Remember, as part of the MAC discussions before / at the Industry Day, companies were invited to state the costs and timescales for getting additional capabilities up and running - and there was an intimation that the USN would help fund that.
As $TMPS is the only other possible provider worldwide in the short term - Airbus (if interested) would have to either purchase surplus civil A330 (such as those from the shut down Thomas Cook airline - and convert them to A330MRTT) in perhaps a year or build new A330 MRTTs -perhaps 2 to 3 years - I'm sure discussions have been ongoing as to what $TMPS can do by when and that the timescales have been derived from that.
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