The deal to replace the aging tankers of the United States Air Force has been one of the most contentious and corrupt in Pentagon history, but to listen to Ron Marcotte, Boeing vice president of Air Force Airlift and Tanker programs, tell it, that is all in the past. Be Carefully orchastrated competition by the U.S. government to make sure it was squeaky clean, and we like that. The 767 is the best aircraft for the warfighter…we know this is going to be a tough competition, that’s okay, but we think we’re going to win, hands down. We’ve been very aggressive and we’ve made the most affordable offer we can make. It’s the right size, it’s agile, it’s able to operate from a large number of airfields both small and large, it’s sized right to park a lot of them on the ramp. It carries far more cargo and is capable of carrying more fuel than KC-135, so it meets that requirement. The current RFP is for 179 aircraft..they haven’t determined a rate of production. The competition: “It’s a big airplane, I think it’s too big, but I mean obviously we could have gone even bigger than that with the 777, but it didn’t fit the requirement.” “it;s not about how much gas you can put on the airplane, it’s about booms in the sky, it’s about operating with their concept of operations…they may have to park at very austere airfields close to the fight, all the things that would demand an agile, medium sized aircraft. And at the same time, it’s still capable of carrying a lot of cargo and packs. It can carry 19 fully loaded pallets or 149 passengers…so it’s a very large airplane, it’s certainly big enough to do what the airforce needs to do…this aircraft is 24 percent more fuel efficient than that aircraft out there…that’s a very very big deal to our air force. I would put our life cycle costs against any aircraft make in the world.
