"William Wright" wrote in message news:PfVec.126725$w54.861228@attbi_s01...

http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/busi...on/8317604.htm
Pentagon's audit agrees: Air Force fudged specs
The audit report finds that the Air Force tailored its bidding
specifications document to the Boeing 767, and the Air Force and
Boeing failed to meet important requirements that would make the
aircraft fit for war, the officials told Knight Ridder, speaking on
condition of anonymity.

-HJC

"On condition of anonymity" is news speak for "delusional idiot". Utterly
useless as a source of facts.

Al Minyard

Wow! Boeing, the company that has built more tankers than the rest of the
world put together, "failed to meet important requirements that would make
the aircraft fit for war" seems rather hard to believe.

Bottom line is, a Boeing 767 is not "fit for war". Have they
benefited from LFT&E as other WAR planes? No.
http://www.dote.osd.mil/lfte/DOCS.HTM
Thats even though tankers are being put into positions where they
could well take shrapnel from a round:
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?...7&archive=true
Many of the lumbering tanker aircraft were fired at by both artillery
and surface-to-air missiles. Carpenter said that commanders were
willing to risk a tanker and its crew to get the fighters to Baghdad
and protect the fast-moving ground forces.
Pilots flew vulnerable tanker aircraft with no radar-warning
equipment, chaff or flairs to evade missiles.
"These guys were gutsy," Carpenter said.
Commanders expected to lose at least one tanker, but none of them was
hit.

If these aircraft are expected to take fire, then they should be
expected to have a chance at surviving the resultant damage. As built,
767s and other transport category aircraft are highly susceptable to
uncontrolled hydrodynamic ram induced fire, and catastrophic
electircal failure caused by what *could* be otherwise inconsequential
shrapnel hits. DHL proved that.

This has been an historic weakenss. here is a paper from twenty years
ago lamenting about the lack of regard for treating tankers as
WARplanes:
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...jun/cahoon.htm
"There is an assumption that tankers will not be attacked."

But sigh until a tanker augurs in from what should have been a
survivable hit, or an MC2A does the same thing and there aren't any
more to spare to replace it in theater, this won't be seen as a
problem.