(Since then, the program has been mired in technical issues, which have crossed $5 billion in overruns.)Īsked about that potential line of attack, Kubasik countered that the current aircraft is “close to 60 percent US components already. The effort eventually worked, and during a re-competition, Boeing took an aggressive stance on its pricing that eventually led to a 2011 win for its KC-46A Pegasus design. When the Airbus team originally won the 2008 contract, Boeing launched an all-out legal, lobbying and advertising blitz based heavily on the idea that the plane would not be “American” enough. That tactic was deployed successfully by Boeing during the first tanker war against European conglomerate Airbus. (One potential competitor for the KC-390 is the Lockheed-made KC-130J, a tanker version of the C-130 transport aircraft currently in use by the US Marines.) If there is another competitor in KC-Z - and it seems inevitable there will be, whether or not the Air Force buys into the idea of a tactical vs strategic tanker - then the obvious line of attack on the KC-390 is that it’s really a Brazilian plane, not an American offering. 元Harris CEO Chris Kubasik (L) and Embraer CEO Francisco Gomes Neto pose in front of a KC-390 model during the 2022 AFA Conference. (That’s actually a rematch - the A330 was the runner-up to the KC-46, albeit with Northrop Grumman serving early on as the US contractor.) Already the heavyweights have lined up for KC-Y: Boeing, whose incumbent KC-46A won the fight a decade ago, and a team-up of Lockheed Martin and Airbus, which is offering a version of the latter’s A330 MRTT, branded as the LMXT for domestic consumption. Positioning the KC-390 as a smaller, “tactical” tanker means that it won’t be competing in the KC-Y program, which has also been referred to as the “bridge tanker.” That effort is supposed to fill potential gaps between when the KC-46 buy is fully online and whatever could come next, dubbed the KC-Z. “Fuel is the number one logistical challenge for airplanes, so why would you not want more refueling capability, of different size and shape.” “I think the key point that we’ve been telling our customers is, you know, this is complementary, right? I mean, you have these large, very critical strategic tankers carrying twice as much” fuel, he continued. So instead of having X amount of large strategic, which puts a lot of eggs in one basket, you can complement that with these ‘tactical tankers,’ if you will, and they work in conjunction,” Chris Kubasik, CEO at 元Harris, told a group of reporters at last week’s Air and Space Forces Association conference. “The recurring theme in the military is about disaggregation. And the strategy for avoiding getting caught up in a fight like the one from a decade ago - and avoiding being tarred as a foreign-made product - seems fairly simple: position the KC-390 as a different class of tanker altogether than what is currently on the market. Stepping into that potential battleground last week was the combination of US firm 元Harris Technologies and Brazilian firm Embraer, offering a modified version of the latter’s KC-390 tanker effort, equipped with a boom refueling system. WASHINGTON - The last time the US Air Force had an open competition to build a new aerial refueling plane, the fight became so nasty that it became known as “the tanker wars.” Now, with the service currently weighing both a near-term and long-term strategy for new tankers, it’s hard not to wonder if there’s a redux of the brutal lobbying fight on the horizon. The piping community in the Midwest of the US have the financial resources to pay for acquisition costs, and as well as featuring the pipes in the permanent exhibits, they are keen to support an annual competition to select a piper to serve as the piper for the museum and ideally play the pipes at special events.A model of Embraer’s KC-390 with US Air Force markings, on display at the AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference, Sept. The museum has been searching for nearly two years without success, and realise that such a set of pipes will be rare and precious. The National World War 1 Museum has been in existence since 1921, and has the largest and most comprehensive collection of WW1 artifacts in the world.
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