India has selected the European Airbus 330-200 MRTT over the Russian Ilyushin-78 mid-air refuelling aircraft in an Rs 8,500-crore contract.So the Airbus offering racked up another win.Defence ministry sources on Thursday said the European Aeronautics Defence and Space Company (EADS) “is now being called for the final commercial negotiations” for acquisition of six Airbus-330 MRTT tankers.
On a personal note I keep wondering if it wouldn't have been the better tanker for the USAF but they bungled the selection on more than a couple of levels.
*They made it a replacement for the KC-135 instead of a best value tanker contract.
*The Air Force didn't do market research to see what airplanes were available to fulfill its needs and got stuck picking between two different size airplanes--it was a no win situation from the beginning.
*Airbus treated the US like a colony..and this is a warning to other manufacturers...having simple assembly plants in the US for our defense products isn't good enough. They need to be manufactured here in order to pass the smell test.
The good thing about the airplane though is that its one big beast and should take up some slack when it comes to transporting cargo and deploying air assets long distances. But the bad is that the A400 will probably eat into its sales. If the turn to the Pacific is real and if we don't come up with a fancy two seat, stretched F-22 then we might miss having a tanker larger than the KC-10 to help us rampage over the area.
