Home » Air » Tanker Split Buy Dead, For Now

Tanker Split Buy Dead, For Now

By Colin Clark Thursday, September 10th, 2009 4:25 pm
Posted in Air, Naval, Policy

In the soon-to-be immortal words of Sen. Daniel Inouye: “Nothing ever dies” on Capitol Hill. That was Inouye’s response Thursday afternoon when a reporter asked the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman if the split buy for a tanker was dead.

Pressed, the senator who often speaks like a seer, finally admitted that the split buy did appear to be really dead for this session of Congress since it was not even a subject for conference discussions.

You’ve got to hand this one to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He pushed back against Congress time and again, arguing that no rational economic or military justification could be mounted in favor of handing part of the tanker purchase to Boeing and part of it to Northrop Grumman. Of course, this only heightens the importance of the coming draft request for proposal. For those who have not been delving deep in tanker matters lately, it looks as the draft may not come out until close to Thanksgiving. And if Gates really is leaving the building sometime in the next four months, the draft may actually hold until he leaves.

The other biggish story from this remarkably speedy passage of the Senate version of the defense appropriations bill (30–0 passage and no amendments offered during a meeting of less than one hour) was the addition of $1.7 billion for an additional DDG-51 destroyer. This addition, which appears to have caught industry by surprise, was done “to benefit from economies of scale and improve stability [of the] Nation’s shipbuilding industrial base,” according to the report accompanying the appropriations bill. Sen. Inouye put it more simply. The ship was added to “just keep the production line going” and to save money.

