Bloomberg, 6/12/8
Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp., locked in a three-month dispute over a $35 billion U.S. Air Force refueling-tanker contract, may wind up in court before the fight is done.
Northrop and partner European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. won the contract Feb. 29 by beating Boeing, the Air Force's only supplier of the aircraft for half a century. Boeing protested the award to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog agency that must make its recommendation to the Pentagon by June 19.
Representative Jo Bonner, Republican of Alabama, and Senator Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican, are backing the Northrop Grumman team that includes EADS, the parent company of Boeing's larger commercial-plane rival Airbus SAS. Airbus, which overtook Boeing in size in 2003, intends to make tanker parts in Europe and ship them to Mobile, Alabama, to assemble both the military and commercial-freighter versions.
Posted June 12, 2008 - 5:16 am
Friday, September 3, 2010
Hmmm, the Air Force goes with the tanker that they feel suits their needs best. Boeing wants them to buy their tanker regardless of what the airmen need. Boeing knew what Northrup Grumman was coming up with, a bigger tanker than theirs that would be more versatile; so why didn’t they develop a bigger tanker themselves instead of just putting a gas pump on the back of an existing airframe? This is just like making your soldiers use an inferior rifle to make some corporation happy, or the bureau of ordnance happy, which is what has happened time and time again in our military. Just ask the submariners in WWII about the early torpedoes that would not explode on direct or magnetic contact with an enemy ship.