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Airbus Group SE beat out Boeing Co. in a $1.33 billion race to supply South Korea with four aerial refueling tankers, dashing the U.S. plane maker’s hopes of securing the first foreign order for a program beleaguered by budget overruns and delays. A spokesman for South Korea’s main arms procurement agency said Tuesday it plans to buy four of Airbus’s refueling planes, called the A330 MRTT, for multirole tanker transport. The first delivery is due in 2019. The European plane maker’s bid became more attractive with euro weakening since the bids were submitted, the spokesman for South Korea’s Defense Acquisition...

In April 2004 the Australian Defence Forces selected EADS's Airbus A330-200 Multi-Role Tanker Transport as a replacement for its ageing Boeing 707-based aerial tanker aircraft. Aside from supportability issues, the 707s had only a probe and drogue refuelling capability. Whenever its General Dynamics F-111s needed to air refuel, the Royal Australian Air Force had to rent a tanker with a boom. Several additions to the RAAF fleet, such as the Boeing 737-based Wedgetail, Boeing C-17 and future Lockheed Martin F-35 need a boom-equipped tanker to fully exploit their capabilities.Additionally, inter-operability with allied nations would be enhanced with a dual mode...

European aerospace giant Airbus has cut its prices in a bid to win a fight with US rival Boeing for a 40-billion-dollar US Air Force contract, a German business daily reported on Monday. Airbus has cut the proposed cost for the contract to build 179 aerial refuelling tankers by at least 10 percent from the level in a previous offer in 2008, the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) reported, citing industry sources. Last week, the two competitors submitted their offers to Washington, setting the stage for a high-stakes transatlantic trade scrap. It will be the third time the contract has been...

The US Air Force has started the countdown to the KC-X contract award after having received three bids to build 179 tankers, including a last-minute offer from a California company selling Antonov aircraft. The contest is likely to remain a face-off between the Boeing KC-767NewGen Tanker and the EADS North America KC-45, even though Antonov-bidder US Aerospace touted a possibly lower $29.5 billion price tag for its proposal.

The inter-theater redeployment of aircraft during Vostok-2010 was one of the key events of the strategic war games, which end today. The Su-24 Fencer and Su-34 Fullback tactical bombers used midair refueling to fly to the Russian Far East. In-flight refueling, routinely used by the world's leading powers, including the United States and NATO countries, allows for the quick build-up of air power in a given zone of conflict. To efficiently implement that maneuver, a country should have a sufficient number of flying tankers, combat aircraft equipped for midair refueling, transport planes to carry auxiliary personnel and cargo, and crews...

Demonstrably proud of their bid on the KC-X tanker, EADS NA officials turned it in one day early and the company’s chairman slammed Boeing for “wasting a lot of time trying to derail” the competition “because someone thinks their plane is inferior.” Boeing’s attacks amounted, said company chairman Ralph Crosby, to a lot of “crap.” EADS flew five paper (and one CD) copies of its 8.800-page bid to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on a chartered prop plane, expecting them to arrive at 2:40 p.m. The company filmed the copies being loaded aboard and the takeoff for employees to watch later....

There is a wrinkle to Northrop Grumman's plans to demonstrate the autonomous aerial refuelling of one Global Hawk by another at high altitude - the tanker will fly behind the receiver. The tanker will be equipped with a refuelling probe and the receiver with a hose-drum unit - the opposite of the normal probe-and-drogue arrangement - and it is the tanker that will rendezvous with the receiver, maneuver into contact with the basket and "push" fuel forward to the receiver. Northrop says this "reverse" refueling arrangement reduces the cost of equipping a Global Hawk fleet for aerial refueling because fewer...

Northrop Grumman dropped out of the US Air Force tanker race nearly four months ago, but a new contract award revealed 1 July shows they remain in the aerial refueling market. In fact, Northrop plans to go one better than manned aerial refueling - the aerospace giant is now working with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on autonomous high-altitude refueling. Under a $33 million deal dubbed KQ-X, Northrop will demonstrate refueling with a pair of Block 10 RQ-4 Global Hawks the company is currently sharing with NASA The ability to refuel mid-air without the aid of a...

Here's the latest twist in the Air Force tanker saga: The Russians are coming. Russia's government-owned aerospace company will announce Monday it is competing against Boeing for the $40 billion refueling-tanker contract, a Los Angeles attorney for the company said Friday. United Aircraft of Moscow plans to unveil a U.S. partner and offer a modified version of its Ilyushin Il-96 wide-body plane, said John Kirkland, a Los Angeles lawyer representing the group. The still-unidentified partner, "a U.S. public company and existing defense contractor," would assemble the planes in the U.S., he said. The Russian interest in the tanker bid was...

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday the Pentagon will drive a hard bargain with Boeing on a contract for a new aerial refuelling tanker after Airbus parent EADS dropped out of the competition. "I wish that we had had a competition. I wish both companies had stayed in it," Gates said. But he said that "we will certainly be sharpening our pencil when it comes to negotiating a contract with Boeing", the sole bidder for the troubled tanker aircraft project. He said he saw no reason why the decision by EADS and partner Northrop Grumman to bow out...

Israel Bolsters KC-707 Refueling Fleet Jan 14, 2010 By Alon BenDavid Nevatim AB, Israel With the threat of a conflict with Iran looming, the Israeli air force has augmented its fleet of KC-707 (“Re’em”) aerial refueling aircraft with an eighth tanker, bolstering the strike capacity the country would have if it tries to undertake a raid on Teheran’s nuclear facilities. The $23-million contract to reconfigure the aircraft was awarded to Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in late 2008, as part of a strategic effort to rapidly enhance the country’s long-range strike capabilities. “Many of the air force’s current missions require extended...

Venezuela Willing to Buy 12 Combat Jets in Russia Venezuela is willing to buy 12 combat jets in Russia, including the transport Il-76s and Il-78 flying tankers, said Colonel Oswaldo Hernandez Sanchez from Venezuela’s Air Force. The jets could be supplied in late 2008, the AP reported. Venezuela clinched past year a few deals with Russia for buying armaments worth roughly $3 billion, including 100,000 Kalashnikov sub-machine guns, 24 SU-30 fighters and 53 combat helicopters. Venezuela also intends to build South America’s first Kalashnikov assault rifle factory. What’s more, Chavez claimed recently he would set up a new air defense...