Rafael Rodriguez, Juan Zapata and Angel Ramirez standing by the first Australian MRTT specimen AirTanker, an EADS-led consortium, has signed a 27 year contract with the UK Ministry of Defence for the provision of air transport and air refuelling capability to the Royal Air Force. World’s largest ever Defence Private Financing Initiative (“PFI”), worth approx £13 billion (€16.7 billion) over 27 years. The AirTanker consortium will be providing a fleet of 14 new tanker aircraft based on the Airbus A330-200 - powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines - which will come into service from 2011, replacing the existing fleet of VC-10 and Tristar aircraft. The A330 tanker derivative is the most capable tanker offered internationally and has now won the five most recent tanker procurement contracts including the Australian, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabian and US air forces. Conversion is straightforward and low risk, and follows the similar A330-200 MRTT tanker programme for the Royal Australian Air Force, three years in advance of the FSTA project and currently in the final stages of flight tests before delivery next year. Within this complex program, EADS-CASA has entrusted GTD for the development of critical subsystems, the “Engineering Simulator” (software for real time simulation of fuel system, hydraulic system and electric system of the aircraft), and the visual system (in charge to interface with both, the pilots and the MRTT mission controller), and the graphical MMI for navigation display, the Primary Flight Display, and the refuelling control & command console. In the other hand, GTD is also service provider to Thales Aerospace, who is the main developer of the avionics of A330 and A330 MRTT.
