Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
May 28, 2008 Aerospace Notebook
By James Wallace, P-I Reporter
IT'S TIME FOR the Air Force to explain in far greater detail than it has why The Boeing Co. lost the tanker competition to the team of Northrop and EADS, a noted defense expert said Tuesday.
"Something is not quite right here," Loren Thompson, defense analyst with the private think tank the Lexington Institute, said in an interview.
In the past, Thompson has been widely criticized by Boeing supporters for being pro-Northrop on the tanker controversy.
But Thompson insisted he has only been reporting what Air Force sources have been telling him, and he had not taken sides in the dispute over whose tanker is better. Thompson said he's had three months since the tanker announcement to understand the issues and listen to all sides, and his latest report, which was posted on the Lexington Institute's Web site late Tuesday, represents the "conclusions I have come to."
The tanker-selection process was hardly as "transparent" as the Air Force has claimed, wrote Thompson, who has close contact with senior Air Force officers.
"Whatever else this process may have been, it definitely was not transparent," he wrote.
Boeing had been widely expected to win the Air Force competition with its 767 tanker, but instead the Air Force earlier this year picked Northrop and EADS, the European Aeronautic, Defense and Space Co., the parent of Airbus, to supply it with 179 tankers based on the far bigger and heavier Airbus A330.
Boeing has filed a protest of the Air Force decision with the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog agency for Congress. The GAO has a mid-June deadline to decide the merits of Boeing's protest. It would be highly unusual for the protest to be upheld.
But Thompson said that even if the GAO finds that only small mistakes were made by the Air Force, given Boeing's contention that the competition was very close, such a finding might be enough for Boeing's supporters in Congress to force the Air Force to hold another tanker competition.
Boeing claims that the Air Force changed its tanker requirements to help the bigger Airbus plane win the competition. Boeing has argued that the competition was "seriously flawed."
But Northrop has mounted an aggressive public-relations campaign, issuing almost daily statements about why its tanker is better than Boeing's. And Northrop has sharply criticized Boeing for suggesting the competition was unfair.
Previously, Thompson said Air Force leaders believe Boeing "is willfully misstating the facts in a bid to obscure the inferior performance of the plane it proposed."
But in the interview Tuesday, Thompson said he has been waiting for the Air Force to make a "slam-dunk" case to him about why Northrop and EADS won. But The Air Force has not been able to make such a case, he said.
"I never really got what I would consider an analytical explanation for the outcome, so what do we really know about what happened?" he said. "It just doesn't look good."
In his latest report, Thompson said the Air Force has failed to answer "even the most basic questions about how the decision was made."
"Whatever it finds," he wrote of the GAO review of Boeing's protest, "the Air Force has some explaining to do."
Thompson made the following points in his report and in the interview that he said raise serious questions about the Air Force decision:
The Air Force claims it would cost roughly the same to develop, manufacture and operate 179 tankers regardless of whether they are based on Boeing's 767 or the Airbus A330. But the Airbus plane is 27 percent heavier than Boeing's and burns a ton more fuel per flight hour, Thompson said. "With fuel prices headed for the upper stratosphere, how can both planes cost the same amount to build and operate over their lifetimes?"
The Air Force claims it would be equally risky to develop the Boeing and Airbus tanker. But the Airbus tankers will be built at plants in Alabama that do not yet exist, Thompson noted. Boeing's tanker would be built on its long-running 767 assembly line.
It doesn't make "common sense," Thompson said, that the Northrop-EADS tanker production plan would not have greater risk than Boeing's.
"This is not plausible," he said.
The Air Force has said the Northrop-EADS team received higher ratings on past performance than the Boeing team. But Thompson noted that Boeing has built all 600 of the tankers in the Air Force fleet, and Northrop and EADS have never delivered a single tanker equipped with the refueling boom the Air Force requires.
"How can Northrop and Airbus have superior performance?" Thompson said.
The Air Force has said a computer simulation of how the competing tankers would function in an actual wartime scenario strongly favored the larger Airbus plane. But the simulation assumed longer runways, stronger asphalt and more parking space than actually exist at forward bases, Thompson said, and the simulation failed to consider the consequences of losing bases in wartime.
"How can such unrealistic assumptions be relevant to the selection of a next-generation tanker?" Thompson said.
He also wrote in his report that the Air Force refused to consider Boeing cost data based on 10 million hours operating the commercial 767, and instead substituted repair cost on the 50-year-old KC-135 tanker. The Air Force also had said early on that it would not award extra points for exceeding key performance objectives, but then proceeded to award extra points, according to Thompson.
"Even now, neither of the competing teams really understands why the competition turned out the way it did," Thompson wrote. "It would be nice to hear from the Air Force about how key trade-offs were made, because at present it looks like a double standard prevailed in the evaluation of the planes offered by the two teams."
Aerospace Notebook is a Wednesday feature by P-I aerospace reporter James Wallace.
