By Emelie Rutherford
As Boeing [BA] backers in Congress push the Pentagon to factor into the competition for the Air Force tanker contract European government support for a competitor, they see themselves reckoning with a familiar force: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
McCain, to the chagrin of Boeing supporters, three years ago advocated for the Pentagon to remove language referencing ongoing trade disputes from a solicitation for a previous, now-defunct contest for the refueling aircraft. A Northrop Grumman [NOC]-European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) team is battling Boeing for the contract.
Now McCain has again piqued Boeing backers by questioning the latest draft solicitation, though not yet specifically over the government-subsidies dispute.
“This is deja vu all over again,” Boeing advocate Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) told reporters yesterday about McCain’s recent questions about the tanker’s draft request for proposals (RFP). Tiahrt alleged McCain advocated “for the French company (EADS) through the last cycle of procurement, he’s advocating for the French company in this cycle.”
McCain helped quash a previous Air Force plan to lease tankers from Boeing and uncover a related scandal that led to the imprisonment and departure of company and air service officials.
The Arizona senator, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and 2008 Republican presidential nominee, told reporters Tuesday he sees the latest tanker contest as “legitimate so far” and not tilted toward one of the two competitors.
Boeing and Northrop Grumman-EADS supporters have both alleged the current tanker contest favors the other side. A final RFP could emerge in mid-December.
McCain asked detailed questions about the tanker source-selection methodology in an Oct. 29 letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates (Defense Daily, Nov. 13).
The senator told reporters the questions, which don’t delve into government subsidies, “were raised from a variety of sources.”
“I didn’t say they were wrong; I did not make a judgment,” he said at the Capitol. “I just…want to confirm that the process is completely fair.”
McCain predicted he will have “periodic questions” about the tanker contest, and acknowledged his recent query to Gates was detailed.
“We were very detailed the first time around,” he said. “It turned out it was corrupt and people went to jail, OK. So I think we have the right to, we’ve earned the right to, make sure that this is a legitimate process.”
Tiahrt and a bicameral group of 15 other members of Congress who support Boeing briefed reporters on Capitol Hill yesterday about their concerns that the final, forthcoming tanker RFP will not reflect a recent preliminary World Trade Organization (WTO) finding that some European Union subsidies to Airbus, which is part of EADS, were improper. That confidential report by a WTO panel is not a final decision, and the WTO also is considering an EU counter-complaint that Boeing unfairly benefitted from U.S. government funding, both federal and state (Defense Daily, Sept. 8).
“If (the Pentagon and President Barack Obama) award this contract…at this time in our economy while we have double-digit unemployment, to a foreign company, I think there will just be outrage across the United States,” Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said at the pro-Boeing press conference. “Just on a very common-sense basis, (because of) that alone, with the trade dispute that we have and the warfighter in the balance, I really plead with the Department of Defense and administration to take a strong look at this thing, and do the right thing and consider the trade distortion that the Airbus company has done, and build that into this RFP.”
Northrop Grumman-EADS supporters counter such claims with arguments about U.S. jobs that would be generated if their team wins and note U.S. government support for Boeing.
McCain, when asked if he would fight any effort to factor the European subsidies into the latest tanker solicitation, said Tuesday “it depends on what their proposal is and what they’re taking in to consideration.”
In terms of his stance on whether the EU aid should be factored into the competition, McCain said: “First of all, I’d have to know how those subsidies are. The fact is that we subsidize Boeing because they take the profits from defense contracts and invest those profits into their product. And so we’ll have to have an evaluation…of the whole thing.”
Brownback acknowledged McCain’s renewed involvement in the tanker contract battle.
“His involvement is well known and has a certain perspective on this, and we will be communicating back and forth with him and his office about it,” Brownback said about his fellow Republican.