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| Good News RonInBayside: KC-45A scrapped (574023) | |||
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Good News RonInBayside: KC-45A scrapped |
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Posted by WillD on Mon Mar 8 23:49:00 2010 EADS/Northrop-Grumman abandons KC-45Northrop Grumman finally gave up the ghost on their bid to supply tankers to the USAF. With the death of Rep. Murtha and the elevation of Rep Norman Dicks from Washington's 6th District to the acting chair position of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee they stood virtually no chance of the House signing off on such an enormous payout to Boeing's competitor no matter what Shelby tries to do in the Senate. This is a victory for our servicemen who will finally stand a decent chance of getting an actual replacement for the more than 50 year old KC-135s now. I do find EADS griping about the "fixed" requirements supposedly favoring the 767 particularly amusing. The selection of the A330MRTT in the first place was not consistent with the requirements as the Air Force drew them up. The original requirements favored the 767, but because Airbus no longer has an aircraft in that class they were forced to offer the A330 despite its great shortcomings in ground handling, and survivability. Given how much money we've blown on this tug of war between the 767 and A330 we could have developed a blended wing body tanker aircraft and used that as the basis for a revolution in airliner design. The Model 367-80, which lead to the KC-135 and 707, and that one design has formed the basis of nearly every medium and large size airliner since then. The blended wing body is particularly well suited to aerial tanker and palletized airlift roles, so the USAF is an ideal anchor customer. The design would combine payload and range capabilities far beyond the A330MRTT, with the reduced radar cross section of a flying wing to make survivability better than the KC-767.   A 1000+ passenger aircraft is a distinct possibility with a blended wing body airliner, so long as you don't particularly want a window seat.  Oh well, with any luck we'll see something like this replacing the later KC-135Rs and KC-10s. |
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