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Probably not- the successful bidder is a joint venture with a US firm and a lot of the work will be done in the USA.

No. That’s why it is the Northrop Grumman/EADS KC-45A, not the EADS KC-45A.

This AF team did a huge amount of homework this time and any legal argument or challenge....is going to find a mountain of effort to prove their points. The Boeing folks will find some military professionals are better than any they ever messed with before. My guess is that legally...this deal can’t be tossed. Only congress can stop or screw the deal up.

Pardon the vanity, but I have a question that I can not seem to determine the answer to. Did the Air Force, in choosing the Airbus A330 as the new refuelling tanker platform, violate the "Buy American Act" originally signed into law in 1933?

To quote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_American_Act

The Buy American Act (BAA - 41 U.S.C. § 10a–10d) was passed in 1933, mandating preferences for the purchase of domestically produced goods in direct procurements by the United States government. Other pieces of Federal legislation extend similar requirement to third-party purchases that utilize Federal funds, such as highway and transit programs.

In certain government procurements, the requirement purchase may be waived if purchasing the material domestically would burden the government with an unreasonable cost (the price differential between the domestic product and an identical foreign-sourced product exceeds a certain percentage of the price offered by the foreign supplier), if the product is not available domestically in sufficient quantity or quality, or if doing so is in the public interest.

The President has the authority to waive the Buy American Act within the terms of a reciprocal agreement or otherwise in response to the provision of reciprocal treatment to U.S. producers. Under the 1979 GATT Government Procurement Code, the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement, the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, and the WTO 1996 Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), the United States provides access to the government procurement of certain U.S. agencies for goods from the other parties to those agreements. However, the Buy American Act was excluded from the GPA's coverage.

In short: Many European industries do not fall under / are exempt from the Buy American Act, as there are reciprocal agreements. Thus, European or partly European products are treated as being American made. Of course, this also applies the other way round: Lockheed Martin will sell lots of F-35 Lightning IIs to Europe, just like it has F-16s before.

Exempting European entries from competitions for government contracts would of course trigger retaliatory measures, meaning it would probably cost the American economy more than it would help.