So France-based EADS and partner Northrop will build 180 new tankers for the U.S. Air Force instead of Boeing, despite the latter’s intensive media campaign. There were hints things might go this way. Prior to EADS’ win on Friday, the firm had scored 25 orders for its Airbus 330-derived tanker: 14 from the Royal Air Force, 5 from the Australians and 3 each from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Boeing’s KC-767, by contrast, had won orders for just 4 each from Japan and Italy — and both countries’ tankers got delayed due to design and certification problems. Boeing has a long history of building tankers, but EADS has caught up fast.
Sadly, nobody considered waiting a few years and buying robot tankers.
Tour Boeing’s proposed KC-767 plant below:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/B_6NSwGIXYk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
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I’m sorry, but this is a dark day. Since when is it ok that the next Air Force tanker will be built by a European defense company? I can’t believe the Air Force is THAT stupid.
EADS is not France-based. It is a European company, although it is legally based in the Netherlands for fiscal reasons.
The robot idea would never do. What makes the Airbus inspired tanker so good for USAF is the huge amount of cargo and personnel it can carry. This will take a lot of workload off of the C-17s and C-5s so as those aircraft can do the things they are good at… roll-on, roll-off cargo.
How is having more cargo space and personnel space necessary? If these are tankers, and their job is refueling, isn’t tasking them with more responsibility taking away from their primary mission to refuel other aircraft? Am I missing something here?
And EADS may as well be based in France, seeing as how Toulouse is Airbus’s main production and assembly center.
If the Air Force thinks the EADS plane is better for the mission then i don’t have a problem, in fact i am glad the boeing didn’t win as i would be wondering how much the decision was based on politics and not merit if the boeing was chosen and yet was beaten by the EADS plane on 4 of the 5 criteria
Hi Pelicans,
I have been around KC-135 and KC-10 units a lot. And that is part of their job, not just refueling but carrying cargo and personnel. Here with the Nortrop-Airbus thing, U.S. will be getting a huge ability to move things to logistics hubs in larger quantities using aircraft that are better than 99% mission ready due to their airframe simplicity.
This is a good thing… all the kinds of things David writes about where getting the logistics end of the Air Force healthy is the way to go for most of the war/peace-keeping stuff. A roll-on, roll-off C-5 and C-17 isn’t needed to do basic movement of personnel and palleted cargo to overseas logistics hubs with normal runways and back. Again this will save the C-5 and C-17 for those roll-on, roll-off kinds of cargo and oversize things that only they can do.
Getting this tanker deal ironed out is a good thing.
Folks, where was the largest F-16 plant, until the Indians got the latest contract? I’ll tell you this, it wasn’t St. Louis, or Atlanta, but Brussels.
As a former RAF pilot I wouldn’t give a monkeys as to who manufactured the tanker provided it A: Had enough fuel onboard and B: Was in its designated airspace at the required time. It is however good news that the USAF has seen sense and purchased a tanker that will be logistically more useful over a politics.
I am not sure Pelican has a grasp of common sense over “We have to buy American!”
Query? I believe every tanker aircraft flown by the USAF had always had a boeing boom system that they developed and patented. So, I doubt Boeing will spend much time crying in their collective beer. Plus which I doubt EADS with their record of cost over-runs and ontime delivery will get much slack from the USAF.
@ELP:
Thanks for the clarification. That helps explains things quite a bit.
@James:
I don’t think you grasp what “Buy American!” sentiment means in the U.S. right now. ESPECIALLY right now, in the middle of a presidential election season, when protectionism is running strong in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Apply that sentiment to the Armed Forces, where the idea of buying anything but American for our military intensifies that sentiment by an order of magnitude. Now do you see the problems with this deal? The KC-30 may well be a better tanker than the KC-767, but with the amount of money tied up in the KC-X tender, there’s no way this deal is going to be anything but tied up in politics. This is common sense concerning the issue. And the politics is going to only hurt the Air Force in the long run, because it needs these tankers ASAP. They could not have been unaware this was going to happen, so again I question what the hell they were thinking when they announced this.
@ Pelican
When did politics and the military ever make common sense together? The two should be as far apart as chalk and cheese. Every armed force ‘needs’ the equipment ‘now’ and that will never change.
