Surprise! GAO sides with Boeing in tanker dispute
posted at 5:37 pm on June 18, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly
And this one really is a surprise. The GAO rarely interferes with a decision on a contract award, and usually has even less inclination to do so on military contracts, where the Pentagon’s expertise creates a large benefit of the doubt. However, today the GAO upheld Boeing’s challenge to the award of a new refueling tanker to Northrop, which could press the Air Force to put the project back out for bid:
In a surprise move, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) upheld a protest filed by Boeing of the Air Force’s decision to award a $40 billion contract for its new midair refueling tankers to rivals Northrop Grumman and EADS North America.
The GAO decision all but ensures that lawmakers who support Boeing will pressure the Air Force to reopen the competition. The Air Force is not bound by law to follow the GAO’s recommendations, but it is customary that the Pentagon heeds them.
The GAO said it had determined the Air Force had made “a number of significant errors” that led to its decision to award the contract to Northrop Grumman.
The decision vindicates not just Boeing but its supporters in Congress, which demanded an investigation after the contract went to the partnership between Northrop and the EU-based EADS. That followed a tortured history of back-dealing and corruption on the part of Boeing that helped create the opportunity for Northrop. No one really came off as a hero in this instance, but it did provide an excellent look at the sewer of defense appropriations, especially after the big consolidation among contractors in the field.
If the Air Force cancels its award and rebids it, the decision will have a multitude of ripples through economic and diplomatic circles. The US wants to compete for defense contracts in EU countries, and the award to EADS (which produces the Airbus) showed that we would open our markets as well. A switch to Boeing now will make the Europeans believe that American politicians will never allow for significant openness in our market and will almost certainly push the EU to adopt protectionist measures as well. If the Air Force doesn’t cancel its contract with Northrop/EADS or once again snubs Boeing, Congress will inevitably haul the procurement officials into hearings to explain their decision.
What seems to be lost in all of this is which aircraft best meets the needs for the Air Force. Maybe another round of bidding will focus more on that trivial issue than nationalism, influence-peddling, and political intervention. Then again, why should this procurement decision be different than any other?
Update: Corrected spelling of Northrop; sorry for the earlier error.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Comment pages: « Previous 1 2
Ease of finding spare parts plays a huge role. It’s easier and cheaper to have one company supply 500 struts, than to find 5 companies to build 100 each.
I’m not sure if you were serious with this question or not. Air re-fuelers do not get close to combat (be kind of silly to have the gas station where surface to air missiles can touch it) and they are usually protected by a group of fighter jets whose only detail is to make sure they don’t get touched.
B-2’s are not capable of being re-engineered to carry, upload and download fuel.
Rogue Traveler on June 19, 2008 at 11:25 AM
I know how close they get to combat…currently. I also know that there have, rather recently, been times when a simple orbit out of harm’s way didn’t meet the needs of a battle-damaged or otherwise broken receiver and they had to fly in closer to save it.
This ‘not capable’ part presupposes a lot about the airframe that isn’t supported by the reality that they already carry and receive fuel. What we’re left with is the problem of offloading, which could be accomplished by retrofitting the inner bay to accomodate extra tank space for 50K lbs of fuel and a deployable boom. Loss of stealth capability would be limited to when the bay doors are open and the boom is deployed.
Unconventional, sure…prohibitively expensive, very likely. Impossible? Not a chance.
James on June 19, 2008 at 1:02 PM
Boeing built the aircraft they requested, to the dimensions they requested, and with the carrying capacity specified in the contract. They moved the goal posts on Boeing, the larger fuel capacity of the EADS tanker was not called for by the contract. How could Boeing forsee that to win the bid, they would have to build a tanker that DID NOT meet the specs they were presented with? If they wanted a bigger fuel load capacity, that should have been spelled out at the beginning of the bidding process. You dont really believe that Boeing would be stupid enough to recieve the specs asking for fuel capacity X, and just decide to build one with a lesser capacity – knowing it would cause them to lose the bid, do you?
Lunkinator on June 19, 2008 at 1:07 PM
Wanderlust, I read the article in the link you provided and have no counterargument whatsoever.
The force needs to revamp its process.
