Air Force tanker announcement...

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David Hilditch
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby David Hilditch » Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:07 am

The protectionist noises coming out of Washington this week are depressingly predictable. If there is pressure to re-contract the deal, this may raise new protectionist sentiments in Europe as well, which could affect other American suppliers to a greater extent long-term than just in this tanker project. The controversy may leak into the presidential campaign as well.

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Verbal
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Verbal » Fri Mar 07, 2008 6:01 pm

The controversy may leak into the presidential campaign as well.
It already has. Pelosi is pointing the finger at McCain.

I think the whole protectionist knee-jerk reaction is a crock. I do think that the Air Force may have pulled the ol' bait-and-switch with Boeing, however. If they really wanted a bigger tanker, why did they encourage Boeing to bid the 767 instead of the 777? The Air Force is looking like the car buyer who starts the day shopping for a Toyota Corolla, and ends the day at the dealer down the street, buying a jumbo Mercedes SUV.
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Verbal
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Verbal » Sat Mar 08, 2008 12:00 am

Boeing: Uncertainty About Process Remains After Air Force Tanker Debrief

ST. LOUIS, March 07, 2008 -- The U.S. Air Force has completed a debriefing for The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] during which acquisition officials sought to explain why they selected a team of Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) for a contract to replace aerial refueling tankers.

The debriefing on Friday came one week after the Air Force's surprising announcement that it had chosen the Northrop-EADS team over the Boeing KC-767 tanker offering.

"We spent several hours with Air Force leaders, listening and probing, all in an effort to better understand the reasoning behind their decisions," said Mark McGraw, Boeing vice president and program manager of the KC-767 tanker. "While we are grateful for the timely debriefing, we left the room with significant concerns about the process in several areas, including program requirements related to capabilities, cost and risk; evaluation of the bids and the ultimate decision.

"What is clear now is that reports claiming that the Airbus offering won by a wide margin could not be more inaccurate," said McGraw.

Boeing officials said that they will take the next few days to evaluate the data presented and will give serious consideration to filing a protest.

"Our plan now is to work through the weekend to come to a decision on our course of action early next week," said McGraw. "It will be a very rigorous and deliberative process to ensure we're balancing the needs of the warfighter with our desire to be treated fairly. For decades Boeing has been recognized as a defense company that never takes lightly protests of our customers' decisions."
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/200 ... 7a_nr.html
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Robert Hilton
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Robert Hilton » Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:27 am

This is going to take forever.
Wouldn't Boeing better turning their attention to other pressing work within the company?

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Dmmoore
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Dmmoore » Sat Mar 08, 2008 4:41 pm

This is going to take forever.
Wouldn't Boeing better turning their attention to other pressing work within the company?
Yes Boeing would be better if attending to other projects but for one detail. If the requirements of the bid changed after the announcement why was Boeing not notified? If Bigger is better, Boeing offers the 767 (which fully complies with the contract and which the Air Force asked Boeing to provide), Airbus offers the A330, Boeing counters with the 777, Airbus offers the A350, Boeing the 747, airbus the A380. Almost an endless cycle.

The contract was for an aircraft with specific capabilities. I think the A330 was a better choice on performance alone but price is a major consideration.

It seems to some that the Air Force bid procedure changed to almost eliminate the 767 because of performance limitations.

I don't have contract proposal details so I do not know costs but in most military contracts, if the aircraft meets the specifications in all regards and is cheaper, the aircraft should have a very good shot at a win even if the other aircraft exceeds the contract requirements.

Personally I think the A330 is the better aircraft, as would be the 777 or the 747 better yet but the USAF didn't ask for aircraft of that capacity.

If the Air force got the most bang for the Buck with the A330, let's get on with it.
Don
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Robert Hilton
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Robert Hilton » Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:03 pm

From what I've read (not just here and JP) I'm not sure that the Boeing position is justified.
I feel there is an awful lot of "yes, but..........." coming from the sales people.
I agree with Verbal in that Boeing messed up big time. It is also plain to see that the Airforce have had to painfully put their operational requirements before political dogma. I agree that the Airbus/NG deal is the best, for this round.
I think Boeing should concentrate on getting the 787 right and then turn their attention to the next round of tankers.
If they keep juggling too many balls at the same time, they risk dropping them all and not just one or two.

