No pain no gain

In defence of risk in defence acquisitions

The RAAF likes to call it the “tanker of choice”.

The RAAF has had one KC-30A tanker transport deployed in the Middle East in support of operations over Iraq and Syria since September 2014, in which time it has offloaded over 50 million pounds (nearly 23,000 tonnes) of fuel – more than 10 per cent of the total fuel offload by coalition tankers in theatre – while operating with a 96 to 98 per cent mission success rate.