EADS said today that it is soliciting bids to design and build a tanker conversion facility in Mobile, Ala.
The move comes as the Air Force tries to plow ahead and award a $35 billion tanker contract, despite a recent foul-up in paperwork. The Air Force accidentally gave EADS information about the tanker offered by its competitor, the Boeing Co., and vice versa.
The Air Force has said it still plans to announce which defense contractor will replace 179 of its Eisenhower-era KC-135 tankers. This is the Air Force’s third attempt at awarding the contract.
“The Air Force has had to wait far too long for a new tanker, and the 48,000 Americans who will build the KC-45 have had to wait far too long for the jobs,” said Ralph D. Crosby Jr., EADS North America Chairman, in a statement. “If our tanker is selected by the Air Force, we are well positioned to hit the ground running on day one.”
If EADS wins, the European parent company of Airbus will set up shop in Mobile, Ala. As it is, EADS doesn’t yet have a factory there but is making the move to get started with a tanker conversion facility.
If the Air Force selects EADS tanker, which is based on an Airbus A330 commercial jet, EADS also has committed to producing A330 freighters in Mobile.
EADS says its tanker will “create or support 48,000 American jobs across the country, and create more than 1,500 direct positions in Mobile. Construction of the production facilities also will create thousands of related jobs in the Gulf Coast area.”
Earlier this week, analyst Loren B. Thompson with the Lexington Institute indicated that Boeing’s chances of winning the contest, with its Everett-built 767-based tanker, are slim, given what he describes as bias by the Air Force toward the EADS tanker.
This morning, Boeing released its own message on the tanker contest and the Air Force’s mistaken distribution of the confidential information to the bidders:
As a defense contractor, Boeing understands that our government customers place great trust in us to handle sensitive information with extreme care, and we train our employees in the proper procedures to keep that information safe and secure. When faced with the unusual and delicate situation of receiving a disc with our competitor’s sensitive data recently, the two Boeing employees who received the disc acted in an exemplary fashion to safeguard and return it to the customer without gaining access to its contents.
Lastly, Colin Clark, with DoD Buzz, offers this interesting take on the recent developments in the tanker saga.
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