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	ReconTeam September 10th, 2009 at 5:02 pm I don’t agree with Gates on much but I could understand the “cooling off” period after the last disastrous contract. However those KC-135s aren’t getting any younger and now that some time has past we should get this new program up and running ASAP.
	Chockblock September 10th, 2009 at 11:12 pm The problem is that Boeing keeps wrapping themselves in the flag, as if by being American they should get the contract. What ever happend to actually building to standard? Congress needs to stop using the DoD as a job creation program. Do KC-135 need to fall fromt he sky to get Congress of their butts?
	Curt September 11th, 2009 at 2:35 am Congress hasn’t been the problem here (well other than the split plane buy thing), the USAF has that distinction. Hopefully when they develop the criteria for deciding on the winner of the new tanker competition, this time they will actually follow their own guidance. Then there wouldn’t be challenges (or at least not that are sustained. Let’s face it, even the most dedicated NG guy has to admit that the GAO report was pretty damning). Of course, that might be asking too much.
	LockMartSkunk September 11th, 2009 at 10:38 am I really think they are going to need to see a tanker just come apart in mid air before they decide to buy anything at all and even then they are probably going to have to contend with NG likely winning on capabilities and then having BA go and say “well it’s un-American, even though we haven’t actually built a tanker yet, but we have some good ideas.…was that another tanker that just came apart?”
	LockMartSkunk September 11th, 2009 at 10:40 am And that last bit about buying another DDG-51 for 1.7B “in order to save money (WTF?)” is classic populist democracy for ya.
	bryan September 11th, 2009 at 11:25 am i officially hate this program. back and forth. yesterday reuters reported DRFP in late SEP and RFP in late NOV. so annoying.
	pfcem September 11th, 2009 at 2:22 pm Curt, No, Congress & the DOD HAVE been the problem & they have left the USAF out to dry. First the DOD screwed up the tanker lease. Then Congress screwed the WHOLE thing up by demanding another competition when the only ‘competition’ to the USAF’s selection was found to be NONCOMPETATIVE & did not meet its requirements. The USAF’s requirements have already been rewritten a number of times to accomodate said NONCOMPETATIVE competator for the same of said competition and there is next to no change that the USAF will have much if anything to say reguarding the next solicitation. And DO NOT confuse the KC-X Source Selection Team with the USAF…
	ReconTeam September 11th, 2009 at 2:30 pm LockMart, the $1.7 billion for a DDG-51 does seem pricey unless it is some sort of Block III packed with new equipment. Hell isn’t the DDG-1000 less per unit than that?
	Aurora September 11th, 2009 at 8:34 pm The KC-30/KC-767 split buy is probably dead. What about a split of KC-777s & KC-767s? The acrimony over the alleged preliminary findings of the WTO only serves to elevate this procurement from the “toxic” category to the “radioactive” level. That ain’t going to abate. Another airbus selection does not appear to have the votes in the Congress to secure the funding. If USAF truly wants a tanker in the next decade, the only way I see getting there is to sole source this thing to Boeing. Otherwise, prepare for war without end. Already teams of lawyers are standing by to pounce on the next RFP. It won’t stop. Of course, they could always include the KC-135Es in the J-STARS re-engining program?
	pfcem September 11th, 2009 at 9:16 pm ReconTeam, No, $1.7 million is how much a new DDG-51 destroyer costs if you procure only one (note that we had been procuring 4 per year on average). The 3rd DDG-1000 is projected to cost $2.5–3.5 billion (the 1st two 3.5–5.0 billion or more). *** Aurora, The reason a split buy is DOA is because Congress & the Administration simply will not release the necessary funds to do so. THE reason why we need to start replacing our KC-135s soon is because with only being ‘allowed’ to procure 12–15 new tankers per year it is going to take 30–40 years to do so.
	ReconTeam September 12th, 2009 at 2:11 pm pfcem I think you meant to say billion. If a new DDG-51 cost only $1.7 million, we ought to have another 100 of them.
	Curt 2 September 14th, 2009 at 3:21 am pfcem, Sorry, you can’t tar congress with the same brush you use on DoD/USAF. They haven’t helped a lot, but let’s face it, they did not mess it up from the beginning. They just kind of piled on later. People wearing Air Force blue, with an assist from a few DoD and USAF civilians as well, messed it up. As to your comment… “And DO NOT confuse the KC-X Source Selection Team with the USAF…” I quote from Air Force News: “I have an Air Force-wide, hand-picked team of more than 150 experts reviewing every aspect of these proposals,” said Terry Kasten, director of the 653rd Aeronautical Systems Squadron at Wright-Patterson AFB. “When the dust settles, we’ll have spent many tens of thousands of man-hours scrubbing the content of these proposals, conducting a legal review and preparing summary information for both an independent advisory council assessment and ultimately a source selection authority decision,” Mr. Kasten said. “The depth and breadth of this team is very impressive. Our 13 evaluation team leaders have nearly 200 years of combined acquisition experience.” Stressing the importance of this program to the Air Force, Mr. Kasten has a full-time, dedicated legal staff to ensure every “i” is dotted and every “t” is crossed. If not the Air Force than who is the KC-X Source Selection Team? It is not the Navy, our experts have been too busy messing up LCS, LPD-17, DDG-1000, and other programs. Given how many errors the GAO report found, looks like the USAF needs some new “experts”.
	Taxpayer September 14th, 2009 at 4:08 pm GAO agreed with only 8 of over 150 errors the Boeing high paid lawyers claimed the Air Force made. The most important error the GAO agreed with was one sentence in the RFP the stated no additional credit would be given about threshold (most likely residual from DRFPs). Strange how GAO interpretered one sentence in the entire RFP over what the Air Force meant instead of the other sentences that called for the offers to submit their best capabilities best value proposal. Also this ruling went against prior GAO rulings that stated documents must be interpreted in their entirety. The major mistake Mr. Kasten and his staff made was they concluded that Northrop’s proposal would be the best tanker for the warfighter and best value for us taxpayers instead of selecting Boeing. Sad for us taxpayers that the next DoD or Air Force source selection will not made that mistake again.
	Old391 September 15th, 2009 at 12:32 pm Never Say Never
	BS_Buster September 17th, 2009 at 3:52 pm The Boeing crowd continues to talk about their line-up of leased aircraft, 767, 777, 787 as KC-X, KC-Y, KC-Z. Darlene is gone and I even believe out of prison so forget your old Boeing subsidy lase plan. The USAF wants and needs a new tanker and the KC-45 IS Americas New Tanker.