Boeing, Northrup Launch Air Tanker Wars, Round II

Hey, that Bob guy is really, really smart. The AF begged Northrop Grumman to enter this competition because of the illegal activities of The Boeing Company in the Tanker Leasing scam a few years back. Northrop Grumman said it would propose only if there was a fair competition. Guess what, Northrop Grumman got it right and was the winner. EADS already has an A330 Tanker flying, Northrop Grumman/EADS SDD-1 aircraft has already had its first flight. Boeing has a couple of Japan and Italy 767 hangar queens. Northrop Grumman/EADS will deliver the first 50 KC-Xs two year ahead of the Boeing proposal. The USAF got it right. Deal with it Boeing!

Concerned Taxpayer, Just in case you’re still looking at this thread, this is from an article in the Washington Post in 2004. Who did you say was in using undue influence? “In the previous Tanker leasing scandal Air Force Secretary James G. Roche asked a lobbyist for Boeing Co. to use the company''s Washington contacts to "quash" a deputy undersecretary of defense and make him "pay an appropriate price" for objecting to the Air Force''s decision to lease Boeing 767 tanker aircraft, according to e-mails released in 2004 by a Republican senator critical of the tanker deal. Roche also pressured independent military cost analysts who questioned the high price of the lease, described other internal Pentagon critics as “animals,” and ridiculed executives at European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS) and its Airbus division, the consortium that offered a competing plan, the e-mails show. He told his top public relations aide to “blow . . . away” the EADS chairman for raising questions about the Air Force decision to work with Boeing. At one point in the three-year Air Force campaign for the lease, Roche e-mailed a friend at Raytheon Co., “Privately between us: Go Boeing!” “ By the way, not that I agree with it, but there is also a WTO case against Boeing for receiving subsidies from the DOD and NASA which are not available to foreign Aerospace firms. Should Boeing have been banned from the competition? Think the political furor over this contract will bolster their case? Thanks for the kind words EB, Semper Fi

I've read literally hundreds of on-line comments regarding the tanker decision and have to say that Bob's posting is probably the best of the lot... I'm a retired USMC pilot and former USAir pilot with flight time in both Boeing and Airbus aircraft. To the Airbus detractors I say this: Boeing is like a Ford, Airbus is like a BMW. Personally, I prefer BMWs....

I'd like to know where you came to this opinion. Boeing should have won that award. the Air Force did not have to consider the EU government subsidies given to EADs. This makes the competition lop sided. The US has a law suit pending in the WTO against these practices in the commercial world. How do our US companies compete internationally, when foreign governments are subsidizing their production. McCain wrote letters to the Pentagon forcing them to ignore/not consider these subsidies. McCain also hired 3 ex EADS lobbyists.....doesn't sound kosher to me. Every step of the way, McCain assisted, directed changes to this proposal to fit EADS airplane. GET THE STORY STRAIGHT! and quit with the propaganda and the intentional misleading of the public. This plane would be built in France and assembled in the US. PERIOD There is a large impact of lost jobs in the US. PERIOD The Boeing concept is far more inexpensive during the maintenance phase, (especially with the increase in fuel costs) PERIOD. I am beginning to question your motives! McCain cost us money over this whole evolution and has had a vendetta against Boeing, which he proudly boasts about, (not using that word of course). If we would have gone with the original Boeing proposal and win, with leasing, we would have new planes in the fleet already. Now it has taken how many more years to go thru this procurement cycle and the costs associated with it. If this is his philosophy, then he won't make a good president! Jean Oliver

I agree with Bob! Cant explain the deal better! All the whiners about the deal come from the states of WA and KS where they would have had more revenue with a Boeing win. Those (all the protectionists) are the senators/representatives not thinking of America''s development and are focussed on personal gains. See the global view and open your eyes. Northrop plane (Yes thats right its a northrop Grumman plane) is much better than the Boeing offering. Boeing is just crying foul because they lost. Sen. Patty Murray also echoed Boeing''s view on the deal being fair and the whole process being transperent in April of 2007. Why change the stance after boeing loses? Wake up America...If we expect the world to buy our defence products, why cant we buy only a fraction of it back from the world?! Thats a global view

