Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Boeing reports mixed results of latest employee survey, but middle management and officers remain key obstacles April 22, 2025
- Hopes for 1Q financial progress turns into bumpy ride for Boeing April 21, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 18. April 18, 2025
- Natilus: Composite BWB, entry-into-service by 2029, 570 on order April 17, 2025
- China bans Boeing, US parts imports in tariff war April 15, 2025
New study on KC-X, and other news
There is a new report on the KC-X tanker situation, in this 16-page PDF. A hat-tip to Addison Schonland and IAG. Airbus and Boeing aren’t rushing to re-bid on India’s tanker program after the country previously canceled a… Read More
Air Force chief ambiguous on tanker selection timing
The Hill, a specialty publication reporting on matters of “the Hill,” aka Congress, reports today that the chief of the US Air Force won’t confirm selection of the winner for the KC-X program will be selected this year…. Read More
Tanker update
It’s been a while since we’ve talked about the KC-X tanker competition, which is coming to the forefront again with the issuance of the Interim Report on Boeing subsidies by the WTO. Flight International has this story citing… Read More
Voice of Watergate Past: Tanker date may be “inoperative”
It never ends. Reuters has this story that the tanker award date may slip from the November 12 dated, but we shouldn’t be surprised, since we suggested as much quite a while ago. What caught our attention is… Read More
O’Keefe fate unknown; assessing impact on tanker competition
The fate of Sean O’Keefe, CEO of EADS North America, who was among those on the de Havilland DHC-3 Otter than crashed and killed five of the nine people on board, remains unknown. Former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens,… Read More
Buying Russian for US lift
We have, from time-to-time, joked that the USAF ought to buy a Russian aerial tanker as a way to avoid the Boeing-EADS-Northrop-Airbus rhubarb in the long-running KC-X saga. Well, here’s news that the US Navy is planning to… Read More
Tanker award to slip to 2011?
Update, Aug. 6: Here is a Pentagon spokesman reacting to the US Aerospace protest over being rejected for its KC-X bid because it missed the filing deadline by five minutes, as reported by The Dayton Business Journal: In… Read More
“More has been costing more”
With the Pentagon’s announcement this week that a major push has begun to wring costs out of the defense budget, will this macro approach trickle down to one of the largest defense procurements in decades–the KC-X tanker recapitalization?… Read More
Playing with fire
The renewed effort by Boeing and its supporters to focus on the WTO ruling against Airbus on illegal subsidies in the KC-X competition (see preceding post) is playing with fire. The hyperbole by Washington State’s Members of Congress… Read More