Airbus A310 MRTT

The Airbus A310 MRTT Multi-Role Tanker Transport is a military air-to-air refuelling tanker and transport aircraft, developed from the earlier A310 MRT multi-role transport. Both are specialist military conversions of existing airframes of the civil A310-300C wide-body jet airliner. The aircraft are designed, engineered, manufactured and modified by Airbus Industrie and the EADS subsidiary Airbus Military, with subcontractors including Airbus Deutschland and Lufthansa Technik. The conversion adds two air-to-air refuelling pods, one under each wing close to the wingtip, and five additional centre fuel tanks. Because production of A310 airframes ended in 2007, conversions can only be made on existing refurbished airliners or as upgrades to A310 MRTs already used by air forces, as Germany and Canada did, and EADS delivered the first upgraded A310 MRTT with new mission avionics to the German Air Force in June 2007.