Northrop Grumman shows why KC-45 is the right tanker.

Military • April 2008 • Views: 427

Northrop Grumman’s KC-45 Tanker is the right answer for the U.S. Air Force’s modernization of its aerial refueling fleet.

This capable aircraft is based on the highly successful A330 airliner, and is a derivative of the tanker/transport aircraft already selected for service in the air forces of Australia, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The KC-45 provides a total air mobility solution – with exceptional capacity for in-flight refueling, plus full flexibility in cargo delivery, passenger transport, aeromedical evacuation, and other missions.

-1

Recent Pages by CyanSnowHawk:
The Panic Virus Syria Is Accused of Transferring Scud Missiles to Hezbollah Cycling's Mystery Man Shows His Face Roy Disney dead at 79 Got a comment? Keep it to yourself

dmann Apr 5, 2008 • 10:55:22pm

To bad its French!

winston06 Apr 5, 2008 • 11:12:58pm

re: #1 dmann

The airframe is French-German-Spanish-Italian-British ;-)
Engines will likely be US made and Avionics will be American as well. However I heard that it won’t be able to refuel USMC/USAF “Osprey” V-22s

chuck Apr 5, 2008 • 11:58:33pm

This link is an ad. Is/was there another compny looking for this contract? Boeing? Lockheed?

abu_garcia Apr 6, 2008 • 9:01:26am

re: #3 chuck

The bid competition was between Boeing and Northrup. Boeing had been in legal trouble about some kickbacks. The bid conditions were changed so that Northrup’s EADS airframe (basically an Airbus), built in France, was not “penalized” for subsidies it receives from European governments (those aren’t scare quotes, I just don’t know enough about it other than that is the word used). The Northrup bid was accepted on evaluated price, partly because the Northrup plane could carry more fuel, which Boeing says was not part of the RFP - yadda, yadda, yadda.

Boeing seems to be softpeddling the kickbacks and subsidies issues and basing most of their protest (a formal process) on the larger plane, more fuel issue. All kinds of politics being played.

It nets out to the arguments about whether it is more important to keep our own defense industry going NOW by giving the job to Boeing or better to buy the (supposedly) best equipment at the best price and in the longer term have more integrity and competition in the process.

Folks are trying to ding McCain because he spearheaded the drive for the investigation that got Boeing in trouble on the kickbacks problem (somebody went to jail and lots of fine$).

Neither tanker will be 100% American but the Boeing would have a significantly higher proportion.

I doubt that it is possible for any of us to have a truly informed opinion without an enormous amount of investigation, mostly folks are going with their biases.

FoolsMate Apr 6, 2008 • 11:39:02am

re: #4 abu_garcia

I heard the CEOs of both NG and Boeing on NPR. Boeing claimed 85% American and NG 65%. I agree 100% it’s nearly impossible to have an informed opinion on this, you’d have to see the evaluations, bids etc. from the entire bid process.

Auto

This page has been archived.
Comments are closed.

Jump to top

Create a PageThis is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go.
Or... you can just click this button to open the Pages posting window right away.
Last updated: 2023-04-04 11:11 am PDT LGF User's Guide RSS Feeds

Help support Little Green Footballs!