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Air Force officials told a Senate subcommittee they still don’t like the idea of “splitting the baby” on the new refueling tanker.
That’s not a surprise, because the Pentagon has been saying to anyone who will listen that they want to have one version of the replacement for the aging KC-135s. They want to take bids from Boeing and Lockheed/Grumman/EADS and do a winner take all. Problem is, certain members of Congress, particularly the head of a House military appropriations committee, don’t much want to listen.
Sen. Patty Murray — who is a big supporter of Boeing (it’s a mutual kind of thing) — wants just one contract, and took a Capitol Hill visit by Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Norman Schwartz to get them to reiterate what they’ve been saying all along about a single contract.
They also got to repeat that they support a “fair and open” competition for the contract, which could be worth about $40 billion. This is hardly news, although it would be news if they would own up at some point to supporting a “rigged and secretive” competition, right?
So what about sending the new tankers — should they EVER get built — to Fairchild?
Answer inside the blog.
No promises. In fact, it sounded pretty much like a non promise:
“Certainly, Fairchild is an obvious candidate for early beddown. There are others in the country too.. Fairchild certainly is in the longterm plans.”
So to review: The Air Force wants new tankers. It only wants one model. It wants to have a fair and open competition to build that tanker. It wants to put those new tankers somewhere. As a current tanker base, at some point, Fairchild will get new tankers.
Not to be overly critical, but it seems like Donley and Schwartz could have stayed at the Pentagon and sent the Senate a copy of the stuff they’ve been saying for months, and got some real work done.
Of course, there may be other interpretations of all this. You can watch the subcommittee questioning of Donley and Schwartz here. If you want to focus in on Murray, her questions start about 88:30 into the 102 minute clip.
Jim Camden is a veteran political reporter for The Spokesman-Review.
Jonathan Brunt covers Spokane City Hall for The Spokesman-Review.
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George_Sands on June 04 at 12:45 p.m.
The wise answer to the problem is to let Boeing build the 767 ariframes and for EADS/N-G to install/provide the mission system tanker equipement. Then split the maintenance, training, support, logistics so that both sides reap about the same amount.
This would provide ONE airframe with ONE mission systems equipment with two viable contractors focused on what each does best.
jimc on June 04 at 2:21 p.m.
Although I’m not an aviation expert, that sounds like an interesting compromise…if the two companies were inclined to play nice together.
It also could be a problem if the real money is in the assembly of the air frame or the adding of avionics/electronics. Not sure if it breaks down to give the advantage to one or the other.
One hangup, however, might be that Boeing would fight over the right to the boom equipment/operating system. They’ve got more of a track record on that front, even though theirs is older and Northrop has been doing R&D, and some actual flight testing, of their new system.
Jim Camden/Spin Control