{"id":196866,"date":"2008-03-18T23:02:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T04:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/03\/18\/mo-tanker-mo-tanker-mo-tanker\/"},"modified":"2008-03-18T23:02:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-19T04:02:00","slug":"mo-tanker-mo-tanker-mo-tanker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/03\/18\/mo-tanker-mo-tanker-mo-tanker\/","title":{"rendered":"Mo Tanker, Mo Tanker, Mo Tanker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I think that I missed a couple of things from the March 10 <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Aviation Week<\/span> issue that I need to address now, specifically some rather telling comments in the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/%3Ca%20href=\" com=\"\" search=\"\" reference=\"xml\/awst_xml\/2008\/03\/10\/AW_03_10_2008_p20-35843.xml&amp;query=TANKER&quot;\">Hometown Hubris<\/a>&#8221; article.<\/p>\n<p>Interesting stuff:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>IBoeing\u2019s proposal  was, &#8220;far too risky and expensive&#8221;.  The 767-200LRF &#8220;Frankentanker&#8221; used the, &#8220;767-200 airframe; over-wing exits from the -300; floors, doors and structurally enhanced wings from the -300F; a cockpit, tail section and flaps from the -400ER, a completely new and not yet produced configuration.<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>By comparision, the A-330 proposal was nearly identical to the Australia tanker currently in test.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>Boeing felt that, &#8220;Air Force purchase of tankers capable of hauling large amounts of cargo could jeopardize Boeing\u2019s already tenuous C-17 production line&#8221;.<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s worth noting that Boeing has already purchased long lead C-17 items for 10 airframes in the expectation of more orders.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>Boeing did consider the  777, and considered pitching both the 767 and 777, but decided on pitching just the 767.  There are claims that someone &#8220;discouraged&#8221; submittal on the 777, but no name or time are given.<\/li>\n<li>The U.S. requirements were similar to Australia\u2019s. The Australian defense forces wanted a tanker that could refuel 3+ fighters, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">and<\/span> carry maintenance crew and spares to a distant Pacific airport.  The smaller airports of Europe and the Middle East were not as important in their scenarios.<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>The 767 could not do this.  You would need a 2nd freighter to carry crew and spares.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now I get it.  They pitched the 767, and not the 777 <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">because they thought that the latter would compete with the C-17<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, to the degree that there was a short field requirement, the 777&#8217;s short field performance is lacking, with its wing optimized toward the cruise efficiency end of the spectrum,<\/p>\n<p>Note, the boom is not rocket science.  McDonnell Douglas developed their own in the 1970s, and Airbus is testing theirs for Australia as as I write.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think that I missed a couple of things from the March 10 Aviation Week issue that I need to address now, specifically some rather telling comments in the &#8220;Hometown Hubris&#8221; article. Interesting stuff: IBoeing\u2019s proposal was, &#8220;far too risky and expensive&#8221;. The 767-200LRF &#8220;Frankentanker&#8221; used the, &#8220;767-200 airframe; over-wing exits from the -300; floors, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1008,984,1016],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-defense-procurement","category-europe","category-international-commerce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196866"}],"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=196866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}