The US Air Force is looking at their next tanker, and the mission creep is insane.

This sounds like it will make the F-35 debacle look like the Skunk Works:

Very little has changed in the configuration and performance of airlifter and air-refueling aircraft since the mid-1950s. Lockheed Martin’s C-5A dramatically expanded payload volume in 1968, and Boeing’s C-17 introduced a strategic airlifter with the ability to make short takeoffs and landings on unprepared runways. Besides those improvements, the U.S. Air Force’s mobility mission has been almost untouched by the survivability requirements that drove radical changes to the design and operation of fighters, bombers and intelligence-gathering aircraft in the last half-century.

As Air Force planners now embark on the early stages of a process to acquire a new class of refuelers and airlifters over the next two decades, there is a clear emphasis on designs that overcome the vulnerability of existing aircraft to detection and interception. That potential shift in the requirements follows a new strategy of air warfare that transforms the role of mobility aircraft from a purely supporting one to an active part in combat operations as forward-based command-and-control nodes and even strike platforms.

And in case you are wondering just how far overboard the USAF is planning to go, have a slice of this guaranteed winner in the next bullsh%$ bingo competition:

It is a transformation that senior Air Force officials are still trying to socialize with the community of cargo and tanker crews. Underscoring the unfolding transition was a key theme of Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein’s address at the Airlift Tanker Association (ATA) annual conference on Oct. 26. “I had the chance to fly the KC-46 a few weeks ago,” Goldfein said before several hundred ATA members. “But what I strapped on was not an aircraft. What I flew was a node in our future network, [with] computing capacity that we can connect at the speed of light to other platforms, sensors and weapons to bring creative solutions to the fight.”

If they are at this level of complete bullsh%$ at this stage of the program, this presages a Death Star sized debacle.