Boeing, and all other big companies conduct industrial espionage, and have it conducted on them. Anyone who doesn’t believe this lives in a different reality. If only we could write about Airbus’, or the specifics of the others.
If the bidding would have been conducted in the sunlight, GAO would not even have looked at it.
To be sure, there are conflicting interests and porksters from all sides, with no exceptions.
That will be around August 17, 2008, in an election year.
It will be a hot summer.
Entelechy on June 19, 2008 at 1:30 PM
So do all aircraft, it does not mean that their airframes or engines can handle the constant strain of all the extra weight handled by fuel. I understand that there is a lot of room in the bay if you’d like to throw a tank in there, but filling the area with a liquid instead of a bomb will drastically increase the weight. Then to make room for a boom, avionics support equipment needed to refuel other aircraft, room for the boom operator and all the extra equipment needed to extend and retract the boom takes up more space than the B-2 can offer.
I understand the argument that nothing is ever impossible, but after reinforcing the airframe, landing gear and installing all equipment and extra crew members needed to perform air to air refueling while keeping stealth capabilities would make the project unreasonable (I believe that is a better term ;) ).
In the scenario you mention, it has to open the bay doors to save the receiving aircraft. We both agree that it would lose it’s stealth capabilities when it opens the bay doors and unloads it’s fuel, making it as effective in these situations as a the tankers we have now. The countermeasure equipment installed on tankers and escort aircraft are more than capable of handling a couple of red zone sorties.
Rogue Traveler on June 19, 2008 at 1:53 PM
Utterly pointless? With absolute certainty.
Blacklake on June 19, 2008 at 2:30 PM
That’s hair-splitting. By that kind of standard, the EADS KC-30 isn’t a US defense contract being opened up to European companies, either. It’s a joint venture between a European primary developer and a domestic manufacturer, with bulk of assembly to take place on US shores. Neither aircraft is being purchased off-the-shelf from a foreign supplier without substantial domestic contribution.
Blacklake on June 19, 2008 at 2:35 PM
A 50K lb payload weighs the same whether it’s in liquid or bomb form…I didn’t give it any more fuel to carry than it’s rated to carry in bombs.
Asymmetric warfare is predicated upon finding and exploiting weak links in the complicated chain of events that a foe’s superior battlefield performance requires. Don’t think that Warden was the only one who could figure out that you don’t have to beat an adversary’s military head-on, you just have to find a way to keep them from employing it…the existence of IEDs and especially EFPs on the ground illustrate it perfectly.
James on June 19, 2008 at 2:43 PM
No, really, it’s not. Lockheed-Martin developed the JSF for the USAF/USN/USMC. We would have bought it regardless of any FMS implications. We will allow some of our allied/aligned nations to purchase them, just as we did with the F-16, F-15, and a whole long list of other aircraft. None of these nations would have come up with the JSF program on their own and asked LM to build it for them.
James on June 19, 2008 at 2:52 PM
And yet Northrop/EADS received the same specs and had the foresight to build one with bonus capacity. Maybe Boeing should’ve tried as hard as they did!
The problem is, they couldn’t–and neither could EADS. Neither company “built” a plane to meet the Pentagon request; rather, both offered aircraft perceived as low-risk in terms of technical development, as they were based heavily on works-already-in-progress for other buyers, requiring only (they hoped) minor changes to meet USAF specs.
The only way Boeing could’ve competed in terms of performance with the EADS product would have been to develop the 777 into a tanker, but that would have been a new plane–and hence too risky to win. Instead they did what they had to, and went with the 767, knowing that the development they already had underway on the Italian and Japanese KC-767’s would lower their development risks. EADS/Northrop did the same thing with their A330 tanker.
Both went to bat with what they were already working on. And what EADS was already working on just happened to be superior. That should be the end of the story, but in the era of Big Pork, when seemingly no Pentagon contract can go uncontested, the story will instead go on for years–until, most likely, Boeing eventually gets its way, the US taxpayer gets bilked, and the USAF gets an inferior tanker.
Blacklake on June 19, 2008 at 2:58 PM
While it’s true that no other nation would have come up with the F-35, if you think the program is not reliant on foreign development partners (and indeed, that it would even have a chance of surviving the current political climate without them), you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Blacklake on June 19, 2008 at 3:02 PM
Comment pages: « Previous 1 2