This is a procurement / funding / politics issue; not a technical one. You'd have to get the tanker, and receivers across multiple DoD branches and countries to buy into a system. The KC-46 is cutting edge, but is a minority against the backdrop of -135s and -10s. The 46 made the leap to a digital video feed instead of window, but is manually-operated.
Operational automated refueling is likely in store sometime in the next few decades, but like everything DoD-procurement-related (at least in the US), will be a slow rollout.
> The 46 made the leap to a digital video feed instead of window, but is manually-operated.
How does changing from a window to digital video improve performance? A window seems to reduce complexity, though a window + zoomed video might plausibly help. It would be too bad if a plane couldn't refuel and return to the fight (or make it home) because a connection or camera or screen failed.
The hope was to eliminate the need to have an airman lying down in the back of the plane manually flying the boom to connect to the receiver aircraft, as a step towards drone tankers. This did not pan out as hoped.
Drone tankers are already a thing. The US navy has done it. This is about drone boom tankers, something that is specific to USAF. Many countries are happy with basket aar. It has some advantages over booms.
Those other countries are generally only refueling small tactical aircraft. The USAF has to also refuel large cargo aircraft and strategic bombers, so they want higher flow rates that only a large boom can deliver.
Russia only has 16 Blackjacks. The US flies and refuels many more than that during a single sortie. The basket is about three times slower than the boom, which multiples when refueling many aircraft.
Taken in sum, virtually everything about the Pegasus has been a trainwreck, and you can see muted signals that virtually everyone is quietly searching for an alternative fleet. I would not be surprised if the 46 program on the whole is forecasted to run deep, deep in the red for Boeing.
BDS is, in general, having a hard time adjusting to a post-GWoT world of fixed cost, versus the oh-so-coveted cost plus glory days in the Aughts.
Then again, maybe the problem runs deeper. If anyone can name me a unqualified-no-doubt-successful new Boeing project - something that isn't someone else's IP or sucked up in an acquisition - from the last twenty years, I'm all ears. The USAF tossed them a softball project to bolt wings and a GPS on a Mark 82 iron bomb . . and they couldn't figure it out without bringing in Kratos.
> Taken in sum, virtually everything about the Pegasus has been a trainwreck, and you can see muted signals that virtually everyone is quietly searching for an alternative fleet.
And yet they are still favoured to win the KC-Y competition (the successor to the KC-X, which picked Boeing's KC-46A as the winner) either (a) by default since Lockheed Martin has left competition (with Airbus saying they're going it alone), or (b) the USAF just cancelling the competition and ordering more KC-46As.
Meanwhile Canada (which all sort of issues with military procurement themselves) found that Airbus was the only qualified bidder for their tanker replacement program and picked the A330 MRTT (of which deliveries have already begun).
The age of being too scared to speak up is nearing an end. Money, ideology, coercion and ego doesn’t actually define 100% of the population. It defines a convenient portion.
Boeing is definitely a shell of its former self. They need to get out of the news. Period. Are there any engineers left in charge, or has it all be overrun by pointy haired bosses and MBAs? I have a feeling the answer to that question has the answers to their issues.
MBAs, Accounting, Biology, Accounting, Management. . the board is almost entirely non-aerospace background, and largely nontechnical even when it is an aero degree (Sabrina Soussan being the sole exception, and I suspect she's just on the board because of Siemens). Speaking anecdotally, yes, the vast majority of leadership, also nontechnical, with very very very few aerospace backgrounds.
This all tends to flush out the go-getters, and doing good CFD work largely requires go-getters. It's very good at retaining box checkers though, and of course the serially dishonest.
This problem of nontechnical leadership[1] is bigger than Boeing, but that same JackWelchian focus on finance-uber-alles[2] is a real thorn in the side of American industry, or even just "American-Made Stuff".
[1] "I ran a shoe factory. And now I'm in charge" Late stage capitalism has so many echoes of late-stage Soviet industry that it's getting a little creepy.
[2] Again, "if you're good with money, you're good with everything" is a crappy way to make stuff, but our problem is when that matches your ideology you tend to see everything through that same lens. Ironically, this is a mental trick that gets tends to get trained out of you in hard sciences.
Operational automated refueling is likely in store sometime in the next few decades, but like everything DoD-procurement-related (at least in the US), will be a slow rollout.