"I wholeheartedly agree with Beags - it was one of the most shameful decisions ever to come out of the defence hierarchy not to fit rear bang seats. It cost a lot of good men their lives".
As opposed to sending crews to war in tankers fuel of gas based on civil airliners with no seats and no modifications to reduce susceptibility to damage or fire?
The present force might be excused as, at the time they were bought, they were envisaged going into harms way. To still be proposing the present PFI when we currently fly them in enemy airspace staggers me.
Lockheed Martin LM has put forward a proposal for a tactical tanker designed to operate in hostile airspace. It's based around a composite wing containing the; a small fuselage with a pressurised cockpit (fitted with ejection seats) and two fuselage mounted engines. Proposed unit cost is around $80 million compared to a KC-767 at somewhere around $150 million. But they'd need a large USAF order to contemplate starting work, and Congress is too interested in subsidising Boeing.
So, who's jets and crews were wandering all over Afghanistan because the USAF wouldn't go where the USN wanted? And, no doubt, will be wandering all over Iraq doing the same thing? Need you ask. And they haven't even got a quick escape hatch.
