RE: http://www.military.com/featur...15240,204297,00.html

This claim / counter claim battle will never end until someone has the nads to pick a winner and get the assembly line moving.

Perhaps the ideal remedy to this rather infantile ****ing contest is to have a fly-off and let the best aerial platform prevail....

On the other hand... probably the best methodology would be to allot both firms an equal share of the contract thereby fulfilling our urgent requirement replace the practically worn-out KC-135R's and KC-10's, as most have too much time on their airframes as it is.

If Congress does not want EADS to get the contract, I don't know why they don't just earmark the money to Boeing and be done with it. Quit the pretense of a "full & open" competition.

America First! Boeing should get the contract period!

No more hollowing out, contracting out, or out sourcing any part of the American Industrial Complex!!!

With an official U.S. unemployment rate of 9.8% (17% unofficially) this ought to be a no brainer.

If our non-representing reprentatives in congress don't do the right thing here then maybe we ought to make them un-employed in the next mid-terms.

NG should do the right thing and back off and EADS should go back to the EU,...SSR

USA ALL THE WAY!!!

JMN

it ought to be but boeing charges 200 million to what 100 million. who do you think gonna get it.

The KC-10's are hardly "worn out" they were bought in the mid 80's and hours wise they are not very high time. FEDEX flys the DC-10/MD-11 has more of them by far than any other "airline" and flys more hours on them in a month than even a high optempto "deployed" KC-10 unit does.

You don't hear them saying how theirs are on there last leggs or anything like that!

quote:

Originally posted by jmnaok4lo:
America First! Boeing should get the contract period!

No more hollowing out, contracting out, or out sourcing any part of the American Industrial Complex!!!

With an official U.S. unemployment rate of 9.8% (17% unofficially) this ought to be a no brainer.

If our non-representing reprentatives in congress don't do the right thing here then maybe we ought to make them un-employed in the next mid-terms.

NG should do the right thing and back off and EADS should go back to the EU,...SSR

USA ALL THE WAY!!!

JMN

The problem with that line of thought is that Boeing will outsource just as much of it's tanker assembly, construction, and parts overseas as will the EADS/Northrop-Grumman platform.

Gentlemen, the american military industrial complex is being hollowed out and I for one would like to see it reversed before it gets any worse!

Boeing should get the contract and do all the important manufacturing at home and not outsource any of it, or as little of it as possible!

Allow me to digress. I do not mind adding that one the major failures of America's current free trade ideology is that it has clearly put the Long-Range National Security of the United States in jeopardy. In the effort to reduce costs we are importing more and more sensitve equipment from potenial adversaries and installing them into our nations military inventory without adequate inspection.

Ask yourselves this. A couple of years ago when the Pentagon refused to insert 16,000 computers that were built in China into the DOD's IT system what was the big deal?

The big deal was that the DOD has evidence that Chinese Intelligence is imbedding specially designed chips and other devices that end up in American military systems and that inhance their itelligence and cyberwarfare capabilities and greatly increase our military's vulnerabilities!

And the insane part is that we still have the capability to manufacture computers and other important related equipment in America to minimize the potenial security problems. It all came down to saving a few bucks.

Ask yourselves how many of America's present space, naval, air and land warfare systems have components that have already been compromised?

The DOD has acknowledged that tracking all foreign made items that make it into sensitive U.S. military systems is a real problem. The procurment system is a mess. I for one do not find any of this funny.

These trends must be reversed. Boeing should win the contract. Furthermore this contract should be the begining of rebuilding the American Military Industrial Complex.

One last point, our non-representing representaives in Washington, both Dem & GOP, are not doing a good job on this and other matters. America should be having an honest national debate about fixing it's economy and that would include fixing our failing trade policies and improving national securty. The present system is rotten!

The world is watching all of our self inflicted stupidity and taking notes.

JMN

Boeing does outsource alot, and that is a solid point.

I do prefer the American company.

