KC-45 Videos from Northrop Grumman
Filed under: Airbus, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., U.S. Air Force, Video
I found these interesting videos about the KC-45, on YouTube. The first is an advertisement for the tanker; the second focuses on the KC-45 assembly process. They’re both worth taking a look at:
Boeing claims USAF cost estimates for KC-45 favored EADS
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, development program, logistics
As part of the source selection for any program the Government does an Independent Cost Estimate (ICE) for the various proposals. If it is for an ACAT ID program the OSD Cost Analysis Improvement Group (CAIG) does it, and if it is ACAT IC then the service’s cost people do it. Boeing is claiming that the ICE for their aircraft was flawed and that the USAF deliberately favored the Northrop Grumman proposal. See the story here. Having been involved in the process of generating these estimates I find it hard to believe that the independent cost analysts would deliberately do this. Read more
KC-45 protest works it course
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, GAO, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, development program, logistics
This article makes it seem that this is something unique, but it isn’t. The winner has to stop work on the contract as DoD cannot pay them. They can certainly proceed at risk, which some companies do in this situation, but on a contract this size it makes sense not to. The GAO has 100 days to announce its ruling, and that will lead to a three month delay for the Northrop-Grumman/EADS team. With the KC-45 being based on a commercial aircraft, EADS could work on some of them with the idea of selling them to a commercial customer if necessary, or may be planning to bump such a contractor to meet original schedules.
KC-45 post on Seeking Alpha
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics, production program
I submitted a small article for Seeking Alpha on the KC-45 as a component of the future profit of either Boeing or EADS. The post reads: “Boeing lost out to EADS for the new airforce tanker contract. The KC-45 will be a version of the Airbus 330 transport aircraft. Boeing had proposed a version of the 767 aircraft. Boeing predicted in their Current Market Outlook 2007 that 28,600 new aircarft will be required to meet the growth in the airline industry by 2026. One would assume Boeing and EADS would get a large portion of these aircraft. The US Air Force will probably order less than 400 aircraft. So the tanker contract will be a small componenet of future production for Boeing or EADS, and a small component of earnings.”
Jeff Babbin is wrong
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics
Jeff Babbin, former defense official in the Reagan Administration and a columnist for The Washington Times and Human Events has an editorial on the KC-45 contract here. Because he doesn’t want to get into the industrial policy argument he claims that the need to operate from smaller fields means Boeing should have one. He calls for the contract to be taken away from Northrop Grumman and EADS and given to Boeing. I left the following comment:
“Mr. Babbin,
The A-12 disaster was caused by the Program Office lying to the Pentagon. That is whey the PM and a bunch of other people were fired. Also building a stealth replacement for the A-6 (in the Eighties) it is a little different then building a converted commercial aircraft. If you prefer I am sure that EADS could deliver 10 aircraft a year from their factories in France and Germany, they just went with Mobile to be nice to America. As to the short runway length, please tell me where all those forward deployed KC-135 aircraft operated from? I think the KC-45 will be fine flying from Diego Garcia, Guam, the US, UK and Germany. That is a specious argument.
Competition in military procurements is a good thing. Once McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing who was their competition? One of the reasons the tanker lease was overturned so quickly was the bad terms for the government. That is what a monopoly gets you.”
Good summation of Boeing and the KC-45
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics
This article by Les Blumenthal is a good summation of the issues surrounding the KC-45 award and Boeing. One of the key questions it asks is was the production of 12-15 K-767 aircraft that important to Boeing that was concentrating on B787 production? EADS wanted the contract to get a foot in the door of the US military, the size was not important as much as the just winning. Boeing did want to keep the 767 line open, but their future is obviously in the 1000 787 they have sold.
Shhh!! Don’t tell Congress
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, HAL, Military Aviation, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, production program
HAL announced today in this article that they expect their MOU with Boeing to bear fruit with exports to America. See this previous story for more on the MOA. HAL believes that they will make parts and components for Boeing for such US military programs as the F-15, F/A-18 and AH-64. Based on the furor over the tanker award to Northrop-Grumman and EADS you would think Congress would protest the outsourcing of such jobs to a foreign country.
