As Ken has repeatedly stated, neither the KC767 or the A330MRTT came close to meeting the USAF requirements in the final contract bidding. Had Airbus been awarded the contract, they would have had to perform major re-design work to meet the requirements. Now, perhaps they would not have botched things as bad as Boeing did, but let's not pretend that Airbus never gets it wrong (A380, A400 both way late and way over budget).
There may be a valid point that the USAF "gold plated" their tanker request, but to be fair, the KC-135 has been used for purposes far removed from the original tanker requirement - it wouldn't be surprising if the same was true for the KC-46.
During the development program, when I pushed back that one of the requirements was nonsensical for a commercially derived platform, the USAF response was (almost literally) "What part of mandatory requirement don't you understand"
The maximum rate of fuel offload for the KC-46 is much higher than what any previous Boeing tanker could meet (I don't know enough about the A330 MRTT to know if it could have met it, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if it didn't either). It was the redesign necessary to meet that fuel offload rate that went so badly wrong (among other things, again, see my previous posts as to why).
There is good news. I've seen the new AR systems - including the 3d terminals, and they
are trick. I suspect the Air Force tech's that control the booms (that currently lay prone in the back of the airplane) will be very grateful for the new systems.
