Well, well, well...
The Air Force, in a stunning upset against the Boeing Company, awarded a $40 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers on Friday to a partnership between Northrop Grumman and the European parent of Airbus, putting a critical military contract partly into the hands of a foreign company.
Abu Muqawama knows next to nothing about the way the U.S. Air Force buys airplanes, but he knows enough from reading the Economist that this is huge. The KC-30, virtually everyone agreed, was the better aircraft. But did anyone honestly see Boeing not getting this contract? This gives us at Abu Muqawama hope in the ongoing war against ridiculous F-22 appropriations. If a large domestic lobby can be rejected in favor of common sense in one case...
Update: "The Captain" has an intelligent response here.
29 comments:
Yeah but these are perhaps the least sexy class of aircraft that USAF flies.
This way they can seem fair and reasonable on a major acquisition to improve their credibility on their fighter adventures (having a few people sent to jail for corruption may have had impact as well).
This is called "revenge."
Boeing rightly incensed a number of people (John McCain being a key player here) and their assuming the DoD would never pick what is a major industrial rival of the US aviation industry was obviously an erroneous one.
It will be interesting to see the reaction of the two Democratic presidential front runners on this one: "McCain crucial player in sending major manufacturing jobs overseas!" Or something like that.
The real tragedy was losing someone who may have been CSAF--Greg "Speedy" Martin. A brilliant general and fine officer who had the great misfortune to take over Air Force Materiel Command just as the shite was hitting the fan over Boeing and McCain was gearing up to stick it to the Service as a result.
As far as the F22 appropriations are concerned, define "ridiculous."
And...let the litigation begin.
This is not the end of this. Boeing isn't going to let this go. It will be tied up in the courts for years.
We Alabama rednecks and displaced coonasses are pretty happy that the contract went to Northrup Grumman.
It should be noted that given the vitriol that Washingtonians have displayed toward Alabamians, we consider Washington state to be just as "foreign" a place as we do then nations of EADS (sometimes even moreso).
No doubt the f22 is considered overpriced by this author. He should consider, perhaps, that the alternative f35 - touted as an inexensive f15 / f16 replacement - is over budget and that, due to smaller than expected aquisition of this aircraft may well come out costing in the $100 million per copy range. Not much less than the f22. Each aircraft has different requirements (f22 is an air supremacy fighter with light attack duties, f22 is a hybrid fighter/attack aircraft with vtol variant) there is room for considerable numbers of both in our future air force.
Saab Viggen is what you should invest in. Costs half, can be fixed by hand, full spectrum capacity at todays peak levels. ;-) On a serious note, it will be interesting to see how the end-user agreements on the tech will be shared. Part of the fighter-discussion up here is focused on that, US equipment is useless against the US.
Sorry, meant the JAS 39 Gripen, from the same makers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAS_39_Gripen
Rather than an example of competitive bidding, could this be a deal between Airbus and Boeing in an attempt to avoid WTO litigation and bickering?
Or some variant on that theme? (pressed publish to quickly)
JBlog has it right - the fat lady in opera hasn't sung yet.
There's no doubt Boeing will challenge this since it pretty much means the end of the 767 production line in Everett. The EADS aircraft, however, clearly is better at meeting the AF requirements however. Hopefully this won't be a CSAR-X redux where years are wasted.
As for F-22 procurement, there are only 60 aircraft left to buy which will cost a little over 8 billion over the next three years. The time for fighting F-22 procurement is over.
In my mind this is payback to Boeing for the procurement fruad in 2004. The Air Force should have made sure that Boeing was debarred temporarily for that and ineligible for this award, If the Airforce did things correctly Boeing might have trouble with a lawsuit because it will open that can of worms again.
This isn't at all surprising. If one looks at the true cost of Major Military Acquisition programs it generally boils down to the cost of maintaining a low production assembly line. The costs are enormous.
Boeings proposal was exactly what the USAF/Congress doesn't want(except for the Congressman in the effected district)...to be the last buyer of a low production aircraft. They end up being saddled with the costs of keeping 10,000's of workers employed just so they can buy spare parts.
This is the problem with the F-22. Without export buyers, the USAF and Congress end up funding the cost of maintaining a low rate production line. At least with the F-35, the costs will be shared between the USAF,Navy, Marine Corp
instapilot, re: "....may have been CSAF--"
A CSAF coming from Materiel Command!? That would definitely be a break in tradition. AFMC and its predecessor AFLC has always been the last stop before they shed the 4-star uniform and begin making some serious money as a board member of one of the defense contractors.
