Top OSD Officials Think Tanker Deal Can Go Ahead
Senior Pentagon and Air Force officials who have read the full 67-page report about the tanker bid by the Government Accountability Office think they can still grant a contract before the end of the Bush Administration. John Young, the Pentagon’s acquisition czar, has reportedly drafted a letter for the four congressional committees that oversee defense spending and policy informing them of the Pentagon’s decision to go ahead and award the contract to Northrop Grumman.
There have been reports that the GAO ruling on the tanker contract could add two years or more to the contract award, something that has greatly concerned Air Force leaders eager to start building new tankers after almost a decade of trying.
"Their finding is that the full document is quite different from the summary," issued last Wednesday, said a source familiar with the issue. The source said Air Force leaders believe much of what was challenged is “procedural” and can be resolved without rebidding the deal.
The 69-page report is expected to become public today.
The GAO said in its summary that it found “a number of significant errors that could have affected the outcome of what was a close competition between Boeing and Northrop Grumman” and recommended that the bid be reopened. By law, the Air Force has 60 days to inform the GAO of how it will respond to the recommendations.
Any Air Force decision to press ahead with the contract award to Northrop Grumman is likely to spark outrage on Capitol Hill among supporters of Boeing, who include Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the Nr. 2 member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, as well as Washington’s two senators and lawmakers from Kansas.
Read the rest of this story over at Military.com's new online defense and acquisition journal, DoD Buzz.
-- Colin Clark
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irtusk,
Yes it is only flaws in the PROCESS that favor one particular team that are being examined BUT my point was that it was flaws were in the PROCESS, not flaws in the offers as you had stated.
If you think there were flaws in the process that favored Boeing have fun finding them. I am sure that if Boeing had won NG/EADs could have found something but the question then becomes if what they found would have been suficient for the GOA to recommend that the USAF "reopen discussions with the offerors, obtain revised proposals, re-evaluate the revised proposals, and make a new source selection decision, consistent with the GAO’s decision". Although one thing I am pretty sure of, NG/EADS would have (as Boeing did) have as part of its protest that it had been lead to believe throughout the process that it was going to win only to have found out during the selection breifing that the KC-X source selection evaluation team did not do certain things as NG/EADS had thought (felt it had been lead to believe) KC-X source selection evaluation team was going to.
I doubt very highly NG/EADS would have found nearly as many flaws &/or had as much luck with the GOA as Boeing did. The KC-X source selection evaluation team would not have had to have made the "significant errors that could have affected the outcome" that it did in order to CLEARLY show that the KC-767AT IS superior to the KC-30 & the RIGHT choice for the USAF. Note that the GOA has stated that Boeing COULD have won had it not been for the significant errors the KC-X source selection evaluation team made.
The BIG problem (as I have said from the beginning of the KC-X program) is that the USAF had to walk a fine line in order to ENSURE that BOTH offeres stayed in the competition JUST SO THERE WOULD BE A COMPETITION. With such a fine line, significant errors are more likely to be made (just as they are when trying to rush the proces under a MUCH truncated timeframe).
Posted by: pfcem at June 27, 2008 01:49 AM