By Ann Roosevelt
Alabama Aircraft Industries Inc. (AAII) announced Oct. 1 its subsidiary, AAII – Birmingham, has won its case filed June 26 in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims against the Air Force and Boeing [BA]–challenging the Air Force’s selection of Boeing for a $1.1 billion contract to perform Programmed Depot Maintenance (PDM) services on KC- 135 aircraft.
The Court set aside the solicitation and enjoined the Air Force from proceeding with the award to Boeing, requiring that “The Air Force must re-solicit the procurement and take the necessary steps in a new solicitation to address explicitly the role of an ever-aging KC-135 fleet on the PDM to be performed.”
Ron Aramini, president and CEO of Alabama Aircraft Industries, said, “We could not be more pleased that the court has given this matter a thorough and fair hearing, as we have requested from the beginning. The deficiencies in the award obviously have been recognized and finally addressed, with the potential to restore integrity to the procurement process for the KC-135 PDM. We look forward to working with the United States Air Force and participating in the new KC-135 competition.”
Boeing now supports both the Air Force KC-10 and KC-135 tanker fleet.
“First of all, we believe it’s critically important that even with the announcement that came out today that there’s no interruption to our service to the warfighter,” Dennis Muilenburg, president of Boeing Global Services & Support, said at a roundtable. “Our focus is wholly on serving that customer and making sure our warfighter’s needs are met, given the critical use of the tanker fleet today.”
There were previous protests on the award that Boeing won last year (Defense Daily, Sept. 13, 2007). Following that, there were two Government Accountability Office protests, which sustained the Air Force award of the PDM follow on contract to Boeing.
The Federal Claims court ruling is “disappointing,” he said. “We’re going to continue to work with our Air Force customer as they take their plans forward. We are very confident that we provide the best capable, the best support to that customer on the tanker fleet, and we’ll continue to do that.”
Boeing has been on a bridge contract with the Air Force while the protest activity was going on that extended the current effort, obviously with the clear intent to maintain current readiness to the fleet for the warfighter, he said.
“Our expectation is while these issues are sorted through that we will continue to execute on a bridge contract,” he said. Close dialogue continues with the Air Force to ensure uninterrupted work on the bridge contract.
What Boeing’s next steps are depend upon what the company learns after a debriefing on the court ruling.
At the same time, Muilenburg said it is unclear what the impact on the PDM follow-on work is of putting off the KC-X tanker proposal. “It places even more emphasis on high quality work on KC-135 and, frankly, it makes it even more important that we see no interruption in service to the warfighter because they are depending on that tanker.”