The Pentagon on Thursday unveiled plans to relaunch a competition for a contract on a new fleet of aerial refueling tankers that pits US aviation giant Boeing against Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS).
Two previous attempts to award the multibillion-dollar contract collapsed amid scandal and bitter disputes between Boeing and its rivals Northrop Grumman and Airbus’ parent firm, EADS.
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn and Ashton Carter, who oversees US arms purchases, were due to brief reporters on the competition later on Thursday, officials said. A draft request for proposals would be posted online yesterday, a Pentagon document said.
In reviewing bids for the contract, the Pentagon decided it would discount a trade dispute between Boeing and Airbus before the WTO as the cases could drag on for years without resolution, the document said.
“We are not able to take account of these claims” in the competition, the document said. But if the winner of the contract was fined by the WTO, the cost would not be passed on to the taxpayer, it said.
Defense firms and members of Congress would be invited to submit comments on the draft, with a final decision on the tanker deal due next summer, it said.
The competition will be designed to avoid the problems that plagued previous efforts, with more concrete, defined criteria for the aircraft and a more transparent process, it said.
The contract for 179 aircraft to replace the aging fleet of mid-air refueling tankers has been estimated to be worth about US$35 billion.
Both Boeing and Northrop Grumman have strong supporters in Congress who in the past have heavily criticized how the deal was handled by the Pentagon.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week announced he had restored authority to the US Air Force to select the winner of the tanker competition.
Gates stripped the Air Force of its acquisition authority on the tanker project last year after the investigative arm of the US Congress — the Government Accountability Office (GAO) — found rival proposals were not evaluated properly.
The contract was awarded in February last year to Northrop and EADS, the parent company of Boeing’s commercial rival Airbus.
But the deal was withdrawn in July last year after Boeing successfully appealed to the GAO.
In 2004, the Pentagon was forced to drop plans to buy and lease tanker aircraft from Boeing after two senior executives at the firm were convicted in a conflict-of-interest scandal.
One of the convicted Boeing officials had been a high-level US Air Force procurement officer.
Gates vowed last week to secure a deal for the tanker promptly while avoiding the problems that have plagued previous attempts.
Boeing has said it was looking forward to seeing the terms of the draft request for proposal and argued it could offer aircraft at a lower cost than its competitor.
EADS chief executive Louis Gaullois, in a Sept. 8 interview in the French newspaper La Tribune, said of the planned tanker bidding: “Our objective is to be in the competition. We are totally determined to be in the running, unless it appears that the request for proposal is biased.”
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