Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) doesn’t want EADS involved in the KC-X tanker contract, he said Thursday. “I hope they don’t bid,” the newly minted chair of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee told reporters following an Aerospace Industries Association event in the Capitol Building. Dicks said the Air Force’s requirements for a new tanker clearly indicate a need for a “smaller airplane” than the A330 derivative Airbus might propose. The A330, he said, is “too big,” and with rising fuel costs, will be “too expensive to operate.” Boeing, the only confirmed bidder for the tanker, has a major production facility in Washington state.
An important U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.