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Well, well, well...
March 1, 2008 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 6:08am | 28 Comments
The Air Force, in a stunning upset against the Boeing Company, awarded a $40 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers on Friday to a partnership between Northrop Grumman and the European parent of Airbus, putting a critical military contract partly into the hands of a foreign company.
Abu Muqawama knows next to nothing about the way the U.S. Air Force buys airplanes, but he knows enough from reading the Economist that this is huge. The KC-30, virtually everyone agreed, was the better aircraft. But did anyone honestly see Boeing not getting this contract? This gives us at Abu Muqawama hope in the ongoing war against ridiculous F-22 appropriations. If a large domestic lobby can be rejected in favor of common sense in one case...
Update: "The Captain" has an intelligent response here.
Abu Muqawama knows next to nothing about the way the U.S. Air Force buys airplanes, but he knows enough from reading the Economist that this is huge. The KC-30, virtually everyone agreed, was the better aircraft. But did anyone honestly see Boeing not getting this contract? This gives us at Abu Muqawama hope in the ongoing war against ridiculous F-22 appropriations. If a large domestic lobby can be rejected in favor of common sense in one case...
Update: "The Captain" has an intelligent response here.
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Worth noting that a sizable chunk of the fleet (about a fifth) are KC-135Es flying with '80s era TF-33 engines as opposed to the CFM-56s of the KC-135R. The annual maintenance costs on the -Es are about a million dollars more per bird than the -Rs. Several of the -Es are actually so worn out that they
Lots of work on those birds - I wonder how much of the airframe is still original?
And has had ridiculous amounts of certification troubles and other problems with them. There's a reason that KC-767 has been getting its ass kicked on the international market by KC-330.
So it's hard to buy the "better aircraft" line. Italy bought 767 tankers, for God's sake.
I think this is just a payoff to Alabama's Republican Congressional delegation for loyalty for Bush vs. the largely democratic Washington delegation.
Did not make any difference that the EADS contract gives
Something had to give, and it had to be shown that the chAir Force is not, in fact, a wholly-owned Boeing subsidiary.
Gen. Martin was headed to be commander of PACOM after AFMC before Sen. McCain (VERY unfairly) torpedoed his career.
1) the 2004 scandal (in which my own Senator, Uncle Ted, had messy hands) which attempted to steer an uncontested, unvetted tanker deal to Boeing; thanks to Sen. McCain for blowing the whistle on that one;
2) the A330, from the specs reviewed by the USAF, is twice the aircraft the 767
It should be noted that given the vitriol that Washingtonians have displayed toward Alabamians, [...]
What vitriol? If someone from washington is spewing vitriol, it's going to be directed at either california, or a certain group of idiots in the other washington.
Alabama isn't even on the target list.
A CSAF coming from Materiel Command!? That would definitely be a break in tradition. AFMC and its predecessor AFLC has always been the last stop before they shed the 4-star uniform and begin making some serious money as a board member of one of the defense contractors.
Boeings proposal was exactly what the USAF/Congress doesn't want(except for the Congressman in the effected district)...to be the last buyer of a low production aircraft. They end up
There's no doubt Boeing will challenge this since it pretty much means the end of the 767 production line in Everett. The EADS aircraft, however, clearly is better at meeting the AF requirements however. Hopefully this won't be a CSAR-X redux where years are wasted.
As for F-22 procurement, there are only 60 aircraft
It should be noted that given the vitriol that Washingtonians have displayed toward Alabamians, we consider Washington state to be just as "foreign" a place as we do then nations of EADS (sometimes even moreso).
This is not the end of this. Boeing isn't going to let this go. It will be tied up in the courts for years.
Boeing rightly incensed a number of people (John McCain being a key player here) and their assuming the DoD would never pick what is a major industrial rival of the US aviation industry was obviously an erroneous one.
It will be interesting to see the reaction of the two Democratic presidential front runners on this one: "McCain crucial player in
This way they can seem fair and reasonable on a major acquisition to improve their credibility on their fighter adventures (having a few people sent to jail for corruption may have had impact as well).
aigo
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