Air Force Says Mix-up Did Not Provide Unfair Advantage in Tanker Bid

Wharton Aerospace ^ | 2/4/2011 | Wharton Aerospace

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

A U.S. Air Force officer told Congress that both Boeing and EADS handled "correctly and professionally" a situation in which each received data from the Air Force about each company's bid to build a fleet of refueling tankers.

Major Gen. Wendy Masiello also testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Air Force unintentionally sent Boeing and EADS the rival bids on compact disks.

The reason for the hearing was to determine whether EADS is in a better negotiating position after one of its employees briefly viewed a summary of the Air Force's assessment of rival Boeing's bid, according to a Reuters article.

The Air Force tried to level the playing field by sending images of each other's bids to both companies 21 days after the accidental breach. A group of seven senators believes, however, that the Air Force is minimizing the impact of its mistake, according to Reuters. The senators, led by Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington State, have called on the Defense Department's inspector general to launch an investigation.

[Deagle]

After all the delays - just get the damn tankers!

[higgmeister]

They have been trying to buy new Tankers for 20 years!

On a side note my younger brother just flew in a KC-135 on a space "A" flight in Europe and got to sit in the jump-seat while they fueled 6 fighters! What a trip!

You know the flying boom operator doesn't lay on his belly and pass gas anymore don't you?

[JaguarXKE]

My son is a KC-135 AC.

[higgmeister]

Fantastic! Maybe he was the driver on the hop my brother took?

[VOA]

If it ain’t Boeing,
I ain’t going.

(ok, just a fun take on aviation)

[USNBandit]

A lot of Navy guys don't like the 135 because if you have to fuel from the boom they put an eight foot length of hose with a really rigid basket on the end. You have to plug and then bend the hose to open two knuckle joints on either end of that hose. In the late nineties they put wing refueling pods on the 135 for Navy tanking and life got better. Long hose, collapsable basket, but you are tanking in the wingtip vortices of the 135. Made the receiver feel like it was going to flip over. You had to hold some weird control forces in.

Old way

Wing pods

When the A-6's went away it made it tough for the Navy to do anything without Air Force tanker support. It is getting better with the Super Hornet around, but long range stuff still requires tankers.

[DuncanWaring]

They should put wing refueling pods on the P-8.

[Oztrich Boy]

The reason for the hearing was to determine whether EADS is in a better negotiating position after one of its employees briefly viewed a summary of the Air Force's assessment of rival Boeing's bid, according to a Reuters article.

Well duh! of course that answer will be no, because the whole purpose of the "mistake" was to put Boeing in the better negotiating position. Because Boeing's Tanker is still on the drawing board, the design can now be tweaked as Boeing now has the full details of the EADS tanker bid.

[bmwcyle]

AMEN

[Tzfat]

My son is a KC-135 AC

Very cool!