Senate hearing in tanker snafu appropriate
US Sen. Carl Levin announced yesterday that he will hold a hearing by Feb. 1 into the snafu by the USAF over sending Boeing and EADS information about each other’s KC-X tanker submission.
We think this is appropriate, as we have written before. The Air Force and EADS must come forward with a detailed timeline and information about the what-when-where-why about this. So that there is a full airing, so does Boeing, though let’s be clear: the burden here appears to be on the USAF and EADS.
The tanker competition has gone on far too long, and the USAF has amply demonstrated that it can’t run this procurement properly. This latest seems to be nothing more than a clerical error–at least based on what is known so far–but is this a harmless error or a fatal error to the process? The Levin hearing may be able to put this to rest.
Holding the hearing by February 1 also seems to fit in the timeline we suggested yesterday, and that is for a February contract award. Levin’s hearing may be timed to clear things up prior to an announcement.
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Leeham News and Comment
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- Odds and Ends: Boeing ponders 787 rate hike; A350 fly-by at PAS?; EMB wins order for E-Jet May 21, 2013
- United returns 787 to service today; WSJ points to other issues May 20, 2013
- Comparing the 787, 777-200/300ER and the 777-8/9X May 17, 2013
- Assessing the A350 program May 16, 2013
Lets see how this goes . IF BA wins, the hearings and investigation will be dropped. IF EADS wins, there will be a formal complaint- investigation and some poor lower level grunt will be left swinging in the jet blast, and a case will be made to split the contract, thus creating many more jobs both for BA and EADS.
Bout the only thing left to decide is the split- 60 forty or forty sixty based on ‘ $$/ plane ” or ” life costs ” per plane.
EADS/Airbus wins a toehold to produce commercial in the U.S. and U.S gets further blocked from producing in the EADS community.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . China creeps up and in a decade or slightly less, takes a major chunk out of the world market by using our Inbterest payments to compete for the ‘ short haul” market, first in china, then spreading.
May we live in interesting times
The Navy has just awarded dual contracts for the Littoral Combat Ship. Some say this is because they wanted to avoid stalemate a la tanker. Is it not time to move to dual buy or some other tanker solution in which both regions win? After all, when all is said and done, this embroglio arises from competition between the SE and NW, not B and EADS.