new 2.0 vision system and that we should start rolling that into the production line in ’28,” Meink said during Tuesday’s defense appropriations subcommittee hearing.
That is five years later than initially planned.
The company has delivered more than 100 of the 188 tankers ordered by the Air Force, which is considering the purchase of another 75 for a total of 263.
Boeing has lost more than $7 billion on the fixed-price contract for the 767 commercial model derivative that leaves it on the hook for cost overruns.
Air Force officials have said they will only order more tankers if Boeing fixes lingering problems.
The U.S. planemaker announced on June 4 that it had completed initial flight testing of the Remote Vision System 2.0 upgrade.
Retrofitting existing aircraft with the new system will take seven years, the Air Force announced in May.
The KC-46 has also had problems with its boom and leaks in its fuel system.
“Obviously, this has been a bad contract for the last decade, this existing contract,” Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told investors in January.
Boeing did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Dan Catchpole in Seattle; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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