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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby David Hilditch » Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:55 pm

I think Boeing should concentrate on getting the 787 right and then turn their attention to the next round of tankers.
Several times around 2004, back on the old forum, when the original Boeing bid sank in a mire of corruption, I had suggested that Boeing do what it did in the 1950s with the joint 707 and 717/KC-135 programs. In 2004 Boeing was also finalizing its plans for the 7E7, which became today's 787, as well as pushing the 767 tanker. Given that the 767 was already then seen as a little small for the USAF tanker requirement, I thought the bigger 787 might have been the best solution, and this would have made the overall program far more cost-effective if the civil and military programs grew on the back of each other. That said, I don't know if there are objections to 'tankerizing' the 787 due to its structure or to composites, or any other reason.

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Dmmoore
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Dmmoore » Sat Mar 08, 2008 6:54 pm

From what I've read (not just here and JP) I'm not sure that the Boeing position is justified.
I feel there is an awful lot of "yes, but..........." coming from the sales people.
I agree with Verbal in that Boeing messed up big time. It is also plain to see that the Airforce have had to painfully put their operational requirements before political dogma. I agree that the Airbus/NG deal is the best, for this round.
I think Boeing should concentrate on getting the 787 right and then turn their attention to the next round of tankers.
If they keep juggling too many balls at the same time, they risk dropping them all and not just one or two.
I agree.
Don
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Robert Hilton
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Robert Hilton » Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:39 pm

I think Boeing should concentrate on getting the 787 right and then turn their attention to the next round of tankers.
Several times around 2004, back on the old forum, when the original Boeing bid sank in a mire of corruption, I had suggested that Boeing do what it did in the 1950s with the joint 707 and 717/KC-135 programs. In 2004 Boeing was also finalizing its plans for the 7E7, which became today's 787, as well as pushing the 767 tanker. Given that the 767 was already then seen as a little small for the USAF tanker requirement, I thought the bigger 787 might have been the best solution, and this would have made the overall program far more cost-effective if the civil and military programs grew on the back of each other. That said, I don't know if there are objections to 'tankerizing' the 787 due to its structure or to composites, or any other reason.
I think from the structure point of view it would be better to build it as a dedicated tanker, especially if you wish to add more tankage in the fuselage. The problems involved in converting the VC10's being a good example. Other than that I cannot think of any reason why the composite structure would limit it's capability as a tanker, preferably a three pointer that is.

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Verbal
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Verbal » Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:51 pm

It's official. Boeing will file a formal protest with the General Accounting Office.
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Robert Hilton
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Robert Hilton » Mon Mar 10, 2008 11:03 pm

That should keep it going for a couple of years.

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Verbal
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Verbal » Mon Mar 10, 2008 11:35 pm

"I'm putting an end to this f*ckery." - Rayna Boyanov

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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Sickbag » Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:46 am

Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.

Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.

Just when I'd stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.

Don't you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here.

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.
.
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Rabbi O'Genius
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Another Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Rabbi O'Genius » Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:50 pm

EADS wins £13bn RAF tanker deal

Airbus parent firm EADS has won a 27-year, £13bn ($26bn; 17bn euros) contract to provide new air refuelling tankers to the Royal Air Force (RAF).
The deal comes less than a month after EADS won a similar air refuelling contract from the US Air Force. Due to enter service from 2011, the RAF will lease 14 Airbus A330-200 aircraft from EADS-led consortium AirTanker. They will replace the RAF's existing fleet of TriStar and VC-10 refuelling planes.

