303Bear said:Wangchung said:Oldbear83 said:
Tone matters, and yours is obvious even in print.
Exactly. We are absolutely controlling 99% of the war but a few US planes on the ground get hit on the ground and it's multiple posts on the empty planes and " well boys, Trump is ignoring his advisors and it's been almost a week so this war is a quagmire!!!" Same mentality of the ********s on game threads that give up in the first 5 minutes of the game.
Depends on what your baseline of support for the operation and acceptable losses are.
If you think (as I do) that this entire operation was largely unnecessary, has been poorly planned from a strategic standpoint (it still is t clear what the actual goal is/was or how it could be achieved) and has been a mixed bag of success and embarrassment (regardless of overall tactical win/advantage, suffering daily strikes on US assets though the region isn't a great look).
So far we have lost 6 tankers (around 1% of our total fleet), a small total number to be sure, but more than I believe we have lost in a conflict at any point. The KC135s are all aged and likely cannot be replaced. The KC46 program has been costly, perpetually behind and beset with teething issues. Losing 3 F15s in a day to friendly fire isn't good. We have spent how ever many billions on munitions, fuel, equipment, plus the increase cost of energy and hit to the markets/economy. Compared toy baseline of "none of these things needed to happen at this moment in time", I think it is very fair to say that we are not succeeding. We may be winning, in the literal military sense, but we are not succeeding.
We're about to put boots on Iranian soil. They won't be the only or the last, and based on past experience, they will likely be there a while.
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USAF general says Boeing has to fix tanker problems before US orders more
By Dan Catchpole
March 12, 2026
\An aerial view of a Boeing KC-46 Pegasus aerial refueling tanker parked at King County International Airport-Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, U.S, June 1, 2022. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
March 12 (Reuters) - Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab has to fix ongoing problems with its KC-46 aerial refueling tanker before the United States orders more, U.S. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Lamontagne told lawmakers during a March 4 hearing.
The general did not specify which problems could hold up a follow-on contract to the existing one for 183 tankers.
"We are working through a couple of issues with the contractor, and we are not going to get a new contract for another 75 KC-46s until we work through some of those deficiencies," Lamontagne told a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
A decision on the contract is likely two years away, he said, adding that he is "confident that a good plan is in place" to resolve the issues next year.
Boeing and the Air Force have already spent years trying to fix problems with the KC-46's refueling boom and the visual system that the boom operator uses to watch the boom and move it during refueling. Last year, deliveries were temporarily paused after cracks were found in a handful of new tankers.
The Air Force ordered the tanker, which is based on Boeing's commercial 767, to begin replacing its fleet of aging KC-135 tankers, which were built in the 1950s and early 1960s. The company has already delivered more than 100 of the tankers. Last November, the Air Force committed to the next block of 15 tankers in the current contract.
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sounds like BA went cheap?? Just re-use the 767 "chasis" - for lack of a better term....,.
- UF
Ideally it would be designed specific for the purpose???
PA.
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