Follow up to columnist on KC-45
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics
Mr. Delasant responded that I did not understand his column and that he was not alleging a conspiracy. I responded with this:
“Sir,
My apologies if I misread your column. You allege that the EADS
aircraft was bought to support a foreign policy and ideology. To
quote:
“But what if your foreign policies have alienated so many people, like
the 1.5 billion or so Muslims living in an arc between Northwest
Africa and Indonesia and Malaysia, that no national leader in the area
would dream of allowing an American airbase on his territory? What if,
in many of the non-Muslim countries as well, your belligerent,
unilateral “cowboy” diplomacy means you can’t get an airbase in there,
either?
What if, stripped of all the flowery rhetoric you deliver once a year
at the United Nations, the essence of your foreign policy is simply a
never-ending search for new countries to bomb?
You need a way to get the benefits of land-based aircraft for power
projection, without the drawbacks of needing to find friendly
countries willing to host your local airfields.
In short, you need really good airborne refueling tankers - the
coaling stations of the modern age.
This is what I believe led the Bush administration to forsake Boeing.
The company’s own data states that the Northrup-Grumman and EADS
contender for the KC-45 had a fuel cargo capacity almost 25% greater
than Boeing’s. How many more bombing runs over Iran, over Syria, over
Pakistan, or any other Muslim or other country that gains investiture
to the “axis of evil” could you do with the extra bomber flight
distances implied by the added capacities of the Northrup-Grumman and
EADS refueler?
And unlike Britain and its coaling stations, using refueling tankers
as imperial force projection multipliers means you don’t even have to
put your young soldiers’ boots down on these foreign soils, separating
them from their beloved cultural icons of Taco Bell and flush toilets,
making them susceptible to all those yucky diseases that all “those
people” always have.
An aircrew can leave on a mission from a base in Middle America, get
refueled a few times in mid-air, drop a few dozen tons of ordnance on
some dusty corner of the Middle East, and still get home in time to
watch their kids’ soccer game, or to vote on that night’s American
Idol.
Who needs diplomacy when you have aerial refueling? In much the same
way that Vladimir Lenin said that communism was Soviet power plus
electricity, it now appears that neo-conservatism is jingoistic
arrogance plus the KC-45.”
Also, if you believe that the requirements process is based on strategy
as it should be if implemented properly (i.e. capabilities are defined
within the national military goals and plans) then strategy should
drive the procurement of the system meeting the KPP’s as defined in
the requirement document. Your argument is based on your
interpetation of the strategy of the current administration. You also
state that somehow by having these types of aircraft in the inventory
after 2011 or so it will weld the next administration, which takes
office, in 2009 to this same strategy. This to me indicates you see
some sort of conspiracy by the current administration.
I apologize for misspelling Asia, sometimes I type too fast.
Thank you for taking the time to respond.”
Letter to columnist
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics, production program
I wrote the following letter to Mr. Delasant who had an interesting column in the Asia Times Online. “Dear Sir,
I read with some amusement and bemusement your column in the Aisa
Times Online on your conspiracy theory on the KC-45 award.
(http://www.atimes.com/atimes
know what you teach but it is probably not DoD Acquisition. The fact
that you did not realize the DoD does not announce any contract awards
until 5:00 PM Eastern deliberately so that the stock market is not
affected kind of clues me in on that. I reference you the Federal
Acquisition Register, the Defense Federal Acquisition Register, DoD
Instruction 5000.1, DoD Regulation 5000.2 and Commander Joint Chiefs
of Staff Instruction 3170.01E. If you understood how things work the
whole system is set up to prevent the type of “conspiracy” you allege.
In fact the whole thing is kind of ironic in that Boeing had a
sweetheart sole source contract to lease tankers to the Air Force at a
cost higher then the procurement cost of the new contract, and with
the provision that the B767 aircraft be returned to Boeing for use at
the end of the lease, so that they could sell them as used aircraft or
release them. Unfortunately it turned out that Boeing was so
desperate to keep the B767 line open that they colluded with an Air
Force official on the contract. Congress rightly threw it out and
directed that a proper competition be held.
