Analysts: March or later for Air Force tanker award

Published 11:25 am Monday, January 24, 2011

The date the U.S. Air Force will announce a winner in its $35 billion tanker contest seems to be a moving target.

But that’s not surprising in this decade-long saga.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services will hold a hearing Thursday on the disclosure of competitors’ confidential bid information.

That hearing, The Hill reports, is likely to push out the award announcement until March or later.

Analysts already were talking about a slide into March. The Air Force initially had hoped to announce in September whether it had chosen EADS or Boeing to replace 179 of its KC-135 tankers. That date had moved until near the end of 2010 and then into early 2011.

Of course, the award announcement doesn’t necessarily mean the end to the contest, as AFP reports.

My favorite quote about this third round of the tanker contest: “failure is an option,” said Richard Aboulafia, a defense analyst with the Teal Group.