'Highly exacting'
The wings for Airbus aircraft are designed and made in the UK at Broughton in north Wales, and Filton near Bristol. "The Ministry of Defence's requirements are known to be highly exacting, and we are grateful that its trust has been placed in EADS and our consortium partners, Cobham, Rolls-Royce, Thales and VT Group," said EADS chief executive Louis Gallois. EADS' similar win in the US was secured in partnership with American firm Northrop Grumman, and is worth £17bn. That success angered EADS' big US rival Boeing, which lodged an official protest. EADS is a pan-European company.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7316835.stm
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Robert Hilton
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Robert Hilton » Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:53 pm

It will be interesting to see how this PFI venture really pans out.

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Verbal
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Verbal » Wed May 28, 2008 6:02 pm

Aerospace Notebook: Analyst questions Air Force tanker decision
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 05/28/2008
Author: James Wallace
(Copyright 2008)

IT'S TIME FOR the Air Force to explain in far greater detail than it has why The Boeing Co. lost the tanker competition to the team of Northrop and EADS, a noted defense expert said Tuesday.

"Something is not quite right here," Loren Thompson, defense analyst with the private think tank the Lexington Institute, said in an interview.

In the past, Thompson has been widely criticized by Boeing supporters for being pro-Northrop on the tanker controversy.

But Thompson insisted he has only been reporting what Air Force sources have been telling him, and he had not taken sides in the dispute over whose tanker is better. Thompson said he's had three months since the tanker announcement to understand the issues and listen to all sides, and his latest report, which was posted on the Lexington Institute's Web site late Tuesday, represents the "conclusions I have come to."

The tanker-selection process was hardly as "transparent" as the Air Force has claimed, wrote Thompson, who has close contact with senior Air Force officers.

"Whatever else this process may have been, it definitely was not transparent," he wrote.

Boeing had been widely expected to win the Air Force competition with its 767 tanker, but instead the Air Force earlier this year picked Northrop and EADS, the European Aeronautic, Defense and Space Co., the parent of Airbus, to supply it with 179 tankers based on the far bigger and heavier Airbus A330.

Boeing has filed a protest of the Air Force decision with the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog agency for Congress. The GAO has a mid-June deadline to decide the merits of Boeing's protest. It would be highly unusual for the protest to be upheld.

But Thompson said that even if the GAO finds that only small mistakes were made by the Air Force, given Boeing's contention that the competition was very close, such a finding might be enough for Boeing's supporters in Congress to force the Air Force to hold another tanker competition.

Boeing claims that the Air Force changed its tanker requirements to help the bigger Airbus plane win the competition. Boeing has argued that the competition was "seriously flawed."

But Northrop has mounted an aggressive public-relations campaign, issuing almost daily statements about why its tanker is better than Boeing's. And Northrop has sharply criticized Boeing for suggesting the competition was unfair.

Previously, Thompson said Air Force leaders believe Boeing "is willfully misstating the facts in a bid to obscure the inferior performance of the plane it proposed."

But in the interview Tuesday, Thompson said he has been waiting for the Air Force to make a "slam-dunk" case to him about why Northrop and EADS won. But The Air Force has not been able to make such a case, he said.

"I never really got what I would consider an analytical explanation for the outcome, so what do we really know about what happened?" he said. "It just doesn't look good."

In his latest report, Thompson said the Air Force has failed to answer "even the most basic questions about how the decision was made."

"Whatever it finds," he wrote of the GAO review of Boeing's protest, "the Air Force has some explaining to do."

Thompson made the following points in his report and in the interview that he said raise serious questions about the Air Force decision:

The Air Force claims it would cost roughly the same to develop, manufacture and operate 179 tankers regardless of whether they are based on Boeing's 767 or the Airbus A330. But the Airbus plane is 27 percent heavier than Boeing's and burns a ton more fuel per flight hour, Thompson said. "With fuel prices headed for the upper stratosphere, how can both planes cost the same amount to build and operate over their lifetimes?"

The Air Force claims it would be equally risky to develop the Boeing and Airbus tanker. But the Airbus tankers will be built at plants in Alabama that do not yet exist, Thompson noted. Boeing's tanker would be built on its long-running 767 assembly line.

It doesn't make "common sense," Thompson said, that the Northrop-EADS tanker production plan would not have greater risk than Boeing's.

"This is not plausible," he said.