May 28, 2008 Aerospace Notebook
By James Wallace, P-I Reporter
IT'S TIME FOR the Air Force to explain in far greater detail than it has why The Boeing Co. lost the tanker competition to the team of Northrop and EADS, a noted defense expert said Tuesday.
"Something is not quite right here," Loren Thompson, defense analyst with the private think tank the Lexington Institute, said in an interview.
In the past, Thompson has been widely criticized by Boeing supporters for being pro-Northrop on the tanker controversy.
But Thompson insisted he has only been reporting what Air Force sources have been telling him, and he had not taken sides in the dispute over whose tanker is better. Thompson said he's had three months since the tanker announcement to understand the issues and listen to all sides, and his latest report, which was posted on the Lexington Institute's Web site late Tuesday, represents the "conclusions I have come to."
The tanker-selection process was hardly as "transparent" as the Air Force has claimed, wrote Thompson, who has close contact with senior Air Force officers.
"Whatever else this process may have been, it definitely was not transparent," he wrote.
Boeing had been widely expected to win the Air Force competition with its 767 tanker, but instead the Air Force earlier this year picked Northrop and EADS, the European Aeronautic, Defense and Space Co., the parent of Airbus, to supply it with 179 tankers based on the far bigger and heavier Airbus A330.
Boeing has filed a protest of the Air Force decision with the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog agency for Congress. The GAO has a mid-June deadline to decide the merits of Boeing's protest. It would be highly unusual for the protest to be upheld.
But Thompson said that even if the GAO finds that only small mistakes were made by the Air Force, given Boeing's contention that the competition was very close, such a finding might be enough for Boeing's supporters in Congress to force the Air Force to hold another tanker competition.
Boeing claims that the Air Force changed its tanker requirements to help the bigger Airbus plane win the competition. Boeing has argued that the competition was "seriously flawed."
But Northrop has mounted an aggressive public-relations campaign, issuing almost daily statements about why its tanker is better than Boeing's. And Northrop has sharply criticized Boeing for suggesting the competition was unfair.
Previously, Thompson said Air Force leaders believe Boeing "is willfully misstating the facts in a bid to obscure the inferior performance of the plane it proposed."
But in the interview Tuesday, Thompson said he has been waiting for the Air Force to make a "slam-dunk" case to him about why Northrop and EADS won. But The Air Force has not been able to make such a case, he said.
"I never really got what I would consider an analytical explanation for the outcome, so what do we really know about what happened?" he said. "It just doesn't look good."
In his latest report, Thompson said the Air Force has failed to answer "even the most basic questions about how the decision was made."
"Whatever it finds," he wrote of the GAO review of Boeing's protest, "the Air Force has some explaining to do."
Thompson made the following points in his report and in the interview that he said raise serious questions about the Air Force decision:
The Air Force claims it would cost roughly the same to develop, manufacture and operate 179 tankers regardless of whether they are based on Boeing's 767 or the Airbus A330. But the Airbus plane is 27 percent heavier than Boeing's and burns a ton more fuel per flight hour, Thompson said. "With fuel prices headed for the upper stratosphere, how can both planes cost the same amount to build and operate over their lifetimes?"
The Air Force claims it would be equally risky to develop the Boeing and Airbus tanker. But the Airbus tankers will be built at plants in Alabama that do not yet exist, Thompson noted. Boeing's tanker would be built on its long-running 767 assembly line.
It doesn't make "common sense," Thompson said, that the Northrop-EADS tanker production plan would not have greater risk than Boeing's.
"This is not plausible," he said.
The Air Force has said the Northrop-EADS team received higher ratings on past performance than the Boeing team. But Thompson noted that Boeing has built all 600 of the tankers in the Air Force fleet, and Northrop and EADS have never delivered a single tanker equipped with the refueling boom the Air Force requires.
"How can Northrop and Airbus have superior performance?" Thompson said.
The Air Force has said a computer simulation of how the competing tankers would function in an actual wartime scenario strongly favored the larger Airbus plane. But the simulation assumed longer runways, stronger asphalt and more parking space than actually exist at forward bases, Thompson said, and the simulation failed to consider the consequences of losing bases in wartime.
"How can such unrealistic assumptions be relevant to the selection of a next-generation tanker?" Thompson said.
He also wrote in his report that the Air Force refused to consider Boeing cost data based on 10 million hours operating the commercial 767, and instead substituted repair cost on the 50-year-old KC-135 tanker. The Air Force also had said early on that it would not award extra points for exceeding key performance objectives, but then proceeded to award extra points, according to Thompson.
"Even now, neither of the competing teams really understands why the competition turned out the way it did," Thompson wrote. "It would be nice to hear from the Air Force about how key trade-offs were made, because at present it looks like a double standard prevailed in the evaluation of the planes offered by the two teams."
Aerospace Notebook is a Wednesday feature by P-I aerospace reporter James Wallace.