As a pilot:

If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going!

quote:

Originally posted by Mud.Dog:
Boeing does outsource alot, and that is a solid point.

I do prefer the American company.

As a pilot:

If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going!

There are a lot of misconceptions with this competition, one of which is the jobs - the DoD has agreed that both companies will provide a roughly equivalent number of domestic jobs should they win. EADS would be setting up a factory in the US to build the planes, using US workers.

Another is that sole-sourcing to Boeing would improve US security. I am definitely in favor of domestic design and production of defense systems, but in this area Boeing has an unhealthy monopoly. The difficulty and expense of designing and building systems of this type has pushed us to the point where Boeing is the only domestic manufacturer for large airframes. In some cases this is not a big deal, but Boeing has neither been aboveboard nor competitive in the competition. Their initial offering was overwhelmingly beaten in the original competition, which was thrown out because the wording of that competition did not allow the USAF to reward NG/EADS "extra credit" for surpassing requirements - which they did and for whch they had been rewarded.

Boeing was the incumbent, made a bad offering, broke the law a few times, had to plead to Congress... I like their planes but how much slack can we cut them?

Oh, and a split award is a bad idea here, especially looking at a future full of constrained budgets. Two designs means two design processes, not to mention the far larger cost of two seperate sets of training and support structures.

quote:

Their initial offering was overwhelmingly beaten in the original competition, which was thrown out because the wording of that competition did not allow the USAF to reward NG/EADS "extra credit" for surpassing requirements - which they did and for whch they had been rewarded.

Thats not entirely accurate. Boeing provided the eaxct aircraft as required in the ORIGINAL RFP and then EADS was allowed to submit a substantially larger airframe that was better suited to the KC-Y requirements that would come at a later date. The USAF DID NOT ask for a MRTT in the first round but a direct replacement for the KC-135. The fact that the USAF gets all giddy when something is way above the requirement is not the point. Had the USAF asked for an MRTT in the original RFP then Boeing could have offered the 777 based platform instead, which by the way is much more capable than the A330 in terms of range, payload and cost per hour.
Another bone of contention is that EADS was receiving a very large subsidy from the EU which allowed the EADS platform to be over 30 million cheaper per unit than without the subsidy.

If the competition is to be fair then we should be comparing apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.

quote:

Originally posted by FlankerFlyer:

quote:

Their initial offering was overwhelmingly beaten in the original competition, which was thrown out because the wording of that competition did not allow the USAF to reward NG/EADS "extra credit" for surpassing requirements - which they did and for whch they had been rewarded.

Thats not entirely accurate. Boeing provided the eaxct aircraft as required in the ORIGINAL RFP and then EADS was allowed to submit a substantially larger airframe that was better suited to the KC-Y requirements that would come at a later date. The USAF DID NOT ask for a MRTT in the first round but a direct replacement for the KC-135. The fact that the USAF gets all giddy when something is way above the requirement is not the point. Had the USAF asked for an MRTT in the original RFP then Boeing could have offered the 777 based platform instead, which by the way is much more capable than the A330 in terms of range, payload and cost per hour.
Another bone of contention is that EADS was receiving a very large subsidy from the EU which allowed the EADS platform to be over 30 million cheaper per unit than without the subsidy.

If the competition is to be fair then we should be comparing apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.

I think NG deserves credit for pitching the different plane. In my section of defense contracting one of the first things we do with ANY government RFP is discuss whether the government is asking for the right thing. While the military knows their requirements, industry knows the technologies and can often find a better solution - which is what I think NG did here.

I am not sure how to feel about the subsidy - in so far as the assorted European governments want to subsidize our military, I am generally okay with it so long as the European profit per plane is <= the subsidy.

I am very concerned about the complacency and abuse that can come about from a major monopoly, which Boeing effectively has in the US, especially in light of their handling of this RFP to date. Whether its EADS or someone else, I really think we need another provider of military transport airframes.