This weekend was nearly unbearable after the news came down that local aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, lost the contract for their in-flight refueling aircraft to Northrop-Grumman. I finally had to shut out all media until last night to get away from it.
That Northrop-Grumman will be buying the airframes for these tanker aircraft from Airbus seems to be the biggest beef, though most in the local citizenry believe that we are, causing them to get all xenophobic and spout that “We’re buying our military planes from Frantz!”.
Never mind that we actually are not, and that there are Northrop Grumman subcontractors in 49 out of 50 states supplying the parts that will be assembled in Mobile, Alabama. Sure, Boeing builds their airframes in Everett, Washington, but a goodly number of their parts subcontractors are in, you guessed it, China.
Also never mind that Boeing employees got busted a while back attempting to buy off the decision-makers in this process, attempting to convince them that making-do with a modified passenger aircraft that couldn’t stay up in the air as long or carry as much fuel as the Air Force requested was better than “givin’ money to furriners”.
The local politicians are playing this up for all they can. Senator Patty “Osama bin Laden builds daycares and we don’t” Murry went to the Everett assembly plant on the day of the announcement to try and spread some of her BDS.
Her and the rest of the “Government is God” Squad are vowing to help Boeing in the appeals process. Which basically means that they’re going whine to the Pentagon for a day or two.
In the end, I’m just waiting to see if this is what it looks like on the surface, wherein Alabamans get some much needed work; or if this is just a ploy to divert a possible big-deal appeal involving the WTO, etc. from Airbus and the EU by giving it to them first and then later using the Boeing appeal to find a typo in their bid so that it can be yanked from them and given to Boeing by default.
Meanwhile, our current fleet of airtankers is rapidly aging.
In the case of the A330 as in any airbus. They are flying corrosion tarps. This is because Airbus Industrie does not use clad aluminum in the manufacture of it’s aircraft. This will lead to extensive maintenance and readiness problems further down the road. Cladding is the last line of defense against corrosion after chemical conversion(alodine for airframe guys), primer and paint.
As you can see, my objestions are based on the quality or in this case, the lack of in airbus airframes.
20 years in tailhook airplanes with the bulk of it in the A6 Intruder does give me background. Our daily environment was much more severe than the Air Force’s.
Yep. Over 40 years in O/M/R of old airplanes and have not found any mechs that like airbus for a variety of reasons. Once upon a time after retiring I worked as a traveling auditor. I found that Boeing and Bell (Helios) have vendors all over the globe. Lots of them in SE Asia.