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I’m in the Air Force Association and receive daily emails from them on current issues. Excerpt from this morning’s (Boeing Tanker controversy) (sorry, long, but sounds like Savage will touch on these points in a moment...):

Protest on the Tanker Award: Boeing has decided to protest the KC-X tanker award to rival Northrop Grumman, issuing a press release late Monday citing “serious flaws in the process.” The company came out swinging earlier Monday, saying in a two-page paper that it submitted “a strong and extremely competitive proposal” and remains concerned how USAF conducted the evaluation.

Using data from the March 7 debrief from USAF, the company said its KC-767 tanker proposal scored “exceptional” and “low risk” in mission capability, met or exceeded all key performance parameters, and had “significantly more strengths (discriminators)” than rival Northrop Grumman’s KC-30 bid in this area.

Boeing said its proposal risk was also rated “low.” But “surprisingly,” so, too, was Northrop Grumman’s despite what Boeing characterized as “high risk associated with its evolving multi-country, multi-facility, multi-build approach” compared to Boeing’s own “integrated and lean build approach.” Boeing’s past performance was rated “satisfactory,” as was Northrop’s, although European aircraft maker Airbus, the latter’s KC-30 partner, has “no relevant tanker experience and having never delivered a tanker with a refueling boom.”

The Air Force deemed Boeing’s most probable life cycle cost as “reasonable,” “balanced,” and meeting realism criteria, all representing the highest ratings a competitor can receive, the company said. The results of the final selection criterion, the integrated assessment of fleet effectiveness, are “inconsistent and unrepeatable” and the assessment itself is of “questionable” operational relevance for several reasons, Boeing said. They include the fact that Northrop Grumman had an inherent advantage since it developed the assessment model.

Also, changes were made to the model before and after the release of the request for proposals that allowed a larger aircraft like the KC-30 to compete. “In the end,” Boeing said, the Air Force selected “a larger, more expensive and operationally limited KC-30 tanker.” Jim McNerney, Boeing’s chairman, president, and CEO, said making the protest “is an extraordinary step rarely taken by our company, and one we take very seriously.”

Counterpoint: Prior to Boeing announcing its protest (see above) in the KC-X contest, Northrop Grumman issued an updated document to set the facts straight from its perspective on its winning tanker platform, its industry team and work share in the United States.

The company reiterated that it is the prime contractor for the KC-30 aircraft, which is now designated the KC-45A. EADS North America, which will provide the Airbus A330 airframes for the KC-45A, is only one of several subcontractors, as is engine maker General Electric. The KC-45A supplier base in the US will include 230 companies in 49 states. Tanker work will support “more than 25,000 direct and indirect jobs in the United States,” actually a conservative estimate, the company said. When both direct and indirect activities are factored, the KC-45A jobs will number “approximately 48,000” nationwide. Assembly and militarization of the tanker in Mobile, Ala., will create 1,500 new jobs.

And the program does not transfer any jobs from the US to France or any other foreign country. In related news, on Monday Northrop received its debrief from the Air Force on how the KC-30 scored in the KC-X source-selection evaluation.

“According to the Air Force, Northrop Grumman’s KC-45A was selected because it is more advantageous to the government in the key areas of mission capability, past performance, cost/price, and integrated fleet aerial refueling assessment,” said Paul Meyer, Northrop’s VP of Air Mobility Systems and KC-45A program manager. “Our tanker clearly provides the warfighter with the best capability and at the best value to the American taxpayer.”