Air Force gets suckered again.

From Aviation Week discussing the tanker job Boeing just won from Airbus:
" a master schedule , which outlines KC-46A milestones and the progress in developing the commercial Boeing 767-2C, a new aircraft that will be he baseline platform. The aircraft was a "catalogue" item, meaning it has been offered to customers but not yet developed, thus the Air Force will be its launch customer.
The 767-2C is based on the -200ER airplane and included Boeing 787 digital displays,main deck cargo door, and freighter equipment and auxiliary fuel tanks. "

Tranlation: Boeing got the government to pay the research and development costs of a new version of the decades old 767. None of this was necessary for the tanker mission, a run of the production line 767 would work just fine without all this extra engineering work at taxpayer expense.

"The FAA and the Air Force are also working to "streamline" the certification process so that tasks only need be done once for both authorities,"

And, the standard 767 was type certified by the FAA decades ago. Since we are redoing large parts of the aircraft we have to do type certification all over again.

"Boeing plans to conduct a major review of the 767-2C configuration by the end of November with a preliminary design review for the KC-46A in March. A critical design review of the KC-46A is slated for the summer of 2013 and of the -2C four months prior;"

And we plan to spend a two years messing around before we start to build the planes. If the Air Force had insisted upon the standard 767, production could start today. The Air Force has allowed the program to slip two years just to be nice to Boeing. Boeing gets a new commercial product on taxpayer money. The Air Force gets bupkis.