Italy moves to Airbus A330 tankers

zulux

Good? A bit of competition is good for everybody. Having one vendor for everything leads to many problems.

kevin_thibedeau

The USAF also selected the MRTT but corruption took care of that threat to Boeing.

tcgv

> Several defence analysts point out that although the KC-46 is the standard tanker of the USAF, it has suffered technical problems and delays that have slowed its competitiveness abroad, to the benefit of the A330 MRTT, which has already been adopted by many NATO and non-NATO allies. In this sense, the Italian choice is seen more as an industrial victory for Airbus than as an American “political defeat”. The political factor surely played a role here, but this bit at the end of the article also sheds light on Boeing's decline, which predates the current US administration. While politics acted as a catalyst, Boeing was ultimately defeated by its own undoing.

ungreased0675

Italy probably didn’t want to wait 12 years for delivery. Good choice.

sschueller

Meanwhile Switzerland is being taken to the cleaners. F35s that had a fix cost in contract with Lockheed are no longer fixed cost because the US says so. Patriot systen permanently delayed and price going up and up. Stop payment resulted in the US pulling from the pre payment for the F35s...

shevy-java

As long as a mad king is ruling over the USA, no US product or service should taint european markets. I fail to see why money should go into companies that are hostile to europeans. Canadians already made that decision months ago (granted, due to the tight coupling of their own market to the USA, this is mega-difficult; most Canadians live on the southern area, aka close to the USA - realistically Canadians can only reduce dependencies, but will never be able to decouple completely, but they had those discussions before, in particular with regards to security. Why invest into a country that became hostile to other countries? Makes indeed no sense. The USA burned all bridges here.)

ksec

This is a noob question but wondering if anyone here could answer. There are plenty of choices for Small and Medium size plane as well as private jet. Why are most commercial airline only buying Boeing and Airbus? And why others aren't making bigger planes to compete?

tim333

There's probably going to be ongoing attempts to be less reliant on the US while Trump is going on about needing Greenland and the like. His last odd 'truth' about it was six hours ago https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1166240468099...

gibber878

The US can go fuck itself.

jmward01

The US stock market is a lag indicator. It is built on perception and whim but, ultimately, is forced to deal with reality. Stories like this don't shift the market, and economies, overnight but they are showing what should be decades of economic and political shift happening relatively in just a few years. In the end this isn't just a signal that Europe has lost faith in the current administration, it is pretty clear that happened a while ago, this is a sign that Europe and others have lost faith in future US administrations. Everyone is a looser here in the long run for many reasons. We really did have it all.

ricardobeat

> The tanker deal is not just a competition won; it is a decision that shifts the balance. Did they at least use European AI to edit this?