Well, that's good news but I will be sad to see the wounderful old VC-10 go.

meh should have waited for the 7E7 to see what it can do. The A330 is starting to get old, and since the MOD cant afford this anyway.
Side note that huge £3 billion loss, wasnt the entire costs. According to my dad it could run upwards of £10 billion, by the time they finish with the numbers.

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Personally i feel that, the most suited aircraft for the job should be used, no matter its point of origin. Thats why they are still struggling to replace the navy's lynx, nothing else either in production or in the planning stages meets the criteria for the job. Although two most likely candidates are still either a new lynx or the blackhawk or seahawk as i believe its known. like most government funded projects, the MOD is now on a huge cost cutting venture, and i gaurentee that this european deal offered some shall we say under the table benifits remember this is airbus.

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The VC10s would've been scrapped by then...

Charlie

personal feelings about airbus aside, IF the A330 is the right fit for this area then sure its a good thing a great thing even, yes it keeps jobs here which is never a bad thing. If this deal was made to cut costs only without looking into all the options, once again the taxpayer will no pun intended Pay. only time will tell if the MOD got it right, lets hope they did as they sign my dads pay cheque and without that theres no roof over my head

i appologise for the mistake and will make sure to change that statement:)

Good choice for the RAF.

Canada has also gone the Airbus route for our tankers, some of our CC-150 Polaris (Airbus A310) strategic airlift planes will be dual-roled.

Much noise was made about the "Boeing tanker supremacy", but it's mostly spurious. We're talking about probe-and-drogue refueling, not flying boom. Boeing actually got into the probe-and-drogue business after many of it's competitors.

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The US Navy and Marine Corps often use VC-10 and TriStar tankers

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yes, but the USN isn't the USAF! 

I copied this from Hansard dated 23 Oct 2003 . Hansard is an edited verbatim report of proceedings in the Chamber, in Westminster Hall and in Standing Committees (in the House of Commons).

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My bad...I forgot about the KDC-10's.

They'll probably go when the Dutch select their new fighter...most of the competitors use a probe.

Just thinking about it...don't the Suadis use KE-3's?

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It used to be three. Your reference to Cobham PLC (& its subsidiary Flight Refuelling Ltd) made me wonder if anyone appreciates Sir Alan Cobham's considerable contribution to in-flight refuelling. I found this photo of 3 RAF Meteors being refuelled by a B-29 tanker using the probe & drogue system pioneered by Alan Cobham & his Flight Refuelling company based at Tarrant Rushton airfield in Dorset. The company had moved there from Ford, Sussex, in 1947. http://www.tarrant-rushton.ndirect.co.uk/index.html

This is exactly the same as the system in use today. It doesn't give any explanation as to why the B-29 is in USAF markings.

This photo of a Meteor F.8 on display at the Tangmere Museum shows the refuelling probe.

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If I ever knew it's now lost in the depths of my memory banks. ??? I shall endeavour to find out.
I seem to recall that Cobham's pre-WWII experiments involved a converted RAF Handley Page Harrow as the tanker with maybe the Gloster Gauntlet on the receiving end. FR owned & operated a number of Avro Lancastrians during the Berlin crisis. It's possible these were later used for tanker research.

The B-29 served with the RAF as the Washington. It's possible that some were converted as tankers or more likely a conversion kit was developed in case they were needed. This might explain the one in my photo. I don't think in-flight refuelling was used in anger during the 50s as the RAF was not involved in much long-range action. I remember that FR had to hastily convert RAF aircraft with probes during the Falklands conflict & also produced a number of conversion kits.