Competition heats up for Air Force refueling tanker deal

With the decision on the $40 billion Air Force tanker contract perhaps a month away, the Northrop Grumman-Airbus team made a final attempt Tuesday to shape national public opinion, which should not influence the contract decision but could affect the political reaction on one of the hardest fought defense competitions in decades.

Paul Meyer, Northrop Grumman Corp.'s air mobility sector vice president, said a Defense Acquisition Board meeting on the tanker program has been set for Feb. 13 and the contract award should be announced in the following 10 days. A spokeswoman for the Pentagon's top acquisition official said the board has been scheduled to meet on that date to assess the risk and required technologies for the tanker contract.

But, she added, "this is all very much flexible."

Also, an Air Force public affairs officer said the timing of the contract award was not tied in any way to the DAB session and no decision date has been set. "We still intend to take as much time as needed to make the right decision," Lt. Col. Jennifer Cassidy said.

The board, led by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and consisting of the service secretaries and top Defense acquisition officials, decides which major procurement programs move ahead to the development and production stages.

The Air Force, whose reputation in Congress has suffered badly because of mistakes on the tanker project, called KC-X, has postponed the contract decision several times in recent months in an effort to avoid any allegations of bias or error that could lead to a protest.

The battle over the massive program to replace the 1960s-vintage KC-135 tankers pits a variant of the Boeing 767 airliner against a modified Airbus A330 in a highly politicized contest in which confrontations over "domestic content" and U.S. jobs have at times overwhelmed discussions of performance and cost.

The Boeing offer has been championed by "Buy America" advocates in Congress and by lawmakers from Washington state and Kansas, where much of the work would be done, against politicians from Alabama, where Northrop Grumman promises to assemble the Airbus tanker.

Meyer, in a National Press Club news conference, argued that the Northrop-Airbus KC-30 offered the nation the lowest risk and best value for the 179 tankers the Air Force intends to buy under the initial contract. He also disputed Boeing's claim of offering the only American-made aircraft, noting that large components are made in Japan and Italy. Northrop Grumman proposes to perform final assembly of the KC-30 in a new plant to be built in Mobile, Ala., with all major components produced in several European nations.

In a possible attempt to influence the tanker decision, Airbus's parent corporation EADS announced Monday that if the KC-30 wins the tanker competition it would build a plant next door to the Northrop Grumman facility in Mobile to produce a cargo version of the A330, adding U.S. jobs.

Boeing spokesman William Barksdale rejected Meyer's claims, saying, "The Air Force makes the decision on who has the riskiest proposal." Boeing will stand by its record of having produced virtually all of the Air Force tankers and building about 1,000 commercial 767s, he said.

Barksdale also noted that moving an entire assembly line from France "adds time and complexity" and he questioned whether the European governments, which control much of EADS, would allow the shift of thousands of jobs to the United States.

The Boeing bid received renewed support Tuesday from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents many of the people working on Boeing's commercial aircraft. The union argued that the "main production lines" for the competing Airbus plane would be located in Europe, which it said "would effectively send tens of thousands more U.S. jobs overseas."