The F-22 and (what became of) the F-35 were the Air Force Establishment's ultimate victory and endzone spike over Boyd and the Fighter Mafia. Now they're gonna pay for it, as their 'bigger, faster, steathy' fighter is simply too expensive to procure in enough bulk to keep the fighter jocks in jobs. Too bad; that's what happens when you put ego ahead of national security.
It also looks like it could be another example of buying the most expensive option with the most bells and whistles.
European countries have been buying U.S. military equipment for decades, making them dependant on the U.S. (just think of all the discussions about cancelling the F 35 and thereby screwing the UK and others). Now, the relation is getting somewhat more equal. I'd guess that some Europeans told the U.S. administration in private that the U.S should open their defense market or Europe will keep other markets closed to the U.S. as well (hell, if I were to decide, I would make Europe buy some C-17s now in exchange for the US getting a couple of A-400's later - this would help to loose a lot of restraints for the planing of U.S. mechanized troops).
Also, this decision will help the U.S. demand for reduced subsidies to Airbus, as the Europeans main counterargument is Boing getting lots of extra money from the US gov via military procurement.
But I think the main message is directed to the U.S. defense industries. It says: stop trying to screw us (the tax payer) or we will get more of our stuff elsewhere. Considering all the cost overruns and other problems of U.S. procurement (coast guard cutters anyone?) this message was absolutely needed.
(Repost from Danger room)
It should be noted that given the vitriol that Washingtonians have displayed toward Alabamians, [...]
What vitriol? If someone from washington is spewing vitriol, it's going to be directed at either california, or a certain group of idiots in the other washington.
Alabama isn't even on the target list.
Two points are being overlooked here, I believe, which has caused Airbus to capture this contract:
1) the 2004 scandal (in which my own Senator, Uncle Ted, had messy hands) which attempted to steer an uncontested, unvetted tanker deal to Boeing; thanks to Sen. McCain for blowing the whistle on that one;
2) the A330, from the specs reviewed by the USAF, is twice the aircraft the 767 purports to be.
The Air Force picked the best aircraft, period.
That said, the noise from this selection process is far from subsiding. My prognostication? We'll see a dual-run of tankers being produced: 330s and 767s.
And it will be a mess.
"A CSAF coming from Materiel Command!? That would definitely be a break in tradition. AFMC and its predecessor AFLC has always been the last stop before they shed the 4-star uniform and begin making some serious money as a board member of one of the defense contractors."
Gen. Martin was headed to be commander of PACOM after AFMC before Sen. McCain (VERY unfairly) torpedoed his career. And I'm sure this had nothing to do with it, but a Navy admiral was given command of PACOM instead.
Anecdotally, I've heard that there are air crews training to fly the same KC-135s their...grandfathers flew.
Something had to give, and it had to be shown that the chAir Force is not, in fact, a wholly-owned Boeing subsidiary.
On the commercial side, the 767 variants have far outsold the A330.
So it's hard to buy the "better aircraft" line. Italy bought 767 tankers, for God's sake.
I think this is just a payoff to Alabama's Republican Congressional delegation for loyalty for Bush vs. the largely democratic Washington delegation.
Did not make any difference that the EADS contract gives relatively few third-world style "assembly" jobs for Alabama, vs the many more Americans who would be employed in full manufacture of the 767.
France and Alabama - allied, who woulda thought it?
"So it's hard to buy the "better aircraft" line. Italy bought 767 tankers, for God's sake."
And has had ridiculous amounts of certification troubles and other problems with them. There's a reason that KC-767 has been getting its ass kicked on the international market by KC-330.
Unless their grandfathers were flying the first rebuilt and re-engined KC-135R's in the mid/late 1980s, then it might be considered a bit of a stretch to have them flying "the same plane."
Lots of work on those birds - I wonder how much of the airframe is still original?
"Lots of work on those birds - I wonder how much of the airframe is still original?"
Worth noting that a sizable chunk of the fleet (about a fifth) are KC-135Es flying with '80s era TF-33 engines as opposed to the CFM-56s of the KC-135R. The annual maintenance costs on the -Es are about a million dollars more per bird than the -Rs. Several of the -Es are actually so worn out that they are no longer airworthy, but Congress won't let the USAF put them out to pasture. (Same thing, incidentally, is happening with some of the older C-130Es.)
It isn't the same airframe as we were flying in the '50s, but rest assured that they're old enough. There's only so much you can do to an airframe before it becomes maintenance prohibitive.
Look at it this way: I could have a car from the '50s that is still drivable today, but I would have to sink a LOT of maintenance costs into it to make it that way.
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