USAF Slammed By the Public and Boeing

Yesterday the USAF announced its decision for the purchase of the new air refueling tankers. Their decision was for the KC-30 (named the KC-45A by the USAF), built in France by Airbus. This aircraft was chosen over the Boeing 767. Needless to say, the general public, and Boeing were livid... to put it lightly.

In order to understand why everyone, admittedly including myself, were so angered by this decision we have to look at many factors. When you look at the stats between the two planes that each tanker is based off of, the reason for the decision is fairly clear; fuel capacity. The KC-30, based on the A330, is larger than the Boeing competition the KC-767, modeled from the Boeing 767. While this seems to be an obvious choice for the winner, thats just about the only thing going for the KC-30.

At the moment, Airbus has built a grand total of, yes count them.... 0 KC-30 tankers, yep thats right, this plane has not even been built and flight tested yet. The KC-767 has recently finished flight testing and has started to be delivered to both the Italian Air Force and the Japanese Air Force for their use. This puts Boeing way ahead of Airbus, they have a deliverable model... right now!

Now lets look at a few more things. Boeing is an American Company, and Airbus is European. This mean the USAF, will be supporting mainly another country, although Airbus has promised to use the American company Northrop Grumman for the mods. So in a time of recession, the USAF decides to send our tax dollars to another country, nothing like giving the stock market a negative boost.

Then there's the issue of price. The sale price for the KC-767 will be $40 million less than that of the KC-30. So the Air Force, who at the moment is complaining because their fighter fleet needs updating and they don't have the budget, is spending over $7.1 billion extra in the initial contract, just by picking the KC-30 over the KC-767. So if they supported the American economy and bought the cheaper plane, that would allow them to buy an additional 51 F-22 Raptors, to update their fighter fleet; not nearly enough, but a good start.

Now we'll talk about the serious impact to the American economy, other than straight cash... rather... Jobs! Boeing estimates that if the contract was given to them, that would allow them to create/sustain about 44,000 jobs in about 40 states between all the supplies and Boeing employees. This also kills Kansas, as many know, I live in Wichita. Our mayor was told this news at a meeting, and shook his head in disbelief, as did many of the other people attending the meeting.

The contract would have created 300-500 new jobs at the Boeing facility in Wichita, as well as another 500 jobs for supplier Spirit Aerosystems. This contract would also have kept the 767 production line running for the next few years, allowing those jobs to remain in Everett, Washington. Overall in Kansas the new job total was expected to be about 3,800. The Wichita agenda meetings produced disbelief and people saying something about an "explosion in Congress."

In a time when European companies are very hesitant to give any money to the American economy, case and point, British Airways. Why should we be supporting another country... in any way if avoidable.

We can only hope that this decision is reversed after the publics reaction to this. I am personally disappointed by this decision. This raises many questions for me about the leadership of the USAF.