Pratt & Whitney has announced that its PW4062 engines are the powerplants of choice for Boeing’s NewGen Tanker design. Boeing disclosed March 4 that it would offer the 767-based NewGen Tanker to the Air Force in the KC-X tanker competition. Two PW4062 engines, each delivering 62,000 pounds of thrust, would power each NewGen Tanker. The PW4062 is the highest thrust model in Pratt’s PW4000-94-inch commercial engine family. Already the company says it has delivered more than 2,500 PW4000-94-inch engines for commercial aircraft, including 767s. These engines have collectively have logged more than 100 million flight miles. “The PW4000 engine has an exceptional track record of performance and reliability,” said Bill Begert, the company’s vice president of military business development and aftermarket services. He said Pratt is confident that the PW4062s would meet the performance requirements and expectations of Boeing and the Air Force.
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.