So rather than buying an off the shelf 767 and making do the USAF has grown some balls and procured a tanker that can do the job much better.
Your election politics should stay well out of procurement.
@James:
Ideally, election politics should stay out of procurement. But you have to deal with reality, and the reality is that this tender dovetails perfectly with the election season this year, and there was little chance of it not being caught up in the electoral spin. And granted, the Air Force did make the tough choice. But they had to know this was going to become a huge issue that would create problems for them IF they made the tough choice to go with Northrop/EADS. So again, what the hell was the Air Force thinking?
@ Pelican
Please clarify as to what problems the USAF may face?
All I foresee is that the USAF will receive another tanker that is better suited to the job at hand and Boeing has rightly had a poke in the eye.
Do you have any actual proof of any problems the USAF may face or are you making a hypothetical remark?
Just read the news stories come out of the U.S. concerning the tanker deal. Massive congressional opposition (especially among Democrats) is building up to this deal. The third-ranking Democratic member of the House Appropriations Committee is Norm Dicks, Democratic representative of Washington’s 6th Congressional District, and a HUGE supporter of Boeing (he helped shepherd the first failed tanker deal) who is promising to get to the bottom of how Northrop/EADS got this deal. There are statements from both Democratic presidential candidates expressing their opposition to the deal, and Speaker Pelosi is already weighing in against it. Those are just a smidgen of the problems facing the deal. So no, I’m not being hypothetical about anything. And if you don’t believe that, read these LA Times stories:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tanker4mar04,1,3267575.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tanker6mar06,1,4185083.story?ctrack=2&cset=true
@James:
Still think there’s no “there” there? :
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/beab3936-ebe8-11dc-9493-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
Now tell me if you think the USAF isn’t in trouble.
All of the political outrage is simply posturing – both sides in this have to show either their outrage or backing of the decision (if you happen to be from Alabama) for thier constituencies. The bottom line is that the AF followed the rules put into place by CONGRESS. The “buy American” laws state that NATO member countries are to considered American. The laws are also very clear on what can and can’t be considered when making a procurement decision – job loss/creation and impacts to the economy are not part of the factoring. If you don’t like that, fine. Write your Congressman and Senator and tell them to change the law and provide a method by which those issues can be factored into a procurement decision. Oh, by the way, when you write them, also tell them to stop being such hypocritical whiners! CM Dicks, just three months ago, when he was sure Boeing would win, was staunchly against a split buy procurement and praised the AF for a completely “open” competition. Now that his district is out, he is crying that maybe there should be a split buy and that the procurement process was rigged and flawed. In the end, there was no way the AF was going to get off cleanly regardless of who they chose.
@Pelicans
I wonder if Pelosi will get off her high horse and look at her own dealings with Syria the hypocritical cow.
All I see is the Democrats blowing hot-air as they always have. It was the same during Clintons administration and it is the same again now.
I don’t see any trouble for the USAF. All I see is a load of political hoo-haa from a group of politicians who have no clue about defence matters.
Changes nothing so Pelosi should perhaps do something more useful with her washed out life.
[...] $100 billion, at stake in a program to build potentially hundreds of tankers for the Air Force. Incumbent Boeing loses. European rival EADS and partner Northrop Grumman win. As expected, Boeing will protest the decision to the Government Accountability Office, which last year sided with protests against Boeing’s win in a multi-billion-dollar helicopter program. Defense News doubts the GAO will support Boeing’s gripe: The Boeing protest is seen in some financial quarters as being unlikely to succeed. One Wall Street analyst said, “It’s interesting what Boeing is not saying. We don’t hear them saying that this lot of planes or this production run will be cheaper than the Northrop-Airbus plane.” [...]
[...] The U.S. Air Force wants to buy $35-billion worth of aerial tankers based on a French design, and partially manufactured overseas. Seattle-based tanker-maker Boeing has protested the decision. Boeing’s political allies say we can’t trust Europeans to make weapons for us. Never mind that entire classes of U.S. weapons are already made in Europe. The excellent Destroyermen blog reminds us of this fact with a photo of a French-made Puma chopper, belonging to U.S. Military Sealift Command, resupplying the USS Russell destroyer. [...]