Air Force: Funding favors solo tanker supplier
Published 11:20 am Tuesday, December 4, 2007
U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said today that the agency likely will award a $40 billion tanker contract to a single bidder based on current funding, reports Reuters.
Wynne spoke at Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington D.C. Both the Boeing Co. and duo Northrop Grumman-EADS are competing for the contract.
Without additional funding, Wynne says the Air Force could buy only 12 to 15 tankers annually. At that rate, a split buy wouldn’t be feasible.
“The cost of that would be prohibitive, unless there was sufficient funding to essentially buy between 24 and 30 — which has not been authorized, and I don’t see any prospects for,” Wynne said.
“That leads me to think that the right answer right now is for a single purchase from a single winner,” he said.
Aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia, with the Teal Group, told the news agency on Monday that he still gives Boeing the edge to win the contract. Aboulafia gave a 55 percent chance of Boeing winning the full contract, a 15 percent chance of Northrop winning the entire bid, and a 30 percent chance of split buy.
The Machinists who work for Boeing are pushing members of Congress to back the Chicago-based aerospace company’s KC-767 tanker. The labor union lists its case for the Everett-built 767 tanker on its Web site along with a handy link to e-mail comments on the tanker bid to Congress.
Arizona Rep. Trent Franks apparently already got the message. He says Arizona would receive 1,100 direct or indirect jobs from a Boeing win, according to the The Business Journal of Phoenix. The publication points out that Boeing has contributed $3,000 to Franks campaign this year while Northrop has given him $1,000.
Noteworthy: The Air Force continues to waffle on just when the agency will award the tanker contract. Although the date had been pushed back from October to January and then to February, Wynne suggested the Air Force may not announce a winner until the end of the first quarter of 2008.
