Posted on 08/16/2015 11:18:00 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
NEW DELHI: The Indian Air Force appears to have taken too long to push through a Rs 8,100 crore proposal to buy three new Boeing C-17 transport aircraft. The American manufacturer simply does not have that many aircraft to sell anymore, having pledged four of the last five C-17s in its production line to Qatar.
After months of efforts, the air force, at a Services Capital Acquisition Plan meeting on July 31, managed to push through the proposal to add three aircraft to its existing fleet of 10 Boeing C-17s that were ordered in 2011. Officials said the proposal is likely to be taken up by the high powered Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) shortly.
However, Boeing officials have gone on record to say that after signing the contract with Qatar the company is left with just one C-17 for sale. With its production facility for the aircraft at Long Beach in shut-down mode, the company has already halted the production line.
Boeing had five C-17 aircraft to sell when the air force first moved the proposal in April, as ET had first reported.
Officials said the air force could get committed aircraft from US inventory or retracted orders of a third country, but the chances of this happening are slim. A solution cannot be ruled out, they said, given that the deal is being processed under the Foreign Military Sales pact.
(Excerpt) Read more at economictimes.indiatimes.com ...
Hope that last one and others already delivered have remote Off switches once people realize that India is not our friend.
Yeah, Qatar is so much better!
I’d rather India got them than those goat humpers.
Hey, Boeing, take a note from the Doritos people: “don’t worry, we’ll bake more.”
India is a friend. Probably the only true friend between we have from Israel to Australia.
The goat humpers are far easier to sign arms deals with than the likes of India since you only have to deal with one “window” of clearance.
Bugger, I was hoping the Australian Gov would buy another 2 and get NZ to pay for them
The Long Beach production line costs too much to keep running and since the US government decided to not buy any more (in fact, they cancelled their initial follow-on order) plus foreign military sales didn’t materialize as planned it would cost too much to set up the line somewhere else. Under Obama, the USAF capped their C-17 acquisition at 223 aircraft and requested line shutdown.
He’s one of those H1-B people, you can’t talk to him.
Big, but obsolescent. There are only about 29 of them in the world. The Antonov design bureau is in Kiev, the engines are made in the Ukraine. I doubt they are going to be back in production anytime soon.
That’s the An-225, of which there is exactly one.
If you’re referring to me, I’ve never seen an H-1B in my life and don’t plan to.
Not at all, I was referring to Reno89519 who said India was not our friend in post #2.
How many more do we need?
Even better.
It's impossible to answer that question unless you know what "we" intend to do with them. To Obama they are make-work, patronage to a constituency that does not support him.
The C-5 is being retired, the Air Force said we needed 10 more C-17s to replace each C-5 to maintain our existing airlift capability. This was when we had 209 C-17s.
We are retiring 21 over the next three years. You do the math.
I’d be curious to see where that 10:1 math came from. That ratio is absurd on the face of it, especially when you compare things like maintenance hours per hour of flight time between the two aircraft.
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