#18 USN - suck it. Boeing pushed a shitty airframe they aren't even going to make anymore, and didn't meet the specs the UASF put out. Typical Boeing arrogance; "we don't care what you want, this is what we build". The idiots went with the 767, which didn't have the range the AF wanted, and Boeing countered with "It can operate closer to the action" from more local bases.
DUH! Tankers job is to stay the hell OUT of those things, operate form the US, drop cargo, gas up planes, and go back home. Boeing kinda said "Screw you we'll tell you how to run tankers". So no wonder the USAF tossed em out.
Had they even a single working brain cell the KC-777 would have been a winner - except for the fact that Boeing's production lines for the 777 are having issues an are falling behind.
Boeing blows and deserved to lose. Boeing should never have let all those MD execs take such a primary role in ruining running the company. Boeing is supposedly a "systems integration" company - and cannot manage the biggest integration job handed them in a while. The same Boeing who was responsible for parts of that failed billion dollar satellite. The same Boeing who couldn't even get a 28 mi segment of "virtual fence" organized for $60 million in contract.
Right now Boeing couldn't integrate a stack of friggen Legos. So they deserved to lose this contract.
So, NG cleaned their damned clock. Grabbed an Airbus design (the only non-Boeing thing left that size) that met the specs, and converted into a tanker that operates exactly how the USAF wanted it to. And FYI, 60% of the aircraft (including the GE engines and all the flight electronics, as well as the boom and tanks and lots of other important stuff) is 100% made here in the US, and 100% of the assembly, spares and maint are here in the US. And money-wise, close to 80% of the money is stateside, which will grow even further when the main contracts come on line.
As for it being Euro? NG is running it. US Company. Maybe you heard of them - they make Aircraft Carriers and other Navy ships, as well as other defense items.
And we have a long history of using parts form other countries when its suitable.
Personally speaking I never had an issue with the M256 Cannon - that is to say the 120mm Rheinmetall smoothbore on the M1A1-2, nor did I ahve an issue with the British derive Chobham armor, nor the Isreali designed reactive armor plates, etc. Those damned foreigner's products got me home safe and killed the bad guys.
And if you think NG is "a whore", then why not piss and moan about the CVN's or Predators they build - or the USS New York, whose workers came back in after Katrina and lived in company provided trailers, pulling 14 hour days - VOLUNTARILY - to keep that ship on schedule.
You stepped over the line.
Back on topic;
I can bet this goes to the supreme court, it gets tossed. No way someone else's libel laws can be enforced here - first amendment blankets a lot of this.
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The author of a book about financing terrorism cannot prevent a Saudi billionaire from trying to enforce a London libel verdict in the United States, a US federal appeals court said Monday.