Topic: Tanker Deal Now In Hands Of Procurement Chief

Team Infidel

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
February 27, 2008 By Eric Rosenberg and Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Hearst Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- As the Air Force prepared to announce the winner of a huge defense contract to build tanker planes, attention shifted Tuesday from The Boeing Co. and EADS to John Young, 45, the top procurement official in the Pentagon.
Young, a Georgia Tech and Stanford University-trained engineer, is chairman of the Defense Acquisition Board, composed of other top Pentagon officials, including Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Although it does not select the winning bidder, Young's panel must give the go-ahead before the Air Force can announce its verdict in the heated competition between Boeing and a team of Northrop Grumman Corp. and Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. for the multibillion-dollar tanker contract.
The panel reviewed the program Monday and has been deliberating since. The winner of the contract is expected to be announced later this week, as early as Wednesday afternoon.
In vying for the tanker contract, Chicago-based Boeing has proposed a tanker model based on the company's 767 commercial airliner. The team of Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman and EADS has proposed a tanker modeled on the Airbus A330 commercial airliner.
The two teams submitted their initial proposals in April and final bids in January.
The new KC-X tanker will replace the Air Force's aging fleet of Boeing-built KC-135 tankers, which average 46 years old.
Confirmed by the Senate in November as the Pentagon's undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, Young is no stranger to the Byzantine military procurement system. He previously was the Pentagon's director of defense research and engineering -- the Pentagon's chief technology officer -- and the principal adviser to the secretary of defense on technical matters. In that post, he oversaw a $70 billion research and development budget.
Young, a Georgia native, previously served as the top procurement official in the Department of the Navy and before that on the Senate's defense appropriations committee, where he was responsible for providing advice on weapons procurement.
At Young's confirmation hearing in October before the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the panel chairman, praised his abilities but also warned him that the position he was about to assume was fraught with difficulties.
"Far too many of our major weapons acquisitions have been plagued by cost increases, late deliveries to the war fighters and performance shortfalls," Levin said, adding that 31 major weapons programs in production had cost overruns of 50 percent or more.
"Over the last few years, we've seen an alarming lack of acquisition planning across the department," Levin told him.
But Levin added that Young was capable of reining in the problems.
"I don't know if there's any higher praise that can be given to a nominee than what fellow staff members give to him. And our staffs are very, very high on you, Mr. Young," Levin said at the time.

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