U.S. flap on the aerial tanker could be self-defeating.

AuthorLaird, Robbin F.
PositionDefense

"We in [Britain] are supporting you on your Joint Strike Fighter. Why are you not supporting us on the tanker?" This simple question, posed by Prince Andrew--the Duke of York and a man deeply involved in British industrial exports--to the representative of a major U.S. defense contractor at the 2008 Farnborough International Air Show last July in Britain, bares the frustration many Europeans in the defense industry have felt as of late. In other words, if the United States wants expanding international cooperation on warplanes in order to field stronger, more affordable modern Western air forces, is it helpful for Europe to see so many chauvinistic-sounding complaints in the U.S., especially in Congress, about the choice of a new in-flight refueling tanker for the U.S. Air Force? After a major competition for that important, long-running contract, the Pentagon chose a plane to be built by an international team involving Northrop Grumman-EADS, the European consortium that owns Airbus. The losing design came from Boeing, the U.S. aerospace giant that traditionally has been the sole supplier of in-flight refueling aircraft to the U.S. Air Force.

An outcry of protest erupted, particularly in some Congressional quarters. Political stakes became clear this fall when Secretary of Defense Gates suspended the competition for the Air Force tanker contract--in effect handing the decision over to the next administration. The process is being watched closely in Europe, and its outcome may have repercussions on the long-term outlook for transatlantic industrial defense cooperation within NATO. What should Europeans--and interested American taxpayers, too--be looking for in trying to decide what lies at the heart of the controversy and what it may portend about future trends in military aerospace?

Any review of the question has to start with the fact that the U.S. Air Force chose the Northrop Grumman-EADS tanker built on an Airbus A330 airframe because it wanted it. There will be negative repercussions, as outlined below, that choice were somehow reversed or overridden by what seemed to be purely nationalistic-framed U.S. political considerations. It is not irrelevant either that the "A330 tanker"--officially known as the KC45--has won four successive recent international competitions over its Boeing rival, which is a tanker on the airframe of the 767 airliner. Boeing has also sold its KC767s to Italy and Japan, though these contracts were nothing approaching the scale of the $4 billion order by the U.S. Air Force. The Italian Air Force has made no secret of its unhappiness with the current state of their 767 tanker program and has communicated this unhappiness to the U.S. Air Force. Overall, the recent record of national choices in four different countries--Australia, Britain, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates--seems to confirm a market preference for this aircraft at this juncture.

In fact, the U.S. military has chosen foreign airframes as platforms in several recent competitive contracts, with U.S. prime contractors providing the systems-integration part of the package. For the Deepwater maritime-patrol aircraft, Lockheed Martin, the systems integrator, chose the Spanish manufacturer, CASA aircraft, over its own competing C-130J, based on the need to get the best-value airframe for the electronic and other onboard systems. The new Presidential helicopter is fitted with systems integrated by Lockheed Martin on the airframe of Agusta-Westland, an Italian company, and the new Army air-lifter will be built by a...

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