The lost Boeing contract

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

tw, king of the ego post, says no other country wants to buy the 767 tankers.

I never said that Bruce. Why are you being insulting? Why do you completely misrepresent what I posted? That is what I expect from UG or TheMercenary.

I said I don't know of any 767 tanker sales. I did not say those other sales did not exist. Both Saudi's and Australians rejected the Boeing 767 for technical reasons. Most surprising for the Saudi's who almost automatically buy American.

Before this decision was announced, from The Economist on 31 Jan 2008 entitled "This time it's war: The aviation giants battle to supply America's air force with a new tanker":

Northrop has won backing from three air commanders who respectively ran operations in the first Gulf war in 1991, Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999. In a recent Air Force Times article they said that larger tankers offer greater flexibility, can deliver more fuel per sortie and do not need to be kept closer to the battlefield than is “militarily prudent”. They conclude: “You can never have enough gas forward in the air.”

Amid the fog of claim and counter-claim, there is little doubt that the KC-30 is the more capable aircraft. But whatever the air force decides, Congress will have the last word—and there its prospects look fairly bleak. More than 60% of the value of the KC-30 would be sourced in America, and EADS would also build commercial freighters on the KC-30 assembly line in Mobile, Alabama. But Boeing's proposal would provide more jobs for Americans.

Do we 'buy the best' or provide Boeing with corporate welfare?

I don't understand why anyone should waffle on this. Facts are obvious - quite clear. The Boeing air tanker is inferior. If Boeing was bidding a competitive product, their proposal would have been a 777. Why would Boeing offer the inferior 767 platform? Boeing was protecting a dying product line rather than offering the Air Force their best. Boeing never thought the Air Force would always "Buy America" rather than 'buy the best'. The Air Force decided to advance America rather than advance Boeing.

Now let's see how many Congressmen are as patriotic.