I have the Boeing protest on my desk

the unredacted version?

Its all speculation right now…I am just going by the congressional debrief that was on C-SPAN.

you mean the political grandstanding that was on C-SPAN 😀

It seems to indicate the final assembly of A330-200Fs will be in France.

yes, until the line in Alabama is finished

that has always been the plan

all the more reason to move quickly so we can get more of those freighters

Dunno if it’d speed anything up; the flying boom can transfer fuel at a much faster rate than the drogue system, being conceived originally for refuelling SAC bombers.

fuel transfer speed is more often limited by the RECEIVER

hoses can transfer fuel faster than most fighter sized planes can take it

booms are only needed for the large receivers like B-52s, C-17s and C-5s

thus overall fuel transfer is faster with 2 fighters on hoses than one on the boom

And the Pentagon just flushed 44,000 of them.

are you just trolling?

i have to assume you are

i provided an intelligent reason for why your claim is blatantly wrong, and then you just come back and repeat the same claim with absolutely no justification

posting blindingly ignorant statements solely to get a rise out of people, sounds like a troll to me 😉

If the KC-767 is selected, very little change to the infrastructure will have to be changed. The hangars can all be used, as well as current parking areas…

nope, when the KC-767 won the first time, a rather substantial chunk of money was set aside to upgrade existing hangars that were too small

the KC-767 hasn’t gotten any smaller, so they’re going to have to upgrade the hangars either way

the Airbus croud is saying the 767 is old, while at the same time they’re saying it’s “unproven”. Sorry guys it can’t be both.

sure you can

taking 2 old parts and sticking them together doesn’t make them ‘new’

it does, however, make them ‘unproven’

The Japanese 767s have been delivered.

but not with the boom that Boeing is offering to the USAF

How many A330 boom tankers are out There?

well the KC-30B for Australia hasn’t been delivered, but it is flying, as is EADS’ modified A310 testbed

Also someone points out the 330 is a 300 with new wings and FBW.
True? If so, then how “new” is the basic airframe?

the basic design of the fuselage might be ‘derived’ from the A300, but it is longer and taller and the wing is all new and the cockpit and FBW were derived from the A320

you say only new wings and FBW as if that is a piece of cake?

those are two massive changes

a tube is a tube and until you switch to a different material (like CFRP) there isn’t much you can do with it. Wings however have had massive improvements in design over the years and FBW is a huge leap from mechanical linkages. You can’t just dismiss them as if they were nothing.

And despite all the talk that the 767 is old technology…I’ve asked the question before but have never received the answer to….exactly how will that alleged “old technology” affect MC rates or costs?

FBW is cheaper to maintain because of fewer moving parts

At first designs focused solely on performance. Everything else was irrelevant, performance was all that mattered. As time went on, air forces and airlines discovered that, yes, performance is nice, but ease of maintenance is also important. When maintenance eats up a huge chunk of your budget, it puts pressure on you and airplane designers to reduce that cost. Thus modern designs began to focus more on making maintenance easier by having access panels in convenient locations and doing other things to make routine chores easier. You see this with fighters. The F-14 was a maintenance hog. The F-18 was a newer design that put more emphasis on maintainability and as a result takes far fewer hours to maintain. The F-35 is expected to reduce that number even more.

As each generation of planes have improved aerodynamics, so have each generation of planes improved maintenance.

FBW is also safer because it prevents pilots from doing (some) stupid things. Easier to train for equals lower training costs. Less likelihood of mistakes equals less likelihood of crashes (which are quite expensive)

I would argue that shipping spare parts from Europe would have a greater impact on MC rates.

BS multiple times over
1. most of the maintenance intensive parts (like engines) are from the US
2. the frame doesn’t require as much maintenance, but when it does there are a ton of commercial A330’s flying that have maintenance done in the US
3. the US buys and STOCKPILES plenty of spare sparts. They could probably go YEARS without ordering anything from Airbus. They don’t wait until they’re out of something to order more of it

(Remember only final assembly will take place in the US…parts will still largely come from the EU)

1. remember that a huge number of the parts come from the US (engines, avionics, communications, etc). In the end there is only about a 20% difference in money to US suppliers between the KC-767 and KC-30

2. remember that if Boeing wins they only build 179 aircraft, but if EADS/NG wins, Alabama will not only build the 179 planes for the contract, but all A330-200Fs, which already has 66 firm orders (before launch) and could potentially receive hundreds more

in the end a KC-30 win actually does more for the economy than a KC-767 win because of all those extra freighters that will be assembled in the US that wouldn’t have otherwise

but let your short-sighted heart fret not, here’s the latest rumor from NCB on A.net

Boeing has won it, I’ve got the info from an Air Force insider that I can not name, a reliable source though not member of the KC-X board.