Tanker Team in counter-attack for £13bn RAF fuelling contract

A consortium led by BAE Systems and Boeing yesterday angrily dismissed claims that its bid for a £13bn RAF contract could turn into a fresh Nimrod fiasco and attacked the rival bidder on cost, safety and operational grounds.

The Tanker Team, which is bidding for the 27-year PFI contract to supply the Ministry of Defence with new air-to-air refuelling aircraft, described the claims by the rival European consortium, AirTanker, as "mischievous and misleading".

The competition for the contract - the largest awarded in the UK under the PFI programme - is turning into the most bitterly contested procurement battle since the aircraft carrier contest last year. The Cabinet is due to make a decision by the end of the year.

The BAE/Boeing consortium also argued that it would safeguard at least the 7,500 UK jobs AirTanker says it will secure and claimed that the rival bid was less safe because there would be an increased risk of mid-air collisions between the tanker aircraft and the one it was refuelling.

The counter-blast came after Robin Southwell, chief executive of AirTanker, said the MoD could face a re-run of Nimrod, which ended up costing the taxpayer an extra £700m, if it selected the Tanker Team. Tanker Team is proposing to replace the RAF's ageing fleet of TriStars and VC10s with 21 second-hand British Airways Boeing 767s. AirTanker, which is led by the Franco-German aerospace group EADS, is offering a mixture of 15-20 new and second-hand Airbus A330s.

Keith Archer-Jones, managing director of Tanker Team, said: "There is a significant difference between the Nimrod programme, which was based on a 1940s Comet design and involved replacing the entire aircraft with the exception of the fuselage and what we are doing. It is really an apples and oranges issue. It is more mischievous than serious."

Tanker Team executives also claimed that the A330 being offered by its rival would not be able to operate from as many airstrips because of weight constraints and was "untried and untested".

In the US a Boeing contract to supply the US Air Force with 100 B767 refuelling tankers has become mired in controversy after the Congress Budget Office questioned its costs, the influential Senate Armed Services Committee attacked the deal and it emerged that Airbus trade secrets had been leaked to Boeing. But Robert Gower, vice-president of Boeing's tanker programs division, said he thought it would have "very little, if any, impact" on the UK's decision.