Defense to oversee new tanker selection

The Pentagon will try, yet again, to buy the Air Force new tankers to replace its aging KC-135s.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday his office will oversee the rewriting of specifications for the new planes by the beginning of August and award a contract worth an estimated $35 billion – and tens of thousands of aerospace industry jobs – by year’s end.

It will be the military’s third try at replacing the KC-135, the backbone of the nation’s aerial refueling fleet and the type of plane stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base.

Four months ago, the Air Force said it would buy 179 new tankers from a consortium headed by Northrop Grumman. But the Government Accountability Office agreed with Boeing, the other bidder for the contract, that the competition was flawed.

To address the GAO criticism, the Defense Department will rewrite the specifications and allow Boeing and Northrop to modify their proposals, Gates said.

It’s an aggressive schedule, considering Congress first started talking about acquiring new tankers shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has seen previous attempts delayed by scandal as well as allegations of political patronage and inflated costs.

Even a top Pentagon official, Defense Department Undersecretary for Acquisitions John Young, conceded the process could take longer than scheduled, depending on how many specifications are changed.

“The December timeline (for awarding a contract) is a goal,” Young said. “If significant things change, the deadline can slip. We would seek to change the minimum amount of things.”

But even minimum changes will be watched closely by Boeing, Northrop and the members of Congress who have aerospace companies’ workers in their states or districts.

Gates’ announcement was met with “cautious optimism” from Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a chief critic of the decision to give the contract to Northrop.

Murray said she was glad that the Defense Department will award the contract this time, rather than the Air Force, which she contends used a flawed process to award the contract to Northrop. But she wants more information about how the new specifications will fix the problems the GAO found with the last competition. Gates and other military officials have been vague about how that will be done, she said.

“How they write these (specifications) is very important,” Murray said.

For example, the Air Force said it wanted a medium-size tanker to replace the medium-size KC-135, and said it must be able to carry certain amounts of fuel and cargo and fly at certain speeds. If the plane was bigger than those specifications, it would be considered, but it wouldn’t get any extra points for its extra capacity, the previous request for proposals said.

The plane that Northrop proposed, a remodeled Airbus 330 jetliner, was bigger than the original specifications, and the Air Force added points to the plane’s score for its extra capacity. That was one of eight problems the GAO listed in reviewing what the Air Force described as a close competition.

The larger Airbus plane was also a bit slower and couldn’t perform one of the maneuvers required for refueling some military planes, the GAO said. It would cost more in the long run, because some bases would need bigger hangars or longer runways than for the Boeing plane, which is a remodeled 767 jetliner.

Asked during a Wednesday news conference with Gates – broadcast online from the Pentagon – if the new specifications would call for a larger plane, Young hedged.

“The size of the aircraft is less of an issue than how you meet our requirements,” he said.

But telling the manufacturers they could build a bigger plane, and get points for it, would be significant, Murray said. If Boeing wants to offer a larger plane, it would need more time to prepare a proper proposal.

If the Defense Department sticks to the original specifications, and doesn’t give points for proposing a larger plane, “I’m OK with that,” she said.

Trying to replace the KC-135 has given the Air Force two black eyes. Congress first considered letting the Air Force lease 100 planes from Boeing, but a top company executive and a high-ranking Pentagon official were convicted of violating federal bidding laws. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also objected that leasing was more expensive than buying the planes outright.

Opening up the contract to competition led to the surprise awarding of the bid to Northrop, followed by the GAO assessment that the process was flawed.

Gates and other Pentagon officials defended that process Wednesday, noting that Boeing raised more than 100 objections and the GAO only agreed with eight. Acting Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, who started his remarks by noting he’d only had the job for three weeks and had no role in the decision, nonetheless said he wouldn’t say the process was flawed.

That will be a tough position to defend in Congress.

“Everyone’s disappointed in the way the Air Force has handled this,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said. Pentagon officials can expect to be questioned about the new specifications as early as today, when they appear before a House Armed Services subcommittee, she said.

“One of the things I want to ask is, ‘What went wrong?’ There were a lot of eyes watching, and yet something went wrong,” the Eastern Washington Republican added.

Murray, McMorris Rodgers and others said they worried about the continued delays in replacing the KC-135s, which were designed in the early 1950s and were built through the early 1960s. Whether they represent states that have Boeing factories or Northrop Grumman factories, members of Congress who have jobs at stake in the contract competition can be expected to bring up the age of the tankers.

Col. Tom Sharpy, commander of the 92nd Air Refueling Wing at Fairchild, said Wednesday he believes the sooner the Defense Department picks a plane and gets it in production, the better. Older planes are more expensive to maintain and less fuel-efficient.

But Sharpy, who has flown more than 2,400 hours in a KC-135, dismissed any suggestion that they aren’t safe.

The planes are kept on a rigorous maintenance schedule, he said. Air and ground crews are excited about the prospect of having a new tanker, but that’s not the key factor.

It’s more important, Sharpy said, “to take our time and make the right decision.”