By Marina Malenic
Representatives from the rival industry teams involved in the contest to build the Air Force’s KC-X tanker replacement fleet met separately with Air Force officials last week to discuss concerns about the terms of the bidding, industry executives said.
EADS North America CEO Sean O’Keefe told reporters that the meetings took place Dec. 8 at Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio.
“We couldn’t ask for a more thoughtful and forward-leaning response,” he said when asked to characterize the nature of the talks. The Pentagon is now poised to to release a final request for proposals (RFP) in the middle of next month, he said during a Dec. 11 press briefing.
EADS and its partner, Northrop Grumman [NOC], won a contract to build 179 tankers for the Air Force in February 2008, only to have it scrapped after U.S. auditors upheld a Boeing [BA] protest tied to Air Force missteps in evaluating the bids.
Boeing spokesman Bill Barksdale acknowledged that representatives from his company also met with the Air Force for several hours.
“We were told our input would be shared with senior Air Force leadership as they move forward to releasing the final RFP in January 2010,” Barksdale said in a blog post.
O’Keefe, meanwhile, said his company supported its partner’s threat to boycott the competition. Northrop Grumman last week threatened to drop out, issuing a to top Pentagon weapons buyer Ashton Carter alleging that the draft is biased in favor of a “smaller aircraft with limited multirole capability” like that offered by Boeing.
“This is not a negotiating ploy,” O’Keefe said.
“We believe that we can…provide a quality capability,” he added. “If that is not what the government is looking for, then there is not a lot of point in offering something.”
Guy Hicks, a spokesman for the company, told reporters at the briefing that the final RFP would have to be altered substantially to make a Northrop-EADS bid viable from a business standpoint.
“The value of added capability offered above the minimum requirement must be included and fairly weighted in the final request for proposal,” Hicks said. He specified capabilities such as greater range, fuel offload and transport capacity.
Earlier in the week, a top Air Force general expressed strong support for the draft RFP.
“From the requirements standpoint, I feel very good about it,” said Air Force Gen. Duncan McNabb, chief of U.S. Transportation Command. “My take is that everything we need in the new tanker is reflected” in the draft document, issued in September.
O’Keefe acknowledged that winning the tanker contract is “critical” to the Airbus business strategy in the United States. The company has plans to move production of its civilian A330 freighter aircraft to Mobile, Ala., if the plant is opened to manufacture tankers. The Mobile factory would be the first in the United States for the European firm.