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Officials: No repeats of tanker mistakes

The company that builds the Air Force’s next tanker, the KC-X, will be determined by numbers, not opinions, Air Force and Defense Department officials are stressing.

Top leaders for both the service and the Pentagon made it clear to both reporters and lawmakers in separate briefings Sept. 24 that the mistakes that led to last year’s cancellation of the contract won’t be repeated.

Boeing Co. protested the award to Northrop Grumman Corp. and partner European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., complaining about the aircraft’s vague specifications as well as secret meetings between the Air Force and its competitors. The Government Accountability Office backed Boeing’s claims, leading Defense Secretary Robert Gates to nix the deal and take the competition from the Air Force. Gates returned control of the tanker program to the service in mid-September.

“This is not a repeat of the prior [2006-07] process,” Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn told reporters in rolling out the proposal for the tanker set to replace the aging KC-135 Stratotanker.

Boeing and the Northrop Grumman/EADS partnership are expected to compete for the contract again. The Northrop aircraft that won that round was its KC-30, a militarized version of the Airbus A300 commercial jet.

If the selection process stays on schedule, a manufacturer will be chosen in June. The first tanker should arrive in 2015 and should achieve initial operational capability in 2017. With about 15 planes delivered each year, the KC-X will be arriving past 2030.

The proposal lists 373 requirements set by Air Mobility Command that the tanker must have, Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley said. Two are a permanent centerline drogue system able to refuel Navy and Marine Corps fighters and the ability to take on fuel from another tanker — both are capabilities the KC-135 lacks.

Spokesmen for both Boeing and Northrop Grumman declined to comment about the requirements until they had seen the detailed draft request for proposals, which the Air Force expects to issue Friday.

Each bidder must submit a fixed price for developing and delivering four tankers used for testing, 64 production tankers and supporting equipment, the maximum price for the 111 remaining planes, and the cost of initial support services for five years. Even then, the total bill for the KC-X is predicted to be about $35 billion, the same price as the contract awarded to Northrop Grumman.

Evaluators will determine how much fuel each tanker candidate burns per hour and multiply that by 489 hours, the average number of hours a KC-135 flies each year. The advantage goes to the more fuel-efficient plane.

To determine the cost of new construction needed to support the KC-X, the Air Force will survey 11 bases that are now home to KC-135s to determine how much additional work must be done. The price advantage goes to the plane requiring less construction.

Finally, the raters will measure the planes’ “warfighting effectiveness.” This puts the planes in a computer simulation where the tanker fleet operates several conflicts simultaneously. The edge in this area goes to the aircraft that needs the fewest planes.

With all that information in hand, evaluation panels of airmen, civilians and representatives of the other services will calculate which tanker has the lowest purchase and operational cost, said Ashton Carter, under secretary of defense for acquisition.

If more than 1 percent in cost separates the two least expensive aircraft, the plane with the lower price wins, Carter said. If aircraft costs are within 1 percent of each other, then an evaluation of 93 “non-mandatory requirements” serves as a tiebreaker, he said.

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, who represents thousands of Boeing workers, agreed facts should determine the winner.

“There can be no more guessing games,” she said in a written statement.

At the same time, Murray had no doubt who the winner will be.

“I remain confident that on a level playing field, Boeing and America’s aerospace workers will prevail,”

Sen. Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, where Northrop proposes to assemble its tanker, was pleased with the process laid out by defense officials.

“The devil is in the details,” Shelby said in a statement. “I look forward to further examining the full draft request for proposals to ensure that it provides a level playing field for the competitors and the best capability for the warfighter.”