CEO of EADS North America Sean O’Keefe believes that there is a bright side for his company in losing the massive U.S. tanker contract. Most of all, he said, “It was a good way to demonstrate what we could do and it validated what we can do.”

Former NASA administrator O’Keefe, who was fortunate to walk away from the crash of an aircraft that killed Senator Ted Stevens last year, said, “We established EADS as a supplier to the Defense Department in a way we would never have achieved before.”

O’Keefe added that the ambition of EADS North America was to “be a leading prime contractor within ten years and to achieve $10 billion of U.S. revenue, through organic growth, M&A [mergers and acquisitions] and building the product portfolio.”