AF officials to brief Congress on tanker RFP - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

AF officials to brief Congress on tanker RFP

The Air Force will unveil to lawmakers Wednesday the final version of its request for proposals for the $35 billion KC-X tanker competition, top service officials said Tuesday.

“We’ll be prepared, actually [Wednesday], to roll out the RFP,” Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing. The secretary added that he and Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter will brief lawmakers on the solicitation.

Earlier in the hearing, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said that the RFP will be released within days. Industry then will have 60 days to offer their bids. After that, the Air Force expects to award a contract for the new tankers sometime this summer.

While Donley declined to go into the specifics of the RFP, he and Schwartz both said repeatedly that they “take issue” with Northrop Grumman-EADS criticism that claims the document is skewed in favor of Boeing and its 767-based offering, which is smaller and less expensive than the Northrop Airbus A330-based bid. Northrop has gone so far as to threaten to drop out of the competition unless significant changes are made to the final RFP to account for the increased performance of their larger aircraft, which is based on a newer design than the 767.

Donley and Schwartz also repeatedly stated during the hearing that splitting the purchase of tankers between the two defense giants would not be feasible given today’s tight budget environment. Any such move would substantially increase the number of tankers the service would have to buy each year.

While Donley and Schwartz would not discuss any major changes that have been made to the cost focused-draft RFP, the Air Force’s top uniformed acquisition officer, Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford, said that the service has been paying attention to both Boeing’s and Northrop’s concerns to “the extend we could.”

In addition to Northrop’s complaint that the RFP is skewed toward a cheaper airplane, both companies are uneasy with the fixed-price nature of the solicitation for a contract that will have the winner delivering airplanes for decades to come.

Shackelford did not comment on any changes to the contractual structure of the RFP.