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The UK Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft (FSTA) will provide Aerial Refueling (AR) and Air Transport (AT) for the Royal Air Force using a version of the Airbus A330 MRTT . The Royal Australian Air Force announced in April 2004 that they had selected Airbus to provide tankers to a similar specification. BACKGROUND Plans involve the replacement of the RAF's current fleet of Vickers VC10 s from 2008 and the Lockheed Tristars around 2012. The new fleet will continue to operate from the RAF air transport hub, RAF Brize Norton , Oxfordshire. It has yet to be announced what role the current AAR/AT squadrons, No. 10 and No. 101 , will have in the PFI arrangement. The FSTA will be a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) where the RAF will pay for aerial refueling and air transport missions as required. The RAF will continue to retain responsibility for all military missions, whilst the contractor will own, manage and maintain the aircraft and also provide training facilities and some personnel. The private company will also be able to earn extra revenue by using aircraft for commercial operations when not required by the RAF - the most suitable of which would be leased air-refueling missions for other European air forces. The RAF however will always have the "first call" on aircraft, being able to mobilise the entire fleet in times of crisis. COMPETITION Final bids for the project were received from the two competing consortia on 30 April 2003.
AIRCRAFT SELECTION The UK Ministry Of Defence announced on January 26 , 2004 that Air Tanker had been selected to enter into final negotiations to provide the RAF 's FSTA. The reasons for the selection of Air Tanker are many and varied but some include,
CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS Following aircraft selection the UK MoD began exclusive negotiations with the Airtanker consortium. However, beginning in April 2004, there were rumours about the fragile state of the contract negotiations. This culminated in an ultimatium by the UK's Defence Procurement Agency, delivered to EADS, demanding a reduced price for the aircraft. With continuing doubts over the FSTA programme Marshall Aerospace , responsible for the conversion of the RAF's original Tristars, have offered to buy and convert some of the large number of surplus commercial Tristars. This would give the UK a much needed increase in capacity (with the upcoming retirement of the VC-10 fleet) at a fraction of the cost of the £13Bn FSTA project. On February 28 2005 the MoD named Airtanker as its preferred bidder for the £13bn contract.
SPECIFICATIONS (A330 MRTT)
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