By Emelie Rutherford
Boeing [BA] on Friday said it “will give serious consideration to filing a protest” against the Air Force’s award to a rival for a lucrative contract to build the service’s replacement air-refueling tankers, saying it had “significant concerns” about the process used after being debriefed by service officials.
Boeing officials were debriefed for several hours Friday by service acquisition officials on the rationale behind the Feb. 29 award of the tanker contract worth upward of $35 billion to a rival Northrop Grumman [NOC]-European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS) team.
“While we are grateful for the timely debriefing, we left the room with significant concerns about the process in several areas, including program requirements related to capabilities, cost and risk; evaluation of the bids and the ultimate decision,” Mark McGraw, vice president and program manager of the KC-767 tanker at Chicago-based Boeing, said in a statement issued Friday night.
“What is clear now is that reports claiming that the Airbus offering won by a wide margin could not be more inaccurate,” McGraw added.
Boeing officials on Friday said they would “take the next few days to evaluate the data presented and will give serious consideration to filing a protest,” the statement said.
“Our plan now is to work through the weekend to come to a decision on our course of action early next week,” McGraw said. “It will be a very rigorous and deliberative process to ensure we’re balancing the needs of the warfighter with our desire to be treated fairly. For decades, Boeing has been recognized as a defense company that never takes lightly protests of our customers’ decisions.”
The Air Force had no immediate comment as of press time.
The service initially planned to debrief Boeing on or after March 12. Yet on March 4 Boeing denounced that debriefing date, and the next day the Air Force move the debriefing date to March 7.
The tanker contract awarded to Northrop Grumman and EADS calls for them to build up to 179 of the newly named KC-45A tankers, which will replace Boeing-built KC-135 Stratotankers that date back to the 1950s.
Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne had told reporters Feb. 13 there were rumors Boeing and Northrop Grumman-EADS unofficially agreed in advance to not protest the tanker award– which both companies subsequently denied (Defense Daily, Feb. 14).
Some lawmakers–particularly those from Washington State, where Boeing has a large workforce–have decried the award of the tanker contract to a team including a European firm, because of the impact on the U.S. industrial base. Critics including Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) suggested that the Air Force, under pressure from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), changed its criteria during the competition because Northrop Grumman was threatening to withdraw (Defense Daily, March 6).
Sue Payton, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, told reporters Feb. 29 that Northrop Grumman-EADS provided the best value when looking at five deciding factors: mission capability, proposal risk, past performance, cost/price and “integrated fleet aerial refueling rating,” which is performance in a simulated war scenario.
Gen. Arthur Lichte, commander of Air Mobility Command, told reporters Feb. 29 the Northrop Grumman-EADS proposal offered more than Boeing’s did.
“More passengers, more cargo, more fuel to offload, more patients that we can carry, more availability, more flexibility and more dependability,” he said.