US Air Force's New Tanker Cannot Refuel the V-22

mpenguin1

mpenguin1

Well-Known Member
The United States Air Force recently awarded a contract to build its new aerial refueling platform to the European defense consortium EADS. Incredibly, sources inside the Pentagon reveal the EADS design is unable to refuel the service's revolutionary new tilt-rotor V-22 aircraft.

According to a "Key System Requirements Comparison" compiled by the Air Force and acquired by TankerBlog.com, while the Boeing tanker provides refueling options "throughout the entire flight envelope," the EADS plane provides "no tilt rotor refueling... "

http://www.defencetalk.com/news/pub...ew_Tanker_Cannot_Refuel_the_V-22100015356.php
 
Is that something that anybody cares about? The aircraft that the V-22 is replacing can't refuel from the 10 or the 135 currently, either.
 
On the surface it sounds bad, but it's all about risks and trade-offs.

I wonder what requirements the 767 was given waivers for.

In all my years of acquisition experience, I have yet to come across ANY solution that satisfies 100% of the requirements.

Someone decided that the benefits of the A330 outweighed the risk of not being able to refuel tilt-rotor craft. It happens all the time; someone decides they'd rather go with platform X which might have better battlefield survivability than platform Y which might have greater range.

In addition to never seeing a solution that satisfies 100% of the requirements, every source selection I was involved with on the government side was protested and yet none were ever overturned. Successful protests overturning awards occasionally happen, but it is extremely rare.

I'm still not saying the A330 is better/worse than the 767; I can only say that having been involved in the overall acquisition process, I believe the process is fair. It's easy for someone on the outside who hasn't seen all the facts to take a single fact and use it to raise doubt in the process. Without seeing all the waivers/tradeoffs and how they are weighed against one another, you can't draw the same conclusion.
 
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