The US Navy awarded Textron Inc.’s Bell Helicopter and Boeing Co. $1 billion to buy components for 16 V-22 Osprey aircraft through September 2009. The contract pays for long lead components that are associated with the production and delivery of 14 MV-22 versions of the tilt rotor aircraft and two Fiscal 2007 CV-22 versions for the Air Force.
More than 20 tankers lined the runway at McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., on March 27, for an “elephant walk” and the base’s largest mass launch of aircraft ever. Sixteen KC-46s and five KC-135s participated in the flush, with aircraft and Airmen from the 22nd Air Refueling Wing and the 931st…