SecDef says KC-45 meddling by Congress may provoke retaliation

May 21, 2008 by Dagpotter · Comment
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, EADS, GAO, Military Aviation, Northrop Grumman Corp., Protest, U.S. Air Force, logistics 

According to this story during testimony about the FY09 Defense budget Secretary of Defense Gates warned that adding a requirement to contract awards for US jobs would only provoke retaliation by US allies in Europe and Asia. Currently Federal procurement law does not have increasing or protecting US jobs as a consideration for evaluating and awarding contracts. Congress can certainly add that to the law, and some have mooted they will, but it would come at a price. The US defense industry is now dependent on non-US companies for many parts and products. US allies are also dependent on US companies for a large amount of their systems as they do not have the capability to produce them. Any attempt by the US government to prevent foreign companies from competing could backfire and reduce the market for US companies. As we have stated here many times with the consilidation in the US industry in the Nineties it is hard to get decent competition for these kind of procurements. Only Boeing, EADS and Russian companies could have bid on it; McDonald Douglas is long gone, so Congress needed to expect this kind of situation.

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