Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
June 29, 2008
Pg. WK9
Defense Secretary Robert Gates must take over the troubled contracting process for the Air Force’s new midair refueling tankers. The current tankers are decades old and the Air Force needs the new planes. But its repeated bungling of the procurement process shows that it is incapable of doing the task on its own.
Healthy competition among defense contractors — on both sides of the Atlantic — is the best way to ensure that the Pentagon buys the best possible gear for the lowest possible price. But according to a scathing report by the Government Accountability Office, there was nothing healthy about how the Air Force awarded the $35 billion tanker contract to the team of Northrop Grumman and the European company EADS over rival Boeing.
The government watchdog agency did not say which was the best plane. But it accused the Air Force of breaking its own contracting rules. It told Boeing it wouldn’t give extra credit for a big jet and then gave extra credit to Northrop’s bigger jet. It changed its rating of Boeing’s communications and computer system without telling Boeing. But it discussed Northrop’s system with Northrop. It also appeared to give Northrop a pass on at least two important stipulations, including whether its tanker could refuel all the planes in the fleet.
The Air Force also miscalculated the full cost of operating the two rivals’ jets. If not for the errors, the report said, “we believe that Boeing would have had a substantial chance of being selected for award.”
The Air Force’s previous attempt to get new tankers — a no-bid deal to lease planes from Boeing — was derailed after it was revealed that Boeing offered a job to the Air Force official negotiating the contract.
The Air Force must follow the agency’s recommendation to reopen the bidding process. But Mr. Gates will have to work especially hard to ensure that the process isn’t further tainted by election-year politics.
That will be difficult. Both Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have called for redoing the competition. Mr. McCain, who was rightly praised for his role in derailing the earlier sweetheart deal with Boeing, must now answer for the role he played in pushing the Air Force to keep Northrop-EADS in the competition.
Some members of Congress, spurred by an aggressive and expensive lobbying campaign by Boeing, are trying to use the agency’s report as an excuse to overhaul how defense contracts are awarded: attaching buy-America provisions and job creation requirements. That was not part of the agency’s criticism.
Such requirements would almost certainly provoke retaliation from allies in Europe and elsewhere — a dangerous course for the world’s biggest weapons exporter. Excluding foreign bidders almost guarantees that taxpayers will end up paying more for less defense.
Mr. Gates is already working to overhaul the dysfunctional Air Force. He fired both the secretary of the Air Force and its chief of staff for their inexcusable failure to keep track of nuclear munitions, among other problems. Mr. Gates and the service’s new leadership must now clean up this tanker mess. They must appoint a new procurement team. With the proper oversight in place, the bidding for the new tanker must start as quickly — and nonpolitically — as possible.
June 29, 2008
Pg. WK9
Defense Secretary Robert Gates must take over the troubled contracting process for the Air Force’s new midair refueling tankers. The current tankers are decades old and the Air Force needs the new planes. But its repeated bungling of the procurement process shows that it is incapable of doing the task on its own.
Healthy competition among defense contractors — on both sides of the Atlantic — is the best way to ensure that the Pentagon buys the best possible gear for the lowest possible price. But according to a scathing report by the Government Accountability Office, there was nothing healthy about how the Air Force awarded the $35 billion tanker contract to the team of Northrop Grumman and the European company EADS over rival Boeing.
The government watchdog agency did not say which was the best plane. But it accused the Air Force of breaking its own contracting rules. It told Boeing it wouldn’t give extra credit for a big jet and then gave extra credit to Northrop’s bigger jet. It changed its rating of Boeing’s communications and computer system without telling Boeing. But it discussed Northrop’s system with Northrop. It also appeared to give Northrop a pass on at least two important stipulations, including whether its tanker could refuel all the planes in the fleet.
The Air Force also miscalculated the full cost of operating the two rivals’ jets. If not for the errors, the report said, “we believe that Boeing would have had a substantial chance of being selected for award.”
The Air Force’s previous attempt to get new tankers — a no-bid deal to lease planes from Boeing — was derailed after it was revealed that Boeing offered a job to the Air Force official negotiating the contract.
The Air Force must follow the agency’s recommendation to reopen the bidding process. But Mr. Gates will have to work especially hard to ensure that the process isn’t further tainted by election-year politics.
That will be difficult. Both Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have called for redoing the competition. Mr. McCain, who was rightly praised for his role in derailing the earlier sweetheart deal with Boeing, must now answer for the role he played in pushing the Air Force to keep Northrop-EADS in the competition.
Some members of Congress, spurred by an aggressive and expensive lobbying campaign by Boeing, are trying to use the agency’s report as an excuse to overhaul how defense contracts are awarded: attaching buy-America provisions and job creation requirements. That was not part of the agency’s criticism.
Such requirements would almost certainly provoke retaliation from allies in Europe and elsewhere — a dangerous course for the world’s biggest weapons exporter. Excluding foreign bidders almost guarantees that taxpayers will end up paying more for less defense.
Mr. Gates is already working to overhaul the dysfunctional Air Force. He fired both the secretary of the Air Force and its chief of staff for their inexcusable failure to keep track of nuclear munitions, among other problems. Mr. Gates and the service’s new leadership must now clean up this tanker mess. They must appoint a new procurement team. With the proper oversight in place, the bidding for the new tanker must start as quickly — and nonpolitically — as possible.