It is simply untrue to say that the Italian aircraft are 4 years late.
It's actually
5 years late. Although to be fair, ol' Bubba Boeing has been using 3 of the Italian aircraft during their futile attempts to get the wing hose and centreline hose systems to work. Still, a bit of a wash and polish, vacuum out the interior and zero the odometer and they'll be as good as new, eh Bubba....
?
Flyt3est, you forgot to add that the world's only 21st Century multi-hose tankers, the A310 MRTT and CC150T Polaris, also have FRL pods. A mild level of drogue nutation was fixed in about 3 days several years ago and the aircraft is a very stable AAR platform.
But if the USAF is stupid enough to plump for ol' Bubba Boeing's virtual Frankentanker, then those clapped-out old 135s will have to stagger on for a few more years yet. 2012? YGBSM as they say.
Does Boeing actually have enough people who know what they're doing to sort out all these late programmes of theirs?