Lawmakers continue to attack tanker decision

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news/2008/03/airforce_tanker_031208w

By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Mar 13, 2008 12:30:38 EDT

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Secretary Michael W. Wynne faced tough questions for the second day in a row Wednesday from lawmakers angry over the Air Force’s decision to buy new refueling tankers from a team involving a European company .

The $40 billion contract to build 179 tankers is one of the richest contracts in the service’s history and pitted Boeing against a coalition of Northrop Grumman Corp. and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., or EADS. The stakes to both competitors and their supporters has been reflected in the increasingly overheated rhetoric on Capitol Hill.

Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee Wednesday, Wynne and Moseley were criticized for choosing an airplane that some said does not reflect the criteria put forward for the competition.

“I am very perplexed by the outcome of this process,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., whose home state would gain jobs from a Boeing victory. “After all, the competition was for a replacement of a medium-sized KC-135 tanker, but what the Air Force selected is an aircraft larger than the KC-10. “What it looks like from my end is you put out a [request for proposals] for a pickup truck … and what you selected at the end of the day was an 18-wheeler. … It’s a completely different concept.”

Northrop/EADS proposed a version of the commercial Airbus 330, while Boeing proposal put forward a version of its smaller 767 jetliner.

Boeing filed a protest Tuesday alleging the Air Force improperly evaluated both competitors’ bids. The Government Accountability Office has 100 days to evaluate the protest and make a recommendation to the Air Force. If sustained by the GAO, such a protest could delay a final decision by many months.

As was the case when he testified the day before at a House subcommittee, Wynne was reluctant Wednesday to go into details of the proposals because of the pending protest. But he defended the Air Force’s selection process.

“We went through a very rigorous examination and we had a lot of interchange with the clients,” Wynne said. “We did at the time believe we bought the right airplane for the right price.”

Murray criticized the Air Force for not considering several factors she said are relevant: the impact of the decision on the American industrial base, the national security implications of sending a critical defense contract overseas, subsidies EADS receives from European governments that Murray said allowed the company to underbid Boeing, and the possibility that bigger hangars and longer runways might need to be built to accommodate the larger Northrop/EADS airplane.

Murray appeared to grow frustrated with Wynne’s repeated explanations that the Air Force was simply following the law.

“What gives me pause is the Air Force is following the letter of the law,” she said to fellow senators. “I think we as policy makers have to think whether … the law is an ass. We have to think about whether or not our laws are protecting our national security interests, our economic interests and our military infrastructure.”

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., whose home state will gain thousands of jobs from the Air Force’s selection of Northrop/EADS, said Boeing supporters’ emphasis on the potential for jobs being lost to Europe is misplaced.

“I believe … that if the Air Force and members of Congress wanted the tanker to be a job creation program for a particular company, they would have scrapped the competition,” Shelby said. “Instead, the intent was to provide our men and women, the warfighters, with the best air refueling aircraft in the world at the best value for American tax payers. … Congress has never, ever intervened to overturn the outcome of a competitive source selection.”

With calls from some in Congress to do just that, it remains to been seen how long such a precedent will stand.