A top Pentagon official chastised Northrop Grumman Corp. over an advertisement it ran in the Washington Post resuming its attack on Boeing, the Wall Street Journal said.
Northrop Grumman ran a full-page ad Nov. 19 saying that Northrop’s first 68 Airbus A330-based planes cost $3 billion less to make than the same number of modified Boeing 767s.
The ad resumes the sniping in national and Washington-area newspapers as the two companies competed for a $40 billion aerial refueling tanker contract from the U.S. Air Force. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates postponed the competition until after the new administration takes office.
John Young, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics confronted Northrop on the ad. “I called the company and said, ‘I don’t appreciate this and I don’t think it’s necessary.’”
