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Boeing Wins Protest of Northrop Aerial-Tanker Award
June 18 (Bloomberg) Boeing Co. deserves another chance to bid on the $35 billion U.S. Air Force aerial-tanker contract won by rival Northrop Grumman Corp., a government agency said. ``The Air Force had made a number of significant errors that could have affected the outcome of what was a close competition,'' the Government Accountability Office said today in Washington. ``We therefore sustained Boeing's protest.'' Boeing appealed to the GAO after Northrop and partner European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. won the contract Feb. 29, snaring a program that had been Boeing's for more than half a century. Chicago-based Boeing claimed changes the Air Force made during the competition favored Northrop. While the GAO ruling isn't binding, ``the outcome here now is obvious,'' Loren Thompson, an analyst at Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based public policy research group, said in an interview. ``The Air Force will have to revisit the competition and start over.'' Mark McGraw, Boeing's tanker program chief, said in a statement that ``we welcome and support today's ruling by the GAO fully supporting the grounds of our protest.'' Pentagon spokesman Chris Isleib said officials ``are aware of the report but have not fully reviewed it.'' While the Air Force isn't required to follow the GAO's recommendation, the service has to explain to Congress if it chooses to ignore the advice. The Air Force must now respond within 60 days with a course of action based on the GAO findings. The GAO's full 69-page ruling remains under protective order because it contains proprietary information. In a three-page release explaining the decision, the agency said the Air Force failed to assess relative merits of the bids in accordance with evaluation criteria; improperly credited Northrop for exceeding aerial-refueling parameters; and didn't adequately explain its finding that Northrop's tanker could refuel all current fixed-wing aircraft as required. In addition, the GAO said the Air Force conducted ``misleading and unequal discussions'' with Boeing; made an improper exception for Northrop when it failed to agree to a timeline for depot-level aircraft maintenance; miscalculated operation costs for the aircraft; and improperly increased Boeing's estimated engineering costs to account for risk.
Posted by: Fred 2008-06-19 |
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