By Jen DiMascio
As the Air Force enters the final stretch of its review of two bids to make the service’s next fleet of aerial refueling tankers, the competitors are continuing to stress their high points–regardless of the impact.
Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Boeing [BA] submitted their bids to the service Jan. 3, and the Defense Acquisition Board has scheduled a milestone B meeting for Feb. 13. The contract award is expected within 10 days of that meeting, said Paul Meyer, general manager and vice president of Air Mobility Systems at Northrop Grumman.
The KC-X, which replaces aging KC-135 Stratotanker, translates into a contract worth $40 billion over the next 15 years.
“We’re trying to make sure that the debate that wants to happen in the public is focused around the facts of what are the attributes of the deliberation and the award,” Meyer told reporters about why the company was reiterating the merits of its proposal. “Will it affect the outcome of the source selection board? No…Whether it has an impact or not, it is going to be part of the debate.”
According to the request for proposals, the Air Force intends to review the proposals according to five key factors–mission requirements, proposal risk, past performance, life cycle cost and fleet effectiveness value.
Along those lines, Northrop Grumman yesterday sought to counter a Boeing information paper circulated Jan. 14 that said that because the Northrop Grumman KC-30 plane is larger than Boeing’s KC-767, it will burn more fuel–about $14 billion worth over a 40-year life span.
Boeing has argued that the KC-30 is oversized, because regardless of the number used, the service is still in the market to buy 179 planes. Boeing officials admit that the KC- 30 probably exceeds requirements in some cases more than the KC-767, but they argue that the service will wind up paying. “In the old days we would call that gold-plating,” a Boeing official said recently.
Northrop Grumman countered that rationale yeterday touting its fleet effectiveness value, which the company has calculated that across a series of scenarios, the effectiveness of the KC-30 fleet is 1.62 compared with Boeing’s 1.35.
Northrop Grumman’s briefing yesterday piggybacks on a briefing by teammate Airbus, a subsidiary of the European Aeronautic and Defense Co., saying that if Northrop Grumman wins the contract, it will also produce A330 freighters in Mobile, Ala.
Although nothing in the Air Force’s RFP criteria relate to building freighters in Mobile, the gesture shows a good faith effort to reduce risk, Meyer said.
“Does it have an impact on the outcome? I don’t know. This is Washington, D.C. It could,” Meyer said.