MOBILE – The selection of a Mobile site for a multibillion-dollar Air Force contract gave Alabama’s port city its second major industrial victory in less than a year.

The Air Force announced Friday it had picked Northrop Grumman and its Paris-based partner, European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., to build 179 refueling tankers at a site at Mobile, creating an estimated 2,000 jobs and putting the city on the aeronautics industry’s world map.