South Korea’s air force has selected the Airbus A330 multi-role tanker transport (MRTT) as its future aerial refueling aircraft over Boeing’s new KC-46A tanker and a Boeing 767 tanker conversion Israel Aerospace Industries proposed. Airbus will deliver four tankers under the $1.3 billion program.

Following a two-month bidding process, South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) announced the selection on June 30, Yonhap News Agency reported. Airbus issued its own statement, saying the selection enables it to “establish a long-term and sustainable cooperation with the Korean industry…We look forward to executing this program in a timely and efficient way as we have done with other A330 MRTT contracts and to playing our role in the security of South Korea for many years ahead.”

The A330 MRTT has won every major tanker competition outside of the U.S. since it entered the market, Airbus claims. South Korea is the seventh nation to order the aircraft, following France, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, UAE and the UK. The latter six nations have ordered 46 total aircraft, according to the manufacturer.

On July 1, Airbus announced that it signed a contract to provide two additional A330 MRTTs to the Royal Australian Air Force, joining five the RAAF currently operates. Airbus in Getafe, Spain, will convert two previously owned Qantas Airways A330-200 airliners to the MRTT configuration, for delivery to the RAAF in 2018.

The A330 MRTT for South Korea was chosen for its performance and was “especially favorable” in terms of price, a DAPA spokesman told Yonhap. Deliveries to South Korea are expected by 2019. “With the combat-ready deployment of aerial refueling tankers, the operational range of the South Korean Air Force will be extended to Dokdo as well as the North Korean region of Pyongyang and Wonsan," said the spokesman, Kim Si-cheol.

At the recent Paris Air Show, Boeing executives said they were confident that the KC-46 was the right solution for South Korea, especially in terms of airfield performance and life-cycle costs. They said that production could be boosted to meet export orders, beyond the 15 aircraft per year that the U.S. Air Force requires. The company will "try to compete" for the expected upcoming tanker requirement in Poland, they added.