Boeing has entered the fray for supplying air refuelling tankers for the Indian Air Force (IAF).
After ignoring the first two previous tenders, Boeing’s Pegasus tankers will compete with the European Airbus A330 MRTT and Rus-sian Ilyushin IL-78. The IAF was almost losing the hope for inducting a fresh batch of tankers in its service in the near future, as the government was dilly-dallying IAF’s strategic requirements for urgently increasing its air refuelling capacity. The first and last major acquisition of the air refuellers was in 2006 from Russia. Probably the IAF was not satisfied with the serviceability of the eight IL-78 aircraft because of maintenance issues. Hence, the IAF decided to induct Western versions of the tankers. On the demand of the IAF, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) twice issued global request for proposals (RFPs), but cost issues raised by the Finance Ministry led to the cancellation of the tenders.
This story is from the December 16-31, 2016 edition of SP's MAI.
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This story is from the December 16-31, 2016 edition of SP's MAI.
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