So many questions, so little time.
That’s what the Pentagon has left the Boeing Co. and its supporters with after announcing its plans for an expedited round of re-bidding for a lucrative Air Force tanker contract. This follows a recommendation by the Government Accountability Office, which last month upheld a protest by Boeing after the contract was awarded to a consortium of Northrop Grumman and Europe-based EADS.
Revised specifications for the $35 billion deal were released Wednesday. Proposals from Boeing and Northrop/EADS are supposed to be submitted by Oct. 1, with the Pentagon aiming to make its choice by the end of this year.
Talk about your hasty decisions.
Shay Assad, the Pentagon’s procurement director, said the new specs will make it easier for the bidders to “fully understand what the priorities are” — a tacit admission that those priorities weren’t spelled out in the original request for proposals. Yet one of them, fuel capacity, will continue to be key, Assad said, with extra credit going to the plane that can carry more. That’s a clear advantage for the Airbus A330 frame, which is larger than the 767 Boeing has offered.
We’d like to know:
n When and why did fuel capacity become a central factor? It wasn’t even mentioned in the Air Force’s original request. Both of the competing planes carry more fuel than the current KC-135 tanker, but the Airbus frame carries about 25 percent more than the 767. Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) pointed out in interviews Wednesday that the KC-135s normally only offload a portion of the fuel they carry. So why is bigger better?
n Why are acquisition costs being given greater weight than long-term costs? Both involve real money, and the relatively fuel-efficient KC-767 will cost less to operate, saving billions of dollars over time.
n Don’t U.S. jobs matter? The KC-767 not only would provide more direct U.S. jobs, but awarding the contract to Northrop-EADS would allow Europe-based Airbus to establish a new manufacturing plant in Alabama. Why would the U.S. military help a foreign competitor — especially one the State Department says has been illegally subsidized — get a leg up on a cornerstone American company?
If, in the end, Northrop-EADS is truly offering a superior tanker at a competitive overall cost, so be it. But a lot serious of questions need to be answered before anyone arrives at that conclusion.
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