Both contractors made numerous public statements on how transparent and complete the process was. Boeing delighted with the process until they lost, they basically just assumed they would win. They keep saying they would have proposed the 777 "if only they had known". They could have proposed both the 777 and the 767 if they wanted too. However the 777 is dramatically larger than the A330, and much more expensive, plus they have a huge commercial backlog and could never have delivered on time. They’ve always know what Northrop was proposing. This isn’t the first DOD contract Boeing has bid on, give me a break, they know how to bid. They just apparently don’t know how to win, other than crying to their political hacks. I guess Boeing must think everyone is stupid enough to believe their bull about the fuel efficiency of the 767. The A330 tanker carries 26% more fuel than the 767, so of course it would burn more fuel to deliver a full payload. The Northrop Grumman Tanker is more fuel efficient per gallon of fuel delivered to the war fighter. That is the parameter which the Air Force used in the competition, and Boeing knew that. One of the reasons that commercial airlines choose the A330 over the 767 is its fuel efficiency. Boeing doesn’t really even care about the Tanker Contract; its small potato’s compared to the commercial business. After driving Lockheed out of the commercial aircraft business and buying McDonald Douglas, and then systematically closing their commercial assembly lines, they have achieved monopoly status in the US. Another wide body assembly line in the lower cost South East has Boeing sweating bullets. Boeing gets the message big time! They may have an American made commercial airliner business to compete with again. That’s what this is about. The Tanker contract is big, but it’s only 20 planes a year, Boeing sell’s 500 planes a year to the airlines they don’t want competition in the US again. EADS has already announced they will produce commercial A330 freighters in the Tanker facility. Boeing may actually have to compete and the US industrial base will expand. There will actually be 3 places in the world where commercial wide bodies are assembled 2 of them in the US again. When Northrop announced, and then quickly retracted, that the contract would actually be in-sourcing 1500 jobs from Europe they were talking about the A330 freighter work. EADS had a fit because the Germans, French and Britt’s might actually realize that they are not competitive with the facilities and workers Northrop and EADS are establishing in Alabama. Because of the Dollar/Euro exchange rate, any work done on an aircraft in the US saves 40% in labor costs on the finished product. This is not even counting the lower labor cost in the US compared to the European welfare states. This is in-sourcing jobs to the US. EADS has an incentive is to do as much work here as they possibly can; not because they love America, but because it reduces the cost of the finial product. American subcontractors will actually be able to compete for more of the piece part work because of the favorable exchange rate. For once we are the lower cost market. Northrop’s 2nd and 3rd Tanker contract bid’s in a few years will in all probability have even more American content than this one, Boeing’s is likely to have less since all of there new commercial line are heavily outsourced. Boeing will not have that drum to beat anymore. What Boeing won’t tell you is that they have outsourced more than 50% of their commercial aircraft business out of the US. The only reason the 767 has 85% domestic content is because the line is shutting down, due to lack of commercial orders. If Boeing had offered the 777 it would have had less domestic US content than the A330. A large portion of the high tech 787 is manufactured in Japan including the wings! There is not very much high tech work in building a 20 year old 767 design. Wake up; the political hacks in Washington State are the ones whining the loudest. Less than 10% of A330 Tanker work is French, the major portion of the foreign content is from the UK one of our best allies. All of the militarization work will be done in Northrop’s new facility adjacent to the EADS assembly building. Northrop’s engineering work will be done in Melbourne Florida.

Let's be FAIR and "Play Nice" Boys. If the US Government subsidized Boeings development costs, and Limited Bidding on THEIR PROGRAMS the way the EUROPEANS SEEM TO DO, perhaps we all could COMPETE and play in the SAME SAND BOX. But Underhanded dealing and "Lobbying" should NOT be acceptable from either party (Not Just ONE). Let’s show some ethics in Business.