Originally Posted by
BEagle
Rather a vague and incomplete requirement - does the platform have to fly 1500nm, offload 50K and then fly 1500nm back? Over what period of time does the platform need to be on station?
1500nm at 500KTAS is 3 hr. Say the burn rate is 5.4 T / hr and alternate requirements are a further hour's burn to tanks dry, then the tanker would need 37.8 T plus whatever time on task was required. With an offload of 50K (22.7 T), that means a tanker on station for an hour would need to have a capacity of around 66 T. Using legacy ex-airline airframes might be a possibility, but the difficult bit would be fitting the boom and associated operator's station.
Since Lockheed and Airbus are proposing to offer A330MRTT to meet this requirement, presumably an A330 sized airframe or larger meets this requirement. The Omegas of this world can offer a converted used A330, probably A340 (which are very cheap cause no one really wants them anymore, and have greater fuel capacity and MTOW than A330) used 777, or used 747. Maybe US Aerospace (the company that offered new Antonov tankers to compete against Boeing and Airbus for KC-X) would also pursue this. It's potentially a pretty big field that Airbus would have to compete against. And have to compete strictly on price.
And FYI, someone claimed that a one hour late proposal arrival was "not material in this case. [KC-X}" In fact US Aerospace's proposal for the KC-X arrived 5 [u]minutes late because the courier delivering it got held up at the entry gate to Wright Pat. Their proposal was rejected and not considered. So yeah, actually quite material.