It’s official. The Defense Department will announce the winner of the Air Force’s KC-X tanker contract on Thursday afternoon at 5:10 p.m. East Coast time. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz will join Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn and Pentagon acquisition executive Ash Carter in the Pentagon briefing room to crown either Boeing’s 767-based NewGen Tanker or EADS North America’s A330-based tanker model as the winner. Stay tuned for more coverage.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…