The hard-fought and fairly won aerial tanker award is under attack from all sides. Mobile, the Eastern Shore and surrounding communities celebrated when the Air Force announced the contract award to Northrop Grumman and its partner the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company – high-tech and high-paying jobs were coming and coming as soon as the deal was signed.
But now that deal is in jeopardy. Shock and opposition is being expressed from such disparate sources as Boeing (the losers), the Machinists Union, miscellaneous congressional delegations of both parties, anti-NAFTA-ites, Francophobes and, of course, Lou Dobbs.
I have no insight into this procurement decision beyond the limited information that has been made available to the public, but am confident the winning Northrop Grumman/ EADS offer must have been far superior to the Boeing bid. If there were any possible reasons for selecting Boeing, the evaluators would have seized upon them and done all they legally could to pick the “U.S.” company.
I can only guess at how the evaluators must have felt when it became obvious that Boeing made an inferior offer. They were going to do the right thing by picking Northrop Grumman/EADS, but knew that they were going to get attacked and beaten up for doing it. And that’s exactly what is happening.
After an initial shocked silence – “everybody” knew Boeing couldn’t lose – the general attacks started. First were the tree-huggers and labor unionists in Seattle who decried the loss of American jobs, the exporting of American technology to foreign countries, and the fact that our brave pilots and crews would be forced to fly a “French airplane.”
Not even the Boeing official who spoke from the corporate headquarters in Chicago, supported the first assertion – in fact no jobs would be lost at Boeing. The second issue – technology out-flow – is equally inaccurate. The basic platforms called for by the Air Force are in-production commercial planes. No secrets here – anybody with the bucks can buy one and do whatever they want to uncover the embedded technologies. In fact there is a bit of technology in-flow in the form of a new refueling boom that was developed for the Airbus A330 as proposed by the NG/EADS team.
The last point – the apparently offensive situation of having Air Force pilots flying a “French plane” – lacks merit and plays to prejudice. Even if being French were some criminal condition, the Airbus fleet isn’t French. It’s a pan-European product and the A330 tanker version (designated the KC-45) will be assembled in Mobile.
If we are comfortable identifying as “American” a plane assembled by Boeing in Seattle from parts made by partners and subcontractors from all over the world, shouldn’t we be equally comfortable calling the KC-45 “American” too? It’s built by Northrop Grumman (a U.S. corporation) and its European partner, EADS, in Mobile, from parts sourced world wide. Hardly different – in fact both teams claim that 60 percent of the content of their tanker (parts and labor) is U.S. sourced.
But the political opportunists, as exemplified by U.S. Representative Norm Dicks (D-Washington, often called “the Congressman from Boeing”) and his counterpart, Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington) have used attacking the award on often spurious grounds as a way to ingratiate themselves with their Boeing-dependent constituents. Hey, that’s politics, but their purported concerns about national security ignore the fact that the Air Force – the end user and expert in the area of airborne tankers – is at least as concerned about national defense as they are. The service has clearly stated that to meet the Air Force mission requirements, they need the KC-45 from NG/EADS and they need it now.
In the midst of all this, Boeing took serious action for the opposition by filing a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office. In doing this Boeing froze all progress on the contract for as long as 100 days. Within that time the GAO is required to report out on the merits of the protest and recommend corrective action (if any) to the Air Force. It’s discouraging this once-in-a-lifetime procurement (the first phase is valued at $35 billion), a procurement that was overseen by the most senior officials at the Pentagon with exceptional care devoted to being unbiased in the evaluation to preclude further delays – is now being held up by a challenge.
Even more discouraging is the risk that even after the GAO rejects the substance of the Boeing protest (as I believe they are most likely to do), funding of the procurement will be blocked in Congress. This is no remote possibility as Rep. John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania) has suggested that if all the other attempts to overturn the award fail, he as head of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, could consider withholding funds for the program. No money, no new tankers. No pot of gold for NG/EADS (and Mobile), just an empty vessel. And of course no improvement in the refueling capability of the Air Force.
Implicit in Murtha’s ruminations is the suggestion that a “right” answer to the Boeing protest would avoid the possibility of such unpleasantness. Perhaps just random thoughts, but as Ron Sugar, CEO of Northrop Grumman, recently observed, if what Congressman Murtha speculated could happen, actually did happen, it would represent unprecedented interference with the procurement process and would have global implications harmful to U.S. business interests.
So for all involved, let’s cap the champagne, put the noise makers back on the shelf and hope and pray for favorable findings and a change in the winds of Congress.
Contact Pete Gleszer at jubilee@lagniappemobile.com.
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