Machinists union officials are expressing renewed skepticism about the fairness of the process of rebidding a $35 billion Air Force refueling tanker plane contract.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon reopened the bidding for the two contenders, Chicago-based Boeing Co. and a team comprised of California-based Northrop Grumman and the military division of Europe’s Airbus Industrie.
In February, the Defense Department awarded the contract to the Airbus team, sparking a protest from Boeing and a directive from the Government Accountability Office to rebid the deal. The GAO agreed with Boeing that the contract process was flawed, and appeared biased toward Airbus, which offered a version of its A330 commercial plane.
That plane is much larger than the Boeing entry, a military version of its 767 commercial plane. But Boeing argued successfully that the Pentagon’s specifications had called for an aircraft about the size of the 767, and added that some specifications were changed after the initial contract was offered for bids, skewing the contest toward Airbus.
But in a statement Aug. 12, Machinists union General Vice President Richard Michalski said the new round of bidding is starting to look like it, too, is being skewed in favor of Airbus, which will make its plane mostly overseas, and would be powered by engines made by Fairfield-based General Electric. The union has backed the Boeing entry, which would be built mainly in the U.S. and would be powered by engines built by East Hartford-based Pratt & Whitney.
‘Alarm Bells’
“Alarm bells are going off over recent Pentagon statements that it will give ‘extra credit’ to the refueling tanker that carries more fuel,” Michalski said. “Such an emphasis in the new round of bidding would be a shift from the original criteria and would heavily favor the Airbus 330-200 aircraft over the Boeing KC-767.”
Michalski said The Air Force previously assured Boeing that no extra credit would be given for exceeding original specifications regarding size and capacity.
“We’re determined that this new round of bidding should not be a warmed-over rerun of the initial competition,” he said. “Every level of this union was mobilized to support a fair bidding process and we’re not going to stand by and let this new competition be hijacked by lobbyists, bureaucrats, or anyone else.”
Boeing partisans also have said that the Airbus-Northrop Grumman plane would be too large to fit many military airfields and would use more fuel than the Boeing entry.
If Boeing were to offer a larger tanker, its options would appear to include a plane based on its 777, or one based on its 767-400, a larger version of the 767-200. The 767-400 is roughly the same size as the Airbus A330-200.
The Defense Department’s director of procurement and acquisitions policy Shay Assad said in a news conference earlier this month that the Pentagon will discuss the new bidding process with Northrop-Grumman and Boeing. Once the final request for proposals are delivered to both companies, each will have 45 days to submit revisions to their proposals, according to Assad.
Through much of November the Defense Department will conduct discussions with the companies about their proposals, and by late November or early December, the Pentagon will request final offers, he said. The contract award should be announced by Dec. 31, Assad said.
