{"id":193565,"date":"2008-12-06T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-06T14:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/06\/australian-mrtt-tanker-delayed\/"},"modified":"2008-12-06T09:10:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-06T14:10:00","slug":"australian-mrtt-tanker-delayed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/06\/australian-mrtt-tanker-delayed\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian MRTT Tanker Delayed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is actually fairly significant news, as it is Australia&#8217;s A-330 MRTT tanker is the airframe that won the US tanker competition.  Stephen Trimble <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flightglobal.com\/blogs\/the-dewline\/2008\/11\/eads-comments-on-6-9-month-mrt.html\">hhas the official reasons for the delay<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ol style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">\n<li>the mutual decision by EADS and RAAF to take the aircraft to the Paris air show;<\/li>\n<li>the RAAF directed changes to the MRTT configuration following contract award which has served to extend the development and testing program (including modifications to the refueling and avionics systems);<\/li>\n<li>the RAAF has requested additional flight testing to ensure a more robust mission system when delivered.  <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>If these are the all the reasons, then it really has no bearing on the viability of the airframe for the tanker competition, but I tend to be cynical on such things, so my guess is that EADS was finding it difficult to meet the schedule.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, Australia&#8217;s currency has generally been falling, which may create budget pressures that might lead them to defer purchases.<\/p>\n<p>See also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aviationweek.com\/aw\/blogs\/defense\/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&amp;plckScript=blogScript&amp;plckElementId=blogDest&amp;plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&amp;plckPostId=Blog%3A27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3A81358451-07e9-47f1-8d45-b6a2861e2ef4\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is actually fairly significant news, as it is Australia&#8217;s A-330 MRTT tanker is the airframe that won the US tanker competition. Stephen Trimble hhas the official reasons for the delay: the mutual decision by EADS and RAAF to take the aircraft to the Paris air show; the RAAF directed changes to the MRTT configuration &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1008],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-defense-procurement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}