The Air Force has said the Northrop-EADS team received higher ratings on past performance than the Boeing team. But Thompson noted that Boeing has built all 600 of the tankers in the Air Force fleet, and Northrop and EADS have never delivered a single tanker equipped with the refueling boom the Air Force requires.

"How can Northrop and Airbus have superior performance?" Thompson said.

The Air Force has said a computer simulation of how the competing tankers would function in an actual wartime scenario strongly favored the larger Airbus plane. But the simulation assumed longer runways, stronger asphalt and more parking space than actually exist at forward bases, Thompson said, and the simulation failed to consider the consequences of losing bases in wartime.

"How can such unrealistic assumptions be relevant to the selection of a next-generation tanker?" Thompson said.

He also wrote in his report that the Air Force refused to consider Boeing cost data based on 10 million hours operating the commercial 767, and instead substituted repair cost on the 50-year-old KC-135 tanker. The Air Force also had said early on that it would not award extra points for exceeding key performance objectives, but then proceeded to award extra points, according to Thompson.

"Even now, neither of the competing teams really understands why the competition turned out the way it did," Thompson wrote. "It would be nice to hear from the Air Force about how key trade-offs were made, because at present it looks like a double standard prevailed in the evaluation of the planes offered by the two teams."
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Sickbag
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Sickbag » Wed May 28, 2008 6:23 pm

I see the collective reeducation programme is proceeding well.
Good work Comrades.
2022: The year of the Squid Singularity

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Verbal
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Verbal » Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:25 pm

I see the collective reeducation programme is proceeding well.
Indeed.
***This message is being sent by Scott Carson, president and CEO of Commercial Airplanes, to all BCA employees***

GAO decision upholds Boeing protest


The Government Accountability Office today ruled in our favor in our protest of the U.S. Air Force’s award of the KC-X tanker contract to our competitor. Today’s ruling validates our protest of the award – a step Boeing has rarely taken but did so in this case to ensure that the best tanker for the mission is selected, that the American taxpayer receives the best value.

While today’s decision is good news for Boeing and the 767 program, much remains to be done. Our expectation is that the Air Force will outline its plans in response to the GAO report within the next 60 days. We will eagerly await those next steps. Right now we believe the Air Force should move swiftly to a recompetition. Together with our colleagues in Integrated Defense Systems, we have a superb team that will build the very best next-generation tanker.

Thanks for your support and for all you do for Boeing.

Scott
"I'm putting an end to this f*ckery." - Rayna Boyanov

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Robert Hilton
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Robert Hilton » Thu Jun 19, 2008 5:21 am

All the GAO said was that the airforce made some mistakes in judging the two offers and that the competition should be run again. It doesn't mean that Boeing will now automatically get the contract, after all both sides will now have the opportunity to polish things up abit.

David Hilditch
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby David Hilditch » Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:25 am

All the GAO said was that the airforce made some mistakes in judging the two offers and that the competition should be run again. It doesn't mean that Boeing will now automatically get the contract, after all both sides will now have the opportunity to polish things up abit.
it does seem to reflect the general disarray that the Air Force seems to be in these days, what with Gates replacing the top civilian and military leaders the other day and its conceptual problem with UAVs and the current type of war threats likely to be faced in the future.

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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby capslock » Thu Jun 19, 2008 11:16 am

For those of us yet unversed in newspeak, what are UAVs?

David Hilditch
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby David Hilditch » Thu Jun 19, 2008 3:35 pm

For those of us yet unversed in newspeak, what are UAVs?
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

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tds
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby tds » Thu Jun 19, 2008 3:56 pm

Does George Costanza work for Boeing these days?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZOLs03vILs

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Verbal
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Verbal » Thu Jun 19, 2008 6:06 pm

George Costanza was a fuckwit.
"I'm putting an end to this f*ckery." - Rayna Boyanov

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Robert Hilton
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Re: Air Force tanker announcement...

Postby Robert Hilton » Thu Jun 19, 2008 7:19 pm

George Costanza was a fuckwit.
So he's dead then?


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