Northrop Grumman, Boeing’s rival for a lucrative U.S. Air Force tanker contract, recently weighed in on whether an international trade ruling should be considered in the contest.
Boeing and its supporters in Congress have argued adamantly that the Air Force should penalize the bid put forth by Northrop and its partner EADS in light of a World Trade Organization preliminary ruling against Airbus. Northrop and EADS will use an Airbus A330 as the platform for their Air Force tanker.
On its new tanker Web site, Northrop praises this Defense News piece, written by Joel Johnson, a defense consultant who has worked with Northrop. Johnson writes that penalizing Northrop and EADS would be a mistake.
Johnson dismisses the argument that Boeing’s KC-767 would boost America’s industrial base, writing:
“But a win for Boeing would simply prolong a production line of the 767 in Seattle. The 767 is obsolete and unattractive to commercial airlines, which is why Boeing decided to spend more than $10 billion to develop a replacement – the 787.
“A win by Northrop Grumman would result in the establishment of an assembly line for both the tanker and freighter version of the A330 … and would establish a new center of aerospace excellence in the Southeast.”
Northrop reiterates Johnson’s point:
“In other words, Northrop Grumman offers to create new jobs building the tanker preferred throughout most of the world. The competitor offers to continue a line of planes that are no longer commercially viable to provide a tanker that has already been rejected by Australia, the United Kingdom, and other wealthy nations.”
The vice president for Boeing’s Machinists union got in his take on the WTO-tanker debate, and President Barack Obama’s role, in this editorial.
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