Northrop won’t bid on Air Force tanker - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

Northrop won’t bid on Air Force tanker

Northrop Grumman today confirmed that it will not bid for the Air Force’s $35 billion KC-X contest, saying the solicitation favors rival Boeing’s smaller 767-based offering.

“Northrop Grumman has determined that it will not submit a bid to the Department of Defense for the KC-X program,” Northrop president Wes Bush said in a late afternoon statement. “We reached this conclusion based on the structure of the source selection methodology defined in the [request for proposals], which clearly favors Boeing’s smaller refueling tanker and does not provide adequate value recognition of the added capability of a larger tanker, precluding us from any competitive opportunity.”

Key Northrop backer Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., quickly slammed the Air Force for its cost-focused request for proposals.

“The Air Force had a chance to deliver the most capable tanker possible to our war fighters and blew it,” the senator said in his own late-afternoon statement. “This so-called competition was not structured to produce the best outcome for our men and women in uniform; it was structured to produce the best outcome for Boeing.”

EADS North America Chairman Ralph Crosby echoed these statements.

“The source selection methodology clearly signals a preference for a smaller aircraft,” Crosby said.

He said the RfP “ignores the added combat capability that could be provided to our military and, for the first time, ensures that our allies will operate with superior capability in this vital mission area.”

Crosby was referring to several U.S. allies that are flying variants of the A330-based tanker.

Northrop’s move comes after months of wrangling between the defense giant and the Pentagon over the structure of the KC-X RfPs that the Defense Department unveiled last fall.

In a Dec. 1 letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Bush threatened to drop out of the competition unless the final RfP was considerably changed.

Bush argued that the cost-focused RfP did not give enough credit for the better performance of the newer, larger Airbus A330-based bid over the smaller, cheaper 767-based jet.

The final RfP, released two weeks ago, was little changed from the draft.

Shelby said, “The Air Force’s refusal to make substantive changes to level the playing field shows that once again, politics trumps the needs of our military.”

No protest

Bush said the company will not protest the Pentagon’s decision.

“We have decided that Northrop Grumman will not protest,” he said in his statement. “While we feel we have substantial grounds to support a [Government Accountability Office] or court ruling to overturn this revised source selection process, America’s service men and women have been forced to wait too long for new tankers.”

Bush took a parting shot at Boeing, which is almost guaranteed to be the sole bidder in the contest.

The Air Force should pay “much less” per airplane than the roughly $184 million apiece it would pay for the first 68 Northrop jets in the 2008 offer.

“We call on the Department to keep in mind the economic conclusions of the prior round of bidding as it takes actions to protect the taxpayer when defining the sole-source procurement contract,” his statement said. “With the Department’s decision to procure a much smaller, less-capable design, the taxpayer should certainly expect the bill to be much less.”

Northrop’s jet won the 2008 round of the KC-X competition. That victory was dashed, however, when Boeing filed a GAO-sustained protest arguing that the service wasn’t clear enough about what it wanted from the two jets in that round of competition.

Air Force officials did not respond to request for comment at press time.