{"id":187812,"date":"2011-02-26T07:19:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T12:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/02\/26\/on-the-boeing-win\/"},"modified":"2011-02-26T07:19:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T12:19:00","slug":"on-the-boeing-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/02\/26\/on-the-boeing-win\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Boeing Win"},"content":{"rendered":"

It will be called the KC-46A, and it appears that it was all about the relative size of the two aircraft<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A congressional source said Boeing was the \u201cclear winner.\u201d Lynn repeated the mantra and told reporters during the press briefing \u201cthat I think what we can tell you is Boeing was the clear winner\u201d when asked how close was the competition.<\/p>\n

The difference between the two bids may have come down the difference in fuel consumption, speculated Loren Thompson, defense consultant and analyst at the Lexington Institute. \u201cThe Airbus plane burns over one ton more of fuel per flight hour than the Boeing plane. Multiply that by 40 years and that\u2019s a lot of money,\u201d Thompson said. Boeing has argued for some time that its fuel consumption rate would save taxpayers \u201ctens of billions\u201d of dollars over the life of the program.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The first part is true, the 767 consumes less fuel per flight hour, but, and this is the reason that no one is buying it commercially any more, it costs more per pound of payload, or, one would assume, pound of fuel offloaded to tankers.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon is saying that they are expecting a challenge, though I think that this less likely from EADS than it is from Boeing.<\/p>\n

As to why Boeing won, I think that it comes down to the following:<\/p>\n