February 29th, 2008. It was the day that Northrop Grumman Corporation announced that it had been selected by the U.S.
Air Force to provide the KC-45A aerial refueling tanker for the KC-135 tanker replacement program. Most notably, this jet would be based on the A330 commercial airframe, produced by EADS - which, these days, would be Airbus’ Defence and Space division. Unfortunately, the celebrations wouldn’t last long for Airbus and Northrop Grumman.
Just days later, Boeing would launch a full-scale counteroffensive to convince the Air Force that it had selected the wrong aircraft. In the end, Boeing was successful in overturning the Northrop Grumman deal, having its 767-based tanker win instead. It’s been quite awhile since this whole ordeal took place - long before our website and YouTube channels existed.
So we thought it would be interesting to take a look back for today’s video!.
