Indian Military

Airbus will be submitting a bid in the tender for the purchase of six mid-air-refueling aircraft by the Indian Air Force (IAF), according to company sources. The deadline for the submission was pushed back by a month after being originally marked for mid-December.

While, earlier, two of the three potential vendors, Boeing and Airbus, had been waiting to see who won the US $ 35 billion KC-X program contract to supply 179 mid-air-refueling tankers to the United States Air Force (USAF), in a postponed-decision that was due last month, the latter has made up its mind about the Indian tender and intends to submit its bid, by the January 12, 2011 deadline.

As reported by StratPost earlier, the response to the Indian RFI was contingent on the result of the US tender as neither company wanted to commit to work an assembly line for only six aircraft in the absence of the much larger US order.

In the meantime, there has been much drama over the KC-X program, with the USAF having inadvertently sent their evaluation of the aircraft pitched by each company to the rival vendor.

European aerospace major, Airbus will show off a model of its A330 MRTT at Aero India 2011 in Bangalore next month.

Airbus has pitched the aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF) competition for six mid-air refueling aircraft, in which it is likely to be competing with the Russian IL-78. This is the second time the IAF running this tender, after its selection of the MRTT was rejected last year because the Indian Finance Ministry considered the aircraft too expensive, especially considering that the IAF already flies the Russian aircraft.

Airbus is also hoping to win the United States Air Force (USAF) KC-X tender program for 179 refueling aircraft, in which it is competing with Boeing.

Airbus Military will also exhibit a model of its C295 twin-turboprop military transport aircraft, which it says is ‘able to carry up to nine tonnes of cargo, land on unprepared airstrips, and perform the widest range of missions ranging for anti-submarine warfare to maritime and border surveillance and any kind of humanitarian aid’.