Lockheed Martin rendering of a large stealth tanker.
NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland—The U.S. Air Force’s renewed look at the future of its aerial refueling fleet is again prioritizing stealthy, new-build aircraft—provided the service can afford it.
The service in August posted a new solicitation to industry to relook at potential designs for its Next General Aerial Refueling System (NGAS), with responses due in the coming weeks. Air Mobility Command boss Gen. John Lamontagne said the solicitation was approved by Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, with the goal of refining cost estimates for aircraft with technology to reduce its overall signature.
“That is really to help us better understand some cost estimates,” Lamontagne told reporters Sept. 22. “When we did the first analysis of alternatives on NGAS last winter, I would say those cost estimates were really rough on what a signature-managed platform might look like.”
The service is looking at if the tanker needs the level of stealth on a Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter but on an aircraft the size of a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker “or something in between. It’s tough to cost,” he said.
“This is really, at its simplest, an attempt to refine those costs, go back out to industry and figure out what’s in the realm of the possible at the right level of signature management if we go down that route, so a good opportunity for us and industry to have a conversation,” Lamontagne said.
The new request for information comes after the Air Force seemed to have put NGAS on its back burner, without extensive funding in its fiscal 2026 budget request. For the near term, the service has said it intends to buy 75 more Boeing KC-46s beyond the current 188-aircraft program of record.
Lamontagne says the service knows that its current tanker fleet cannot serve it well in a high-end fight, becoming increasingly at risk against peer adversaries.
The service’s analysis of alternatives looked at multiple options, including conventional large tube-and-wing aircraft, along with business-jet-sized aircraft, blended wing body airframes and high-end, stealthy tankers.
“We are trying to upscale and change the equation on our survivability,” Lamontagne told reporters at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference here.
Lockheed Martin in spring 2024 released a rendering of a large, stealthy tanker refueling its F-35s as the analysis was ongoing. The company is continuing its design approach for this type as attention on NGAS continues. Rod McClean, the company’s vice president and general manager of Air Mobility & Maritime Missions, tells Aviation Week that Lockheed’s operational analysis shows survivability is needed. The company is helping the Air Force understand this space better with its analysis, while also refining what it wants to offer for NGAS.
“For sure, it will be a clean-sheet design because one thing that we understand to be survivable—a typical tube-wing design like a commercial airliner—is not sufficient,” McLean said on the sidelines of the conference. “One thing we are known for within Lockheed Martin [is] our innovative design techniques and analysis and providing survivable assets, survivable aircraft. That is in the mix.”
The analysis needs to understand the price point, he says.
“It’s a variety of options because at the end of the day it could be a family of systems that supports that refueling requirement,” he says.
Lockheed Martin is exploring how one aircraft could meet two missions for Air Mobility Command—combining NGAS with the C-17 and C-5 replacement known as the Next Generation Airlift. AMC is in the early assessment of this program, looking at a potential selection in the 2040s. McClean says a combination is “not likely” as there would have to be tradeoffs in the capability for each mission, but it is part of their current analysis.
