Originally Posted by BlueScholar

They're more right than they are wrong though. It's been a financial disaster for boeing, costing them around $7 billion in losses and counting. It's been an operational disaster, years late due to unforced errors like FOD in the fuel tanks, an engineering debacle from boeiong be unable to assemble already existing boeing wings, fuselages and cockpits, and also just terrible design like the 3D camera trying to replace a good old fashioned, simple window and did I mention it's years overdue. Heck I remember reading about it in school and hoping there would be one in my UPT drop and I was off by several years. I'm not even sure if it's certified to refuel all DOD aircraft yet. Yes the DOD cares more about number of booms in the sky than individual tanker capacity so it's not meant to compete with the KC-10, but you'd think the 46 should be able to replace a 4 engine tanker that's 70 years old. Some of that is the AF being the AF with bad acquisition picks, but it's another ****ty boeing product with their signature quality control. Meanwhile most times I've gone through the desert over the past decade we've seen an A330 tanker out there doing work while the KC-46 just got cleared to deploy what, 6 months ago?