The KC-X Tanker, The Musical

It appears that we've got our first astroturf, Tankerblog.com, which has been anonymously registered, where they brethlessly reveal that A330 tanker cannot refuel the V-22, while the 767 could.

The blog describes itself as, "The blog is moderated by Mike Reilly who spends his days at the Center for Security Policy and a bipartisan group of legislative assistants who spend their days, and most nights, working on Capitol Hill."

These "staffers" are from the Seattle no doubt, and the CSP has among it members, Richard Perle, Douglas J. Feith, , Frank Gaffney - Project for the New American Century, Monica Crowley and , Laura Ingraham. (You can get a line on their right wing nut supporters here)

No reasons given for why the difference, and in the real world, if refueling were needed it would be done by a KC-130 turboprop, since using a jet to refuel a turboprop that has to operate below 15k feet because it is not pressurized is just nuts.

A bit of humor at this "blog" though, they have a poll on whether congress should stop the deal, and the pro EADS sides in winning.Tanker War Blog, unnamed bipartasin staffers in congress, from Washington state, no doubt. http://tankerblog.blogspot.com/ look at their poll...good yucks.

The kicker is that Northrop Grumman says it can refuel the V-22, "said on Monday its aerial tanker based on the Airbus A330 could refuel the V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft flown by the Marine Corps."

Nice to see some defense procurement related humor.

In the meantime, we are starting to see people worrying that Congress will go xenophobic, and queer the contract which would threaten weapons sales in Europe. *cough* JSF *cough*

As to what Boeing is arguing about, it appears that a lot of this is the spacing between wingtips while parked. The USAF reduced this on the basis of what had actually observed.

Additionally, Boeing complained that the Combined Mating and Ranging Planning System (Cmarps) system which was used to develop operational scenarios for the bidding, was something that NG was more familiar with, but seeing as how the software is over 20 years old, I think that this is more another example of how Boeing was being petulant in the bid process.

Aviation Week (subscription required) also lists the following issues:

• The Air Force added a "receptacle credit" for the capability of receiving as well as offloading fuel. Should have been there from the start, but it's a clearly a positive capability.
• Changed its assessment of the pavement thickness/strength at airports used in the mission modeling, allowing more A330s to be parked.
• There was a change in ground turnaround time, which was then, "fixed for both competitors at 4 hr., 15 min.

For what it's worth, Airbus tanker is already in test, see picture:


There are 767 tankers flying, but they are substantially different from what was pitched to the USAF.