 Airbus had previously attempted to enter the market at Brookley Field when its military division EADS partnered with Northrop Grumman to produce the KC-45, billed as the next generation of air refueling & cargo aircraft for the US Air Force as a replacement to the aging fleet of KC-135s.EADS/Northrop Grumman originally won the contract bid to produce the aircraft, but the plans were put in limbo after rival Boeing filed a protest over the bidding process; and in 2011 Boeing was declared the winner of the rebidding.In the 1977 film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", the entire landing strip complex behind Devils Tower was actually constructed and filmed in an abandoned aircraft hangar at the former Brookley AFB.