Posted on 05/10/2009 8:06:35 PM PDT by Libloather
Dicks says tanker contract won't be split
Associated Press
Published: Thursday, May 7, 2009
TACOMA -- Congressman Norm Dicks says a proposal to split an air tanker contract is dead.
Dicks told The News Tribune of Tacoma that a key congressman, John Murtha of Pennsylvania, has agreed not to split the contract between Boeing and a European competitor.
The Air Force spending is part of a bill being considered by the House Appropriations Committee. The tanker contract for 179 planes is worth $35 billion.
(Excerpt) Read more at heraldnet.com ...
Ain't THAT a kick in the behind...
How much did the Murtha and friends get out of this deal?
A lot of the content of the supposed Airbus tanker is domestic [officially it would be a Northrop Grumman tanker.] A fair part of the Boeing airframe is made elsewhere. Dicks is appropriately named.
BTW, I don’t know whether the heavy load capabilities of the Northrop Grumman tanker make that plane more capable for a significant number of mission scenarios If so, going with only the Boeing version may not make a lot of sense in purely military terms.
Based on relatively recent experience with the KC10 and the KC135, the Air Force knows the answer to this question.
For what it is worth, flying the old 707 airframes for several more years might be a better answer than having a couple of goofy Dem representatives boinking around with a procurement rules.
Northrop Grumman/EADS won this thing but there’s just too much corruption.
People in Alabama are required pay their taxes too. Therefore, we should be treated fairly. We were ROBBED!!!!!!!
Just had a looong talk with a tanker toad about this last week. First off, he’s flying aircraft from 1959!!!! No kidding. Second off, he was not so wild about a huge tanker (KC-10, Airbus or 777 derivative) due to the need for “booms in the air” versus pounds of fuel in the air.
This is a guy who helped plan the Iraq air war in 2003, and knew quite a bit about the 1991 Gulf War too from a crew’s perspective. He’s still active duty and apparently working on quite a few high level programs. Its not my area of expertise, but he had me convinced the way to go is 767’s (smaller, more booms for the money, don’t have to mod hangars, etc.) or something like that. He had lots of downsides on the large tanker. But his parting shot was along the lines of a great desire to fly something younger than he is, which he has almost never done.
Sure it’s from 1959 BUT its been rebuilt many times.
I’ve seen C-130’s that may have hauled me around the “Nam” at Hill AFB in for their ?X rebuild. They were just skeletons and then left the rebuild as good as the day they were born. Olde Guys Rule! :>)
Yes, we need the best for the USAF!
Yep, you were robbed that you couldn’t divert Katrina money to build a plant to take jobs from another part of the states and move them to your state (and a bunch to France too).
If we continue to let foreign companies get an American company to front for them and slap a “Made in USA” sticker on their product we won’t have a defense industry left.
(see the recent helicopter contracts, VH71, the presidential copter etc.)
A bit like that good ole’ axe that's been around for 20 years - As good as the day it was made - but it's had six handles and two heads in that time...:^)
I don’t believe you can find that Alabama got a lot of Katrina money. That all went to a bunch of folks in New Orleans.
Boeing certainly doesn’t understand what “Made in USA” means so that’s not a good talking point.
Boeing tried the cheat the taxpayers a few years ago. They have a history of this. They lost in the most fair and transparent bid in USA history. They’re now basically given a blank check and allowed to write in just about any number they can come up with.
Boeing is (belatedly) doing what most US-based manufacturers who can offshore their production are doing - fleeing the most hostile and repressive environment for manufacturing on the planet - the good old USofA. We're lucky they still make anything here.
Along with the increasingly hostile business climate in the US, Boeing has to compete with a state-subsidized competitor who'll transfer production and technology anywhere on earth to win an order.
Boeing tried the cheat the taxpayers a few years ago. They have a history of this
A few upper management types and some corrupt gov't officials tried to cheat, not the entire company.
They lost in the most fair and transparent bid in USA history
BS. Boeing's entry was the only one to meet the original contract specifications. The gov't re-wrote the specs to suit the airbus tanker.
I don't want to see my tax dollars going to foreign manufacturers. This entire fiasco is the direct result of allowing McDonnell Douglas and Boeing to "merge". We need at least two viable large airframe manufacturers in the US - we don't need to become dependent on Europeans (or chinese) for our defense needs.
I agree with most of what you’re saying but it was the most fair and transparent bid process in our history.
Boeing agreed to the changes from the orginal so that’s not really a good point.
BAF (10000 employees in the USA) and a lot of foreign companies are now making a lot of our weapons systems. Is that right? I don’t think so but that’s what our government has allowed. Why did they allow this? So we can sell our weapons systems around the world. The Military Industrial Complex obvioulsy has too much influence.
I agree with much of what you’re saying. It’s just that the government let it get to where it is and now they want to change the rules after Northrop Grumman and EADS went through this long process. It cost Northrop Grumman / EADS a lot of money to go through this process only to find out that they weren’t going to be given a fair opportunity. They should have just given it to Boeing to begin with and offered them a “blank check.”
You’re also correct about there not being any competition now. The lack of competitiveness will not do much to help further develop weapons systems.
If you read the GAO ruling you can’t really keep repeating the talking point about it being fair and transparent. When one of the several findings was unequal treatment of the bidders.
What blows my mind is that we have something like 180,000 people working procurement at the Pentagon. That is close to the combined employees at NG and Boeing (military divisions).
So the bean counters who are trying to save the taxpayer money are in effect spending billions to save millions.
So the “blank check” you talk about probably wouldn’t be such a bad deal. Remember both of these planes are actually being subsidized by the commercial versions. Compare the cost to those presidential helicopters for reference. So the government is saving about $10B right off the top. (also compare to the A400M)
BTTT especially for the tanker crew’s perspective.
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