Tanker Talk: Northrop ponders protest; Boeing takes no prisoners
Published 11:12 am Friday, March 5, 2010
Analysts are weighing in on Boeing’s announcement yesterday that it will offer the Air Force a tanker based on its Everett-built 767 commercial jet.
Boeing has taken a blunt approach, rather than a diplomatic one, this time in drawing comparisons between its KC-767 and the KC-30 offered by Northrop Grumman and its partner EADS, notes Lexington Institute’s Loren B. Thompson.
“The shock of losing in the first round of competition has changed the company’s whole approach to preserving its fifty-year aerial refueling franchise, so don’t expect it to take any prisoners in the coming battle unless there is a need for hostages,” Thompson writes.
While Northrop officials rationally realize the Air Force’s $35 billion contest heavily favors Boeing’s smaller tanker, emotionally they still want to fight it out, he writes.
One way to fight Boeing is to give it a dose of its own medicine – launching a protest with the Government Accountability Office, as Boeing did the last time around.
Analyst Scott Hamilton, with Leeham Co., writes on his blog that he’s hearing more and more that Northrop will protest the Air Force’s final requirements rather than bow out of the competition as the company previously threatened to do.