Unfortunately for Boeing only two companies in the West could bid,
them and EADS. A Russian company such as Illyushin could have
proposed their IL-76 tanker, and might have one as it offers better
short field performance than the B767, which is the only area that the
B767T is superior then the KC-30 aircraft. Somehow the only other
company in America that could make a comparable aircraft, McDonnel
Douglas, merged with Boeing in the 1990’s. If the Air Force had
purchased a few more KC-10 aircraft in the 1980’s they wouldn’t be in
this position.
Currently there are various laws that govern US content of DoD items,
such as the Berry Amendment, and laws on specialty metals and other
strategic item sources. Boeing, if they had bid the B787, might have
had a hard time meeting these laws as it is truly an aircraft made
world wide (Japan, UK, Italy and many other countries. Please see
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com
this. Of note parts are even made in France. I believe that even
large parts of the B767 are made in Japan and Italy. EADS will
assemble the aircraft in Mobile, AL; just like Boeing is attempting to
assemble the B787 in Seattle. It makes sense for EADS to buy
components and build things in a dollar zone country, and I would
expect to see EADS source the KC-30 to the best extent with US
companies who get paid in dollars and not Euros.
An example of this is French aircraft engine Turbomeca, who have a
large plant in Dallas, TX for building engines, and have just started
construction of a large plant in North Carolina that will supply parts
to every Turbomeca engine. The world of aviation construction is
world wide, and in the future more and more it will be moved to
countries like China where labor costs are low.
So, please do a little research before writing uninformed opinion
about things you clearly do not comprehend. If you do not object I
would like to post this on www.defenseprocurementnews.com along with
any response from you.
Cheers,
Dagpotter”
Political thoughts on KC-45
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics, production program
This article at both AmericanThinker.com and Real Clear Politics is a more political view of the KC-45 acquisition and protest. No criticism of Mr. Lifson but I think he reads too much into this issue. I think it is safe to say that the award was based on the understanding of the criteria by the Source Selection Authority and Board. There was most likely no attempt to send a message to Boeing. If it was done for that purpose then it should be overturned and re-competed.
As predicted protest filed
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics, production program
Press reports indicate that Boeing filed their protest with the GAO today. The key complaint is that the requirements were changed to accomodate the larget KC-30 aircraft. Key quote is “Emotion did not play into this,” McGraw said of Boeing’s decision to file a protest. “We were deliberate in this process and we think we were not treated fairly.” Early analysis is that to overturn the award will be hard.
After debriefs protest to come
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, GAO, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics, production program
According to press reports Boeing will protest the KC-45 award to Northrop-Grumman and EADS. They are supposedly going to the General Accounting Office (GAO), which is the middle level. The lowest is the agency making the decision, here probably Air Force Material Command, and the highest is straight to Federal Court. They can still go to court if they disagree with the GAO decision. If you go to court you will most likely just get some money, not the contract. The GAO if it upholds the protest will most likely direct recompetition. See the CSAR-X for an example of that, which funnily Boeing won but Sikorsky and Augusta Westland won on protests. Northrop Grumman on the other hand put out a press release on why they won.
Boeing 767 also has foreign components
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Northrop Grumman Corp., U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics
As this article in the Seattle Times states, at least 15% of the 767 is made overseas. This includes some major structural parts of the aircraft. That is the problem with modern systems today. All of them rely on foreign suppliers to provide lower prices and some efficiencies. This is even more so with the 787, Boeing’s newest aircraft. Yes, the Airbus will have more overseas content, but it is in the best interest of EADS to move as much as that to America where it can.
CNNMoney.com roundup of KC-45 award
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, Federal Budget Process, Northrop Grumman Corp., U.S. Air Force, commercial aviation, logistics
This article is a pretty good summary of the situation relative to the KC-45 tanker contract. The US Air Force and Congress have themselves to thank that Boeing did not get the contract. As I have previously stated, when you open a competition you might be surprised by the results. The consilidation in the US aerospace industry that has been going on since the 1990’s is also a factor. Industrial policy, like the article states, cannot and should not be part of an award such as this. If it is the services get criticized for sweet-heart deals that are bad for the taxpayer, re: the tanker lease.
