Don't know if anyone else noticed this: the US Air Force is having a great deal of difficultly buying airplanes.
The Air Force needs some new air-to-air tankers. These are the boring, unglamorous planes that are necessary. They are big gas stations in the sky: they fly around and refuel all the other planes. Boring as shit, but necessary to move things (tanks, people, bombs, relief supplies) around the globe in this globalized age. The tankers the Air Force has are about 30 or 40 years old (converted 707s, if I remember correctly).
A few years back, the Air Force put out a proposal for new tankers. Big ticket items (replacing all the tankers was expected to cost $30 to $40 billion) takes years, so no one was surprised when it moved slowly. Eventually, the Air Force decided on a solution: lease them from Boeing. This seemed strange (leasing makes some financial sense for, say, cars when the company is buying them for you, but less so for weapons systems), so various governmental agencies (Congress, GAO) and other (press) started looking a bit closer. They discovered that the Pentagon officials were a bit to close to Boeing (the chief procurement officer retired from the Air Force and started work at Boeing just after the contract), and that the contract wasn't fair/balanced. They told the Air Force to do it over again.
That took a few more years. The competition came down to Boeing (again) and a strange consortium of Northrup-Grumman and Airbus (a European airplane manufacturer, who directly competes with Boeing for passenger-plane sales globally). No leasing this time: the US Air Force was going to buy $40 billion worth of new tankers. These are always strange "competitions" in that neither Boeing nor NG/Airbus had an actual real plane to show; the competition was of plans and proposals. The Air Force thought about this for a few years, and (bucking the patriotism vote) went with the NG/Airbus plan. Boeing squawked, cried foul, and asked a higher power (the GAO) to investigate.
The GAO report came out a few days ago. They said the Air Force had tipped the competitive scales towards NG/Airbus unfairly, and that the decision could have gone the other way (to Boeing) if the Air Force had actually played fair. The Air Force had no immediate comment, Boeing celebrated, and NG/Airbus was unhappy. The GAO result isn't legally binding on the Air Force (they could ignore it), but they'll likely do it over again.
Thus, the Air Force has twice failed to buy planes, and is looking at a third go-round for what amounts to a simple purchase (compared to other planes, a tanker isn't really complicated). The official Air Force response is days (or weeks) away, but certainly this looks bad for them. And showcases how screwed up the procurement system is (and always has been).
Just thought you might be interested.
Posted by baltar at June 19, 2008 03:37 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Corruption | Homeland Insecurity | Military Affairs | Politics