The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) has ordered additional Airbus A330 Multirole Tanker Transports (MRTTs), bringing its multinational MRTT (MMF) fleet to 10 aircraft.
This announcement follows Belgium’s decision to increase its hours in the programme with an additional 1,100 flight hours per year. The Multinational Multi Role Tanker Transport Fleet (MMF) provides strategic transport, air-to-air refuelling and medical evacuation capabilities to its six participating nations: Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg and Norway. These countries have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that allows them to share costs proportionally following their commitments to annual flight hours.
Since the arrival of the first aircraft in 2020 and especially since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the MMF is protecting European sovereignty and showing its capabilities as a multirole tanker, said Jean Brice Dumont, Head of Military Air Systems at Airbus Defence and Space. With this new order, he said NSPA has already acquired one out of four optional MRTTs requested beyond the nine aircraft contracted earlier.
MMU already operates seven A330 MRTTs and reached the Initial Operational Capability ceremony on March 23rd. Full Operational Capability is expected in mid-2024.
Its success relies on the excellent cooperation between NATO, the participating nations and industry. The programme also stands as an example of how nations can cooperate, pooling and sharing resources to get ongoing access to state of the art capabilities.
The unit has been deployed in NATO’s Eastern Flank, for the evacuation of Afghanistan civilians and refugees and for multinational exercises in the Indo-Pacific region with the German Air Force, among other missions.
Two tankers yet to be delivered are expected to enter service in 2024, while this new aircraft will arrive at the end of 2026. The MRTTs from MMF operate from MMU’s Main Operating Base (MOB) in Eindhoven (Netherlands) and the Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Cologne (Germany).
