rssPentagon Will Extend Air Force Tanker Bid If Euro Giant Shows Real Interest
Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 5:40 pm
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It’s been a tough road to refurbishing the Air Force’s refueling tanker fleet. The Pentagon’s KC-X tanker bid has seen Northrup Grumman drop out in frustration. European defense giant EADS has been playing coy about bidding on the multi-billion-dollar contract. EADS said earlier this month it’s considering submitting its own bid, alongside Boeing, but it wants the Pentagon to extend its May 10 deadline by 90 days. Meanwhile, the Air Force keeps its decades-old tanker fleet. But today the Pentagon put the onus back on EADS.
In a press briefing that just concluded, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said that if it receives “formal notification” from EADS as well as Boeing that they intend to bid, then the Defense Department will keep the bid open until July 10. That’s 30 days short of what EADS wants. Morrell called it a “reasonable period of time,” and sweetened the pot, adding that the Pentagon would compress its schedule for a decision on awarding the KC-X contract, keeping to a deadline of “early this fall.”
Asked if international politics played a role in the decision — EADS is the parent of French aerospace giant Airbus and French President Nicholas Sarkozy said that if the process was fair, “EADS will bid” during a White House appearance yesterday that was largely about cooperation on Iran — Morrell firmly denied any such thing. “Politics are not a part of this process,” he said, “Never have been, never will be.”
Legislators have an expectation that EADS, should it win, will build the KC-X in Mobile, Ala. A group of eight bipartisan friends of Boeing in the Senate wrote to President Obama today urging the Pentagon to side with the American company.
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Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 12:30 pm
The KC-X could be built in any one of a number of aircraft plants owned by the US Government and, in effect, loaned to contractors. The decision on an airframe should be mission-oriented and meet the needs of the military and civilian customers in accord with current operational doctrine — not, incidentally, Anglo-American “strategic bombing” theory or, for that matter, “Buy American” conceits of yore.
We need a “national system” (Hamilton and List) of trade doctrine. But, that should not be the Stalinist giantism of the Pentagon or Nye Commission Socialism of the 1920's.
The Obama Administration should not pick a site to appease the obstructionist Alabama delegation, especially if nothing actually appeases them and simply reinforces a neo-Confederate hard-line that has succeeded in getting more and more pork thrown at them.
This plane could be built in any number of Democratic States or Congressional Districts. Boeing in WA does not actually need the work or the distraction. Their tanker proposal is really an attempt to keep remnants of Douglas alive in St. Louis. EADS could do that as well as or better than Boeing.
The workers are plant-specific, line-specific, or block-specific. GOCO (government-owned, contractor-operated) plant brands are just lobbies of little intrinsic military, economic, or technical significance at all. The main thrust of their lobbying today is OTC derivatives they prop themselves up with financially in civilian markets. So, who is kidding whom in DC about these matters?
A successor to the C-130 is another project that EADS could bid on. Their M-400 project is as screwed-up in Europe as the KC-X has been here.
In fact, NATO needs a military-industrial policy that focuses on conservation of fossil fuels and skilled labor as well as industrial innovation and dual-use international logistics.
The “protection” we engage in with, not against, our NATO allies should be of capacity for technical innovation and cultivation of skilled labor, since the competition is Brazil, Russia, India and China. Moreover, BRIC is legitimate competition we have to meet technically and financially, with planning, standards, and patriotic-professional discipline throughout out political economy, not with war or threats of war.
We cannot meet that competitive challenge through self-deception and corruption or more cowardice in Washington.
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