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Oct 20, 2016

Lara Seligman | Aviation Week & Space Technology

As the U.S. Air Force sets its sights on a more survivable next-generation tanker that will be able to support strike assets in increasingly dangerous battlespace, Lockheed Martin believes it has the answer: a fuel-efficient, hybrid wing-body aircraft that can take off and land on short runways for maximum operating flexibility.

Gen. Carlton Everhart 2nd, chief of Air Mobility Command, recently kicked off an effort to study a next-generation “KC-Z” tanker—one that may look very different from the large-bodied, commercially based KC-10s, KC-135s and KC-46s of today. As adversaries such as Russia and China develop sophisticated surface-to-air missiles (SAM) and antiaircraft weapons designed to foil U.S. forces’ ability to penetrate their airspace, the tanker of 2035 and beyond is increasingly vulnerable, Everhart says.

Ahead of an official Air Force study on the future tanker, expected to begin within the next six months, industry is already gearing up to solve this problem.

The Next Generation of Air Refueling

Lockheed’s proposal builds on its Hybrid Wing Body concept for a more fuel-efficient future airlifter
The tanker has an H-tail configuration and embedded engines to reduce radar cross-section
Its automated boom refueling would provide quicker, safer operations
Its short-takeoff capability would enable maximum flexibility

If you ask Kenneth Martin, Lockheed Martin’s principal engineer for advanced mobility, the new battlefield necessitates a lower-signature—if not fully stealthy—refueling aircraft that moves away from the commercial-derivative tankers of years past. The future tanker fleet will need to be able to operate 500-250 mi. from the threat, outside the reach of modern SAMs but well within range of enemy radars and air-launched missiles, Martin calculates. This means the next-generation tanker will need a lower radar cross-section than conventional refueling aircraft, but it does not need to be “quite as pointy and as sharp” as an F-35 or an F-22, he says.

Lockheed’s vision builds on the company’s Hybrid Wing Body (HWB) concept for a more fuel-efficient future airlifter, which combines a blended wing and forebody for aerodynamic and structural efficiency with a conventional aft fuselage and “T” tail for airdrops. The next-generation tanker may compromise with an “H” tail configuration, which would give the operator robust flight control and stability compared to a pure blended wing-body configuration, such as the B-2 stealth bomber or the V-shaped tails on the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, Martin says.

“It’s still going to probably look a lot like an airlifter,” Martin says. “It’s not going to be a pure flying-wing, delta-wing sort of airplane because it still needs to be an efficient, everyday Air Mobility Command asset.”