After spending the holiday weekend at his cabin near Mount Vernon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked Tuesday at Fort Lewis when he’ll announce whether the Air Force will rebid a $35 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers. “Very soon,” was the answer, which some took to mean as early as this week.
The more important question, of course, is what that decision will be. If it’s anything other than rebidding the contract Boeing lost to a consortium that includes its European rival Airbus, as was recommended last month by Congress’ nonpartisan General Accounting Office, Gates should expect an epic backlash, with Washington’s congressional delegation on the front lines. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), along with Sens. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), on Tuesday introduced a resolution calling on the Pentagon to rebid the flawed tanker contract.
The GAO’s investigation, launched after Boeing protested the Air Force’s awarding of the contract to Northrop Grumman and EADS, the parent company of Airbus, revealed a process that was thoroughly botched. The GAO found that the Air Force ignored its own evaluation criteria, and misled Boeing by giving Airbus extra credit for offering a larger-capacity jet. Boeing offered a version of its 767 after considering the larger 777. Both frames are built at the company’s Everett plant.
Yes, a Boeing tanker would provide more U.S. jobs than one built mainly in Europe. And it’s not a small point that the Airbus model came into being through subsidies that the United States is challenging as illegal before the World Trade Organization.
But the GAO investigation suggests that the decision to award the contract to Boeing’s rival wasn’t even the best deal for taxpayers. The Air Force, it turns out, miscalculated operating costs for each aircraft, favoring the Airbus version when Boeing’s actually had a cost advantage of more than $90 million. In a deal that could eventually grow to 179 tankers valued at $100 billion, it would be good to get the math right.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has called for a new “full, fair and open competition.” Given the Air Force’s tarnished credibility, nothing less will be acceptable. The contract must be rebid, and considering that the current fleet has been in service for half a century, the sooner a new process is completed, the better.
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