The Pentagon on Thursday announced it has chosen Chicago-based Boeing Co. over the rival European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., parent of European aircraft maker Airbus, to provide new refueling aircraft to the Air Force, through a hotly contested contract to modernize the service’s aerial refueling capability.

Pentagon officials made the announcement at an afternoon news conference. Officials said the contract, worth up to $35 billion, will create up to 50,000 jobs. Boeing is to generate the first group of 18 planes by 2017.

EADS can file a protest to appeal the decision, as Boeing did when it lost a prior round that was later judged to have been mishandled by the Air Force. But Defense Department officials, already weary of the years of delays in the problem-plagued competition, emphasized that they believed the government-administered competition for the prized contract was open and fair.

The Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base would manage the program. Air Force officials declined on Thursday to disclose how many ASC personnel have been involved in supporting the tanker program to date. The center manages a broad array of the Air Force’s top aircraft and weapons programs.

The Boeing-EADS competition has been intense, matching the companies’ public relations and lobbying efforts and pitting congressional supporters of both against each other.

The government’s prior attempts to award the contract in recent yrears ran into problems, even as the Air Force insisted the new tankers are a top priority and badly needed to replace the KC-135 aircraft, some of which have been flown since the 1950s and 1960s. The Air Force says the tankers are needed to refuel fighters and bombers aloft when they are needed for rapid dispatch to hot spots around the world.

The new tankers represent a “much-needed program,” Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said at the Pentagon news conference.

Boeing is to build up to 179 of the flying tankers at factories in Washington state and Kansas. EADS proposed to do it at a plant in Mobile, Ala.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.