By Marina Malenic
The Defense Department may not meet a target deadline for releasing its final request for proposals for a new aerial refueling tanker at the end of the month, as officials continue to wade through the hundreds of questions and comments submitted by the competing companies and members of Congress, the department’s top acquisition official said this week.
DoD officials had said a final RFP for the KC-X tanker aircraft would be released 60 days after the release of the draft in early October.
“It’ll happen when we’re done doing a thorough job of considering all the questions and suggestions we’ve gotten,” Ashton Carter, the under secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said during a Nov. 23 press roundtable at the Pentagon.
Carter told reporters that the new bidding rules will be “crystal clear” because the Air Force has better defined its requirements for the new aircraft, which is expected to replace its Eisenhower-era fleet in the coming decades.
“One of the advantages that the department obtained by going through this now…for the third or the fourth time is that we do know very well what aircraft the warfighter wants, what kind of requirements there are,” Carter said. “And that’s one reason why we were able to be as specific as we were in the draft RFP.”
Still, he said, the department will strive to “preserve the attribute of clarity” in the final document “so that it’s clear to everyone when a contract is awarded next summer why it was awarded to the party that it was awarded to.”
“It is a much less subjective source selection strategy than it was last time,” he added.
Carter also reiterated the Pentagon’s position on not including results of a World Trade Organization case on aerospace subsidies into the bidding rules. Boeing [BA] backers in Congress have argued that a preliminary WTO ruling against Airbus, the parent company of rival EADS North America, should be taken into account.
EADS North America and its industry partner Northrop Grumman [NOC] last year won the KC-X contract, which is expected to be worth between $25 billion and $50 billion through the life of the acquisition, according to Pentagon officials. Boeing’s protest of that award was sustained by the Government Accountability Office. Gates last year instituted a “cooling off period” due to the highly politicized nature of the competition, finally reopening it this fall.
Carter said the Defense Department remains on track to award a contract for 179 airplanes next summer.
“We’ve had obviously criticism from both parties,” Carter said. “I suppose that was destined to be.”