The U.S. Navy may have passed over Lockheed Martin’s submission for its MQ-25 Stingray drone tanker program, but the company is still looking to make its mark in the aerial refueling sector with the U.S. Air Force’s KC-Z tanker project. The firm’s legendary Skunk Works special projects office is crafting various proposals, including stealthy hybrid wing body and flying wing designs, as well as a concept based around a fleet of smaller unmanned aircraft. The Maryland-headquartered contractor prominently displayed a model of one Advanced Tanker Concept, the hybrid wing type, below artwork depicting a different aircraft concept in action paired with the text “Rapid Global Mobility,” at the Air Force Association’s annual Air, Space, and Cyber conference earlier in September 2018. Lockheed Martin first unveiled this particular design concept in 2016, which was itself an outgrowth of earlier work the company had done as part of the joint Air Force-NASA Speed Agile project.

On the show floor, a representative from Skunk Works told The War Zone that the goal was to provide the Air Force with a set of tiered options as the service continues to iron out its requirements for the future KC-Z. They added that the USAF had not yet indicated to them what type of aircraft or operating concept it might be leaning toward at present. That being said, earlier in 2018, the Air Force Research Laboratory showed off its own model of a stealth tanker concept with the title “Advanced Aerial Refueling.”

Joseph Trevithick A model of Lockheed Martin's hybrid wing body KC-Z concept.

The Air Force intends to fill this emerging stealth tanker gap with KC-Z, but it remains to be seen what else it might expect these aircraft to do. The Skunk Works representative said that those secondary requirements may be among the biggest drivers in the in the configuration of the final design. The Advanced Tanker Concept model that Lockheed Martin has publicly shown features a conventional wing-and-tail configuration with hybrid wing body planform. This is specifically to provide the internal space and allow for other features, such as rear loading ramp, necessary for the notional aircraft to adequately fill the “C” role, or cargo carrying function, in KC-Z.

Joseph Trevithick Another view of Lockheed Martin's KC-Z model.