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Northrop Grumman Corporation has been selected by the U.S. Air Force to provide the KC-45A aerial refueling tanker for the KC-135 tanker replacement program. This $35-billion Pentagon contract to build 179 aerial refueling tankers may ultimately grow to $100 billion with follow-on orders, because the Air Force is considering acquiring more than 400 tankers over the next four decades.

Since 2001 the U.S. Air Force has been trying to buy new tankers with the hope of retiring its aging KC-135s. The Air Force's KC-45A is based on the highly successful A330 commercial airframe, produced by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS). Northrop's plane will be a modified version of the Airbus A330 wide-body passenger jet built in Toulouse, France.

The initial KC-45A contract provides four system design and development aircraft and is valued at $1.5 billion. The KC-45A airframe completed its first flight on Sept. 25, 2007 and will now begin military conversion to the tanker configuration. Its aerial refueling boom system is currently undergoing flight tests and has successfully performed numerous in-flight fuel transfers with receiver aircraft.

The KC-45A will be built by a industrial team led by Northrop Grumman and includes primary subcontractor, EADS North America — as well as General Electric Aviation, Sargent Fletcher, Honeywell, Parker, AAR Cargo Systems, Telephonics and Knight Aerospace.

The tanker aircraft will be assembled at new, state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Mobile, Ala. and will employ 25,000 workers at 230 U.S. companies. (See the next article.) The KC-45A's refueling systems will be built at new facilities in Bridgeport, W.Va. and delivered to the KC-45A production center in Mobile for aircraft integration.

This award is expected to be the nation's last large Pentagon purchase for at least a decade, and will have enormous economic consequences. It will create thousands of jobs around Mobile that will become the site of a Northrop production facility, as well as in Southern California. Consequently, Mobile will join Toulouse and Seattle as the world's third major aircraft manufacturing city.