From Aviation Week

 

Pentagon Scraps USAF Tanker Competition

Sep 10, 2008

By Jefferson Morris

 

The U.S. Department of Defense announced this morning that it is terminating the U.S. Air Force refueling tanker competition, and has notified Congress and the competing industry teams of the move.

 

Halting the current competition can be viewed as a win for Boeing, which complained that the quick pace of the recompete didn't give it enough time to substantively change its proposal. The deferment would allow the company to rebuild its proposal strategy around a larger aircraft like the 777.

 

According to a DOD statement, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in consultation with senior Pentagon and Air Force leaders, "has determined that the solicitation and award cannot be accomplished by January. Rather than hand the next administration an incomplete and possibly contested process, Secretary Gates decided that the best course of action is to provide the next administration with full flexibility regarding the requirements, evaluation criteria and the appropriate allocation of defense budget to this mission."

 

Northrop Grumman partnered with EADS to offer a tanker based on the A330 for the so-called KC-X program, while Boeing proposed the 767-200LRF for the $35 billion effort. Boeing protested Northrop Grumman's upset win of the award, and DOD and the Air Force had been planning to rapidly turn around a new competition.

 

This marks the second aborted attempt to replace the Air Force's aging fleet of KC-135 refueling tankers, after an ill-fated effort to lease tankers from Boeing.

 

"Over the past seven years the process has become enormously complex and emotional -- in no small part because of mistakes and missteps along the way by the Department of Defense," Gates said. "It is my judgment that in the time remaining to us, we can no longer complete a competition that would be viewed as fair and objective in this highly charged environment. The resulting 'cooling off' period will allow the next administration to review objectively the military requirements and craft a new acquisition strategy for the KC-X."

 

The Pentagon says the current KC-135 fleet can be "adequately maintained" to satisfy requirements for the near future, and funding in fiscal 2009 and afterward will be allocated to maintain the fleet "at high-mission capable rates."

 

DOD will make recommendations to Congress on what to do with the pending FY '09 tanker replacement funding, and plans to continue funding the KC-X effort in the FY'10-15 budget plan presently being crafted in the Pentagon.

Frustrating, this is. Aren't the KC-135s getting rather past it now?

Apparently the first KC-135 was delivered in 1957 and the last in 1965. High op tempo hasn't helped.

From Air Force Times

 

Tanker bids could take 4 more years

By John T. Bennett - Staff writer

Posted : Thursday Sep 18, 2008 7:39:14 EDT

 

The Air Force is preparing a list of ways the next administration could replace the KC-135 aerial tanker fleet, including blueprints for competitions that would last as few as eight months to ones that could span 48 months.

 

The “range of options” includes “a cold start to an [analysis of alternatives] to a more abbreviated process … that could include just an RfP,” Gen. Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff, told reporters during a Monday press briefing at an Air Force Association-sponsored conference in Washington.

 

On Sept. 10, Defense Secretary Robert Gates halted a competition between Boeing and a team composed of Northrop Grumman and EADS for a $35 billion, 179-plane contract. That race was launched earlier this summer after congressional auditors upheld Boeing’s protest of the Air Force’s decision on Feb. 29 to buy the flying gas stations from the Northrop-EADS team.

 

At the Sept. 15 briefing, Schwartz said Air Force officials hope to meet soon with the Northrop-EADS team to work out the details of terminating the February contract, but no date has yet been set.

 

When a reporter asked the air chief and Michael Donley, the acting Air Force secretary, “how dead is the tanker competition?” an intense-looking Schwartz replied sternly: “It’s not dead.”

 

As for the options, the general said, “I hope we can come up with a less complicated acquisition strategy that doesn’t have 800 different criteria.”

 

Their predecessors had placed the KC-X tanker program atop the services primary acquisition needs, a rare move for the fighter aircraft-focused service.

 

It remains undecided where the program will rank under Donley and Schwartz, with the acting secretary saying he has yet to conduct the kind of comprehensive servicewide analysis needed to rank weapons-buying priorities.

 

But the duo signaled another of those top priorities, the CSAR-X rescue helicopter effort, could culminate with a contract award before the end of the Bush administration’s second term. Donley said he sees a contract being awarded for new helicopters in “a couple of months.”

 

Meanwhile, Donley also said he has yet to direct the kind of “top-line analysis” needed to determine whether the Air Force will continue to tell Pentagon brass and Congress it needs $20 billion more than current planned each year, a contention often made by the last Air Force secretary and chief.

 

Further, the new leaders also they have not had time to consider “specific numbers” of a list of aircraft, including C-17s, F-22s and F-35s, that might be needed to conduct future expected missions.

 

But Schwartz said he feels “there’s a legitimate argument that can be made that we should have a handoff between production lines” between planes currently being built and “generation-five planes.”

 

That comment seems to place Schwartz on the side of building what officials and analysts have called an “acquisition bridge” between F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II production — by either building more F-22s, or stretching out the current F-22 buy, or beginning construction of F-35s sooner than planned. Both fighters are being built by Lockheed Martin.

 

During the session with reporters, the two leaders also discussed a number of other issues, including annual budgets.

 

Donley said he has asked service officials to examine how the Air Force might move some things that have been purchased using war supplements into the annual budget. Specifically, he pointed to things like UAVs; sensors; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms.

 

Several industry officials briefing reporters at the conference have said their companies are planning for “flattening” defense budgets during the next administration. But Donley said he “does not want to anticipate a reduction” in the Air Force’s yearly spending level.

 

Schwartz endorsed two programs that, if current plans are fully enacted, would add advanced airframes to the fleet: a next-generation bomber and the Joint Combat Aircraft.

 

The former is a “vital program for the country,” he said. On the latter, the four-star said: “There is a clear need for a plane of that size.” The Air Force is slated to purchase about 24 medium-sized JCA cargo planes.