Mobile is bracing for a third round in one of the longest-running fights in modern defense contracting history, as Airbus and Lockheed Martin prepare to team up on a new bid to build refueling tankers for the U.S. Air Force. If the partnership wins the competition, it would add another production line to Airbus’ assembly plant at Brookley, with A330 airliners built in Mobile shipped to a Lockheed Martin facility in Georgia for conversion into military tankers.
The renewed competition revives a rivalry with Boeing that has shaped Mobile’s aerospace ambitions for more than a decade. Mobile and its European-owned rival first squared off over a tanker contract in 2008, when a Northrop Grumman-EADS team, which included Airbus, won a $35 billion deal to replace the Air Force’s aging refueling fleet. Boeing challenged the award, and the Government Accountability Office ultimately agreed to reopen the competition. Boeing won the second round and has held the contract, known as the KC-46, ever since.
That victory has come at a steep cost. Boeing’s KC-46 program has been plagued by production delays and quality problems, including well-documented issues with the aircraft’s remote vision system, the camera-and-display setup boom operators use to guide fuel lines into receiving aircraft. Industry estimates put Boeing’s losses on the program at roughly $5 billion, and delivery timelines have repeatedly slipped. Those struggles have fueled speculation in Washington that the Pentagon may want a second supplier back in the mix for the next phase of tanker procurement.
For Mobile, the stakes go well beyond aviation history. Airbus has operated a final assembly line for A320-family jetliners at Brookley since 2015 and later added a second line for A220 aircraft, employing hundreds of workers and anchoring a broader aerospace cluster that includes suppliers and maintenance operations along the Gulf Coast. A tanker contract would mean an additional production line, more skilled manufacturing jobs and a further boost to the region’s standing as a genuine center of aircraft assembly rather than just a stop on the supply chain.
The earlier fights over the tanker contract were also marked by pointed political rhetoric. In 2008, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, defending Boeing’s home-state workforce in Everett, said she would challenge anyone to show her a worker in Alabama who had built an airplane. The comment drew a sharp response from Mobile-area officials and residents at the time, and it has remained a sore point for years afterward. Backers of the Mobile bid argue that line no longer holds up, given that Airbus workers in Mobile have spent nearly a decade building and delivering commercial jetliners.
The earlier tanker war was also colored by scandal. The original contract that first went to Boeing was scrapped after federal investigators uncovered a bribery scheme involving Boeing’s then-chief financial officer and a top Air Force procurement official, who accepted a lucrative job offer in exchange for favorable treatment on the deal. The official went to prison, the contract was voided, and the competition that eventually produced the 2008 Northrop Grumman-EADS win, and the later reversal in Boeing’s favor, followed from that fallout.
Neither Airbus nor Lockheed Martin has formally submitted a bid in the new competition, and the Air Force has not announced a timeline for a decision. But officials and business leaders in Mobile are watching closely, given how much the region’s aerospace sector has grown since the last tanker fight and how directly a win or loss could shape its trajectory. Local economic development officials have long pointed to the tanker competition as a potential catalyst for further investment at Brookley, on top of the commercial airliner work already underway there.
For now, the outcome remains uncertain, and both companies are expected to make their case to the Pentagon and to lawmakers in the months ahead. Given the history between the two sides, another public and political battle over the tanker contract appears likely before any final decision is made.