Pentagon plans refueling tanker contract award in early 2010
Request for proposals in long-delayed program is expected to be completed by early spring of this year.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told lawmakers Tuesday that he plans to get the new competition for aerial refueling tankers under way within the next several months, in the hopes of awarding a contract for the lucrative program by early next year.
During testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Gates said he expects to complete by early spring a much-anticipated request for proposals for the next-generation tanker program, which was stalled last year after GAO investigators upheld a protest by losing bidder Boeing Co.
Meanwhile, Gates shot down any suggestion to split the multibillion-dollar contract for tankers between two companies. Some have advocated that doing so would quell the political fervor over the contract, but Gates said having two different tankers in the fleet would be too costly.
"I think the idea of a split buy is an absolutely terrible idea and a very bad mistake for the U.S. taxpayer," he told the panel.
In February 2008, the Pentagon awarded a contract potentially worth $40 billion to a team led by Northrop Grumman and EADS, the European consortium behind Boeing rival Airbus, to provide 179 tankers.
But defense officials canceled the contract during the summer after GAO found the Air Force made significant errors in its evaluation of the competing proposals.
The only Bush administration Cabinet official to stay on the job under President Obama decided last year to leave the fate of the tanker program and other sensitive procurement decisions up to the next administration.
"As I focused on the wars these past two years, I ended up toward the end of last year punting a number of procurement decisions that, I believed, would be more appropriately handled by my successor and a new administration," Gates told lawmakers. "As luck would have it, I am now the receiver of those punts. And in this game, there are no fair catches."
During a hearing with Senate Armed Services Committee earlier Tuesday, Gates said he is "firmly committed to a competitive process" for the tanker program that results in an airframe that meets technical requirements and is the best deal for the taxpayer.
"My plan, frankly, is ... when a new deputy [defense secretary] gets confirmed and when a new undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics is confirmed, then I would sit down with the two of them and with the secretary of the Air Force and chief of staff of the Air Force and determine the best way forward," Gates told senators.