By Emelie Rutherford
If the Air Force’s contested tanker contract with Northrop Grumman [NOC] and a European partner is overturned, it will be a “disaster” for efforts to accelerate cooperation between the United States and Europe on defense technologies, a British proponent of enhanced ties predicted yesterday.
“If the tanker deal were to be torpedoed by Boeing, [BA] the response here was that would be a disaster,” said Giles Merritt of the Security and Defence Agenda, a Brussels-based security and defense think tank. Speaking from Brussels during a Future Defense Technologies roundtable, co-located at the Atlantic Council in Washington, he was referring to sentiments given at a forum last month.
The response was “that European suspicions of American protectionism in the defense field would be strengthened as never before,” said Merritt, the moderator. “And I don’t think anybody really disagreed with that.”
The Air Force awarded the contract for the KC-45A aerial-refueling tanker, a pact estimated to ultimately be worth more than $35 billion, on Feb. 29 to Northrop Grumman and a team including European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS)–spurring outcries from some U.S. lawmakers about lost job opportunities in the United States.
Losing bidder Boeing protested the tanker award March 11, and the Government Accountability Office has until day’s end June 19 to issue a decision.
Terry Pudas from the National Defense University’s Center for Technology and National Security Policy yesterday predicted because the Air Force tanker deal is similar to the Navy’s VH-71 presidential helicopter program–which also combined U.S. and European partners–it could fall under similar scrutiny.
“I think there is going to be a lot of scrutiny on the performance” of the potential Northrop Grumman tanker, Pudas said in Washington. “Remember the presidential helo came under enormous scrutiny because of the cost overruns and all those sorts of things. So if this [tanker] is a successful endeavor, and the performance is good and on-time and on- cost, I think that’s going to do a lot for future endeavors.”
Some members of yesterday’s roundtable pointed to other tests, aside from the tanker deal, of U.S.-European defense cooperation.
Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted the U.S.-U.K. defense trade cooperation treaty, signed by the countries last year and awaiting U.S. Senate approval.
“The one thing you want to watch…is the treaty with the U.K.,” Lewis said in Washington. “It’s cumbersome, yes. [But] it is an improvement and it’s the first real change since the 1970s when it comes to arms transfers. So the treaty in some ways and whether it’s ratified by the Senate is a better measure than the tanker deal about how the U.S. feels about cooperating with trusted allies.”
Speaking from Brussels, European Parliament member Geoffrey Van Orden said while he’s “delighted that European companies have won that particular argument” on the tanker matter, the contract is a defense industry deal having nothing to do with the European Union.
“What about Joint Strike Fighter?” he asked about the fifth-generation F-35 jet the Pentagon is working on with multiple partner nations. “Where have we got to on that? Where have we got to in terms of access by key and reliable allies to the essential technology? Because it seems to me that that also is an issue of confidence.”