Frontier India Strategic and Defence - News, Analysis, Opinion

Written on March 28, 2008 – 8:08 am | by Frontier India Strategic and Defence |

A fleet of new Air Transport and Refuelling Airbus A330-200s will replace the RAF’s TriStar and VC-10 aircraft under a £13 billion Private Finance Initiative deal signed today, Thursday 27 March 2008. The aircraft – which will be owned by AirTanker under the terms of the deal, but fly in RAF ‘colours’ – will undertake air-to-air refuelling and passenger air transport tasks. The aircraft are expected to enter service around 2011, to serve for three decades. The Airbus A330-200 has now won each of the last five military tanker contracts internationally. AirTanker aircraft will be more than 50 per cent British by value

AirTanker, the EADS-led consortium,which signed the contract with the UK Ministry of Defence for the provision of air transport and air refuelling capability to the Royal Air Force. The AirTanker consortium has also completed its financing for the programme, raising approx £2.5 billion (€3.2 billion) for investment in the fleet, a new state-of-the-art operational base and associated infrastructure.

The Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft (FSTA) programme includes the provision of a fleet of 14 new tanker aircraft, based on the latest generation Airbus A330-200 to enter service from 2011, replacing the previous fleet of VC-10 and Tristar refuelling aircraft. The contract also includes provision for all necessary infrastructure, training, maintenance, flight management, fleet management and ground services to enable the RAF to fly air-to-air refuelling and transport missions worldwide. The A330 FSTA aircraft will be more than 50% British by value. Through this agreement, EADS will become the RAF’s leading supplier of transport aircraft, complementing its existing commitment to supply 25 A400M aircraft to the UK forces.

The FSTA fleet will customarily carry a minimum of 80 tonnes (100,000 litres) of aviation fuel per aircraft roughly equivalent to the capacity of 2,500 Mini Cooper petrol tanks (at 40 litres each).

The total fuel dispensing rate from the aircraft is approximately 5,000 litres/min or about 80 litres per second. The wing pods alone refuel twice as fast as an F1 pit stop. Using all three refuelling points, you could fill 125 Mini Coopers a minute – more than two a second.