Three likely to tender for Korean tanker bid

Boeing will bid its KC-46A Pegasus for the Korean tanker requirement. (Boeing)

Three companies are expected to bid for the Republic of Korea Air Force’s requirement for four air-to-air refuelling tanker aircraft.

Boeing has formally offered its KC-46A Pegasus, while Airbus Defence & Space has already announced its intention to pitch its A330 MRTT. A third bid is expected to come from Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI) offering modified retired Boeing 767 airliners. IAI has previously delivered modified 767 tankers to Colombia.

The KC-46A is also based on the 767-200, albeit in a new-build form currently in development for the USAF’s KC-X program.

Selection of the successful bid is expected by the end of 2014, with delivery in the 2017-19 timeframe.

Comments (3)

Raymond

July 1, 2014 at 2:31 pm

Will be interesting to see who the victor is here, hopefully without politics / local lobbying playing a part in which aircraft is ‘better’. Can’t see the IAI refurb bid winning, however.

adammudhen

July 1, 2014 at 4:10 pm

@Raymond, with Boeing so heavily invested in the SK aerospace industry, the idea that this competition will have no political element to it seems pretty far-fetched.

Raymond

July 1, 2014 at 5:51 pm

Glad to be corrected, but I did say ‘hopefully’… 🙂

If so, it should still be interesting, because if the A330 MRTT is so much better as it’s been claimed, there might be a good fight for it to be wearing RoKAF colours…

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