By Dan Catchpole
March 12 (Reuters) - Boeing 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.
Several KC-46s have been supporting US air strikes on Iran, based on flight records.
A Boeing spokesperson on Thursday declined to comment and referred to CEO Kelly Ortberg's statements on the program during a Jan. 27 call discussing fourth quarter earnings with investment analysts.
"It is taking us more resources to make the deliveries," Ortberg said. "We delivered 14 tankers in 2025, and we are planning to deliver 19 in 2026. And we made the conscious decision that we needed to keep resources at a higher level to assure that we make those deliveries on time."
The planemaker took a $565 million charge in its fourth quarter earnings. The company has lost more than $7 billion on the fixed-cost program.
"Obviously, this has been a bad contract for the last decade, this existing contract," he said.
When Boeing bids on the next contract, it will revise its pricing to ensure "we can make money" on the program, he said.
(Reporting by Dan Catchpole in Seattle; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama .)
