As the RAAF said the “two trials occurred over March and April,” it could be assumed that the flights to certify the RAAF KC-30A with the USAF F-15s took place in March, since, as mentioned above, the tests of the RAAF E-7A Wedgetail with the USAF KC-46A were held in April. In the same framing, the release then mentioned the KC-46A and E-7A trials, specifying that those were the first such activities too, noting that “between the two trials, hundreds of refueling contacts were made.” The RAAF’s images, however, show only the F-15E Strike Eagle from the 40th FLTS making contact and flying with the RAAF’s KC-30A, with the boom just above the Eagle’s AAR receptacle, on its port-side engine intake. Hamilton, the outgoing ARDU chief, added that the testing “leveraged results from previous air-to-air test campaigns,” with the E-7A being flown “to the very limit of its performance, and to the extremities of the KC-46 boom limits.” This was to identify inadvertent “extreme positions” the operators might find themselves in.
Author: Parth Satam
Published at: 2025-08-09 19:40:58
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