The Boeing Co.’s KC-46 Pegasus tanker was shut out again Tuesday, this time by South Korea. That makes the aerial refueling tanker 0-for-6 competing for foreign military contracts.
Boeing has lost every one of those deals to its rival, Airbus Group’s A-330 Multi Role Tanker Transport.
The European consortium won the $1.3 billion deal for four tankers due, in part, to a weaker euro, South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration said Tuesday.
Airbus beat out Boeing and Israel Aerospace Industries’ Multi Mission Tanker Transport, a modified Boeing 767.
The only contract that Boeing’s KC-46 has won over the A-330MRTT was the U.S. Air Force’s KC-X contract, which was mired in controversy and took years to resolve.
But it is really the contract that matters.
Airbus can now boast its A-330MRTT tanker will be used by seven militaries around the globe, but those deals only amount to 50 orders.
Boeing has sold the KC-46 to only the U.S. military. And the Pentagon buys in bulk.
The Air Force intends to order 179 aircraft from Boeing, an order projected to be worth more than $41 billion.
Right now, the airplane is still in development. It is a military derivative of the successful commercial 767-200.
Designing and developing the KC-46 has taken more time and more money than Boeing had initially expected. An interim version, the 767-2C resumed test flights in late May.
But the fully militarized version, the KC-46A, has not left the ground.
Boeing originally scheduled its first flight for late 2014.
The company has said that despite the delays to its internal time line, it will still meet its next contractual deadline: to deliver 18 combat-ready tankers to the Air Force by August 2017.
The KC-46 is assembled at Boeing’s Everett plant adjacent to Paine Field.
Both Boeing’s and Airbus’ tankers are designed to perform multiple roles, including simultaneously refueling multiple aircraft in flight.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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