Air Force under gun after Northrop exits tanker fight

7:11 PM Saturday, March 13, 2010

A new generation of flying gas stations has been described for years as the biggest pending Air Force acquisition.

Incredibly, airplanes — known as tankers — that refuel other planes in flight have existed for many decades. More incredibly, the tankers that the U.S. military now use are from the 1950s and 1960s.

The process of getting them replaced has been, shall we say, a bit troubled.

Not for many years has there been any controversy about whether the tankers should be replaced.

When the Air Force moved to update the fleet in 2001, Boeing was the sole bidder. But the company was eventually stripped of the deal after a scandal that resulted in people going to jail. Sen. John McCain was instrumental in bringing the scandal to light.

Later in the decade, Boeing bid against Northrop Grumman, which was in a partnership with a European firm. The bids were handled at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where the later stages of the acquisition process will also be managed.

Northrop won the bid, but Boeing appealed, and an independent government investigation found that the Air Force didn’t follow its own rules in awarding the bid, changed the rules in midgame and gave more information to one side than the other. (Definitely not a shining moment for Wright-Patterson.)

Perhaps the Air Force was bending over backward not to be accused of favoring Boeing.

So the bidding process was restarted. This time, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has taken responsibility for running it.

But now Northrop has pulled out. It says the Pentagon’s specifications favor the smaller Boeing plane.

This is not good, because it eliminates competition, which tends to drive costs down.

Some people are enraged over the government’s posture. European officials see protectionism at play. The president of France has promised to take up the issue with President Barack Obama. And Alabama, where much of the work on the Northrop plane was to be done, is ready for a Franco-Bama alliance, not withstanding any lingering hard feelings about France’s view on the Iraq war.

But Northrop says it won’t push the fight anymore, given how long American troops have had to wait for a modern tanker. That’s good.

In truth, the Pentagon’s position looks pretty solid. Secretary Gates has long emphasized that the Pentagon shouldn’t always buy the most expensive systems available. The Northrop plane could carry more fuel than the Air Force requested. More is nice, but there were reasons behind the Air Force request. And the Boeing plane is smaller, so it can land in more places.

At any rate, the upshot of Northrop’s decision was not only to make Boeing’s day. (A contract for $40 billion, with the possibility for more later, up to $100 billion, can do that.) The upshot was to put the Pentagon and the Air Force under more public scrutiny than ever.

And Boeing. If Boeing gets arrogant — feeling it can’t lose — that could still derail the process again.

Secretary Gates is out to save money. He can’t allow his decisions about the bid specifications to backfire by virtue of eliminating competition. He will need help from the Air Force in keeping Boeing under control — not only in awarding the enormously complex, long-term contract, but in carrying it out.

— Cox News Service

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