Lockheed 😉 And old McD (Now Boeing…)
We only need so many tankers, even if they only ever came from one company the rest of the time we are a country…. So you’d give it to Airbus because you are sick of seeing a Boeing Tanker?

Wrong, only Boeing designs and builds airliners in the US hence why it was the only US designed option. The purpose of preventing monopoly is to insure good service and reasonable prices, the basic purpose of a market economy. The US needs quite allot of Tankers. This is all very simple.

If they have already made a selection…then it is wrong to have a fake competition…and if that is in fact what they did where Boeing was basically written out of the competition, then lawsuits will be thrown , and rightfully so, because weather anyone like to believe it or not, a lot of money was spent on both sides for marketing and research, plus development costs… and if it came down to then not having a chance….well, I do not see Airbus holding the reigns too long without a long court battle.

We dont know that Boeing was ‘written out of the competition’, this deal was always going to bring lawsuits as every other procurement deal seems to these days. As I have explained multiple times the purpose of the competition is not for Boeing it is for the DoD and USAF for the same reasons explained above.

Is that what I said? You read way too deep into that one…
No, do what Lockheed forgot to do with the J…
Ask the crews who currently fly those missions what they need? And the MX who fix them, what would make turn times faster..
As the tactics folks what would make their lives easier…
Logistics folks… you get the point.

A) That was almost certainly done.
B) These are commercial airliners and the differences in logistics and training will be close to nil with the obvious exception of that already outlined in the contract.

Defence procurement should not be about providing welfare for US workers it should be about getting the best product at the best price for the end user.

Monopoly on what? They do not have anything close to a monopoly on anything…

So which other US company is it that builds tankers/airliners?;)

What I am saying is, if they made up their minds and selected the plane they wanted and the competition was a sham… then it wasn’t done the right way…

It was carried out for the purposes of USAF and the DoD, they wanted a particular aircraft and they went out and got it. They may have started out wanting the Boeing offer and then changed their mind either way the right plane won.

Plus, has anyone asked who is actually going to fly them what they wanted?

So you plan on giving every US tanker pilot for the next 40 years a chance to fly each plane before the decision is made? The pilots will fly whatever they are trained to fly, given that this is based on an airliner I can not imagine anything to challenging cropping up.

But if it had discouraged Boeing from entering the 777 into the comp., but then selected the A330 because of its close to 777 size, doesn’t that bark?

The original RFP much favored the 767, then they changed the RFP to allow for closer wingtips…because the Airbus team was going to drop its bid, because it could not have won with the original RFP.

I am not saying it was a wrong decision, I am just saying this isn’t clean no matter how you look at it. Too many questions unanswered.

Not at all. Strikes me that the USAF knew which plane they wanted (for reasons explained multiple times already in this thread by others) and did their best to get it. All this is is Boeings revenge, and please dont paint them as whiter and white………pork all the way.

I honestly don’t give a damn who won…as long as it was done right…

I watched this last night on C-SPAN, it was entertaining, to say the least…
looks here, it wasn’t done right:

Link: Boeing’s tanker bid damaged when Air Force changed criteria

Just a taste here:

The Pentagon had pulled a “bait and switch” in telling Boeing that it wanted a medium-size tanker, such as the 767.

“Had Boeing known that the Air Force wanted more, it would have bid the 777,” he said.

Boeing defense chief Jim Albaugh made that same point at an investor conference in New York.

“If they had wanted a big airplane, obviously we could offer the 777,” Albaugh said, “and we were discouraged from offering the 777.”

No it looks like the air force did its best to get the aircraft it felt it needed…….now that might be a novelty but it is one that I can live with. And I think we all know where this is coming from.

Why not bring it back they’ll never be awarded because the Germans are to scared to get stuck into a fight now a days

Whilst the German state and people may have a reluctance to engage in conflict beyond their own borders I can assure you that their soldiers are fine and brave men who can be relied upon by their allies.

Extreme right-wing groups in the UK drape themselves in the Cross of St George and/or the Union Flag, but nothing stops the same flag(s) from being flown from official and historic buildings throughout the land. (Unless you’re a Daily Mail conspiracy theorist, of course. 😉 )

Indeed the irony is that the best way to deal with that is to make the symbol widely used. The more common something is the more it undermines the potency that the minority desire of it.

Anyway if we were to ban all symbols related to neo-nazis and their ilk we would have to learn to count without using the number 8.

I gave my sources.;)

No you did not. You claimed that Russian ASAT capabilities are superior to America’s, you were then asked to back that up and you have not.