Quote:
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Boeing today said the U.S. Air Force’s decision to award a contract for the next aerial refueling airplane to the team of Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) is at odds with the fact that the Northrop/EADS team’s KC-30 is less survivable and more vulnerable to attack than the Boeing KC-767 Advanced Tanker. The Air Force evaluation cited the Boeing offering to be more advantageous in the critical area of survivability. The evaluators found the KC-767 tanker had almost five times as many survivability discriminators as its competitor. Speaking this week at the Aerial Refueling Systems Advisory Group (ARSAG) Conference in Orlando, Fla., former U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff and retired Gen. Ronald Fogleman stressed that survivability greatly enhances the operational utility of a tanker. “When I saw the Air Force’s assessment of both candidate aircraft in the survivability area, I was struck by the fact that they clearly saw the KC-767 as a more survivable tanker,” Fogleman told the ARSAG audience in his role as a consultant to Boeing’s tanker effort. “To be survivable, tanker aircraft must contain systems to identify and defeat threats, provide improved situational awareness to the aircrew to avoid threat areas, and protect the crew in the event of attack. The KC-767 has a superior survivability rating and will have greater operational utility to the joint commander and provide better protection to aircrews that must face real-world threats.”
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That pretty much explains it all.
Why is it that I'm always called upon to provide sources, yet other people never provide anything, yet these same people make claims of their own constantly? Crud!
Anyway, read it all here -
http://www.reuters.com/article/press...08+PRN20080411
-S
PS. Some additional data:
-- More robust surface-to-air missile defense systems
-- Cockpit displays that improve situational awareness to enable flight
crews to better see and assess the threat environment
-- Better Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) hardening -- the KC-767 is better
able to operate in an EMP environment compared with the KC-30
-- Automatic route planning/rerouting and steering cues to the flight crew
to avoid threats once they are detected
-- Better armor-protection features for the flight crew and critical
aircraft systems
-- Better fuel-tank-explosion protection features.
PPS. All these things add up to less fuel carried. Hence the 330's fuel advantage.