Whatever the Government Accountability Office ultimately finds as it looks at Boeing’s protest on a contract to Northrop Grumman for aerial refueling tankers, “the Air Force has some explaining to do,” said Lexington Group defense analyst Loren Thompson.
First, Thompson said, the Air Force said it would cost about the same amount to develop, build and operate 179 tankers, whether they are based on Boeing’s 767 or the Airbus A330. But The A330 is 27 percent heavier than the Boeing aircraft and burns more than a ton more fuel per flight hour. “How can both planes cost the same… over their lifetimes?” he asks.
Next, the Air Force says it would be equally risky to develop the Boeing tanker or the Airbus tanker. But Boeing proposes to build the tanker on the same assembly lines that produce other Boeing aircraft. Airbus proposes to build its tanker at a plant with a workforce that does not yet exist in Alabama. “How can risks be equal?” Thompson asks.
Third, the Air Force says a computerized simulation of how the competing tankers would function in a wartime scenario favored the larger Airbus plane. But the simulation assumed longer runways, stronger asphalt and more parking space than actually exists. “How can such unrealistic assumptions be relevant,” he asks.
Finally, the Air Force says the Northrop-Airbus team had higher ratings on past performance than Boeing. But Boeing built all 600 of the tankers in the Air Force’s current fleet. Northrop and Airbus, meanwhile, have never delivered a single tanker equipped with the refueling boom the Air Force requires. How does that equal superior past performance for Northrop/Airbus? Thompson said.
“I could go on,” he said. “Whatever else this process may have been, it definitely was not transparent.” Neither team understands why the competition turned out the way it did, he said. “It would be nice to hear from the Air Force about how key tradeoffs were made, because at present it looks like a double standard prevailed in the evaluation of the planes offered by the two teams.”