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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > February > 28 > Entry
Editorial: Finally, AF might really get its tanker
Any time the Air Force announces who will build its new tanker aircraft, breath gets held. Will the decision stand or won’t it?
After all, Boeing Co. was getting the contract in 2001, before a scandal broke out
that resulted in a top Air Force official going to prison for favoring Boeing in return for jobs for herself and family members.
That event didn’t reflect badly on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where the tanker program is managed. The problems were in Washington, D.C.
Later in the decade, though, a decision was made at Wright-Patt to award the contract to a partnership including Northrop Grumman, not Boeing.
That was set aside after Boeing asked for an investigation, and the Government Accountability Office issued a scathing report saying the Air Force didn’t follow its own rules. Jump ball.
This time the winner is Boeing, over EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co.), which was part of the Northrop partnership in previous rounds.
People are thinking this is probably it. Everybody wants this fight to be over. Time to move on.
Tankers are planes that refuel other planes in midair. They play a big role in modern wars. The United States has had tankers for half a century. Unfortunately, it’s had some of the same tankers all that time. They’re getting a bit creaky.
And yet, not everybody has been exactly single-minded about getting this decision over with. Just before the decision was announced, a lot of people were under the impression that it would go the other way. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington state (Boeing country), said, “I won’t tolerate it.”
This time around, in an effort to make sure nothing went wrong again, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates basically took the decision-making process under his own wing.
And the Pentagon took its time, coming up with a decision last week that had once been expected last summer.
The extra caution was called for. The tanker has long been described as the Air Force’s biggest acquisition project. The contract — $35 billion now, with implications for twice that much more in the long term — is the largest awarded by the Barack Obama administration. It entails perhaps 50,000 jobs across the country.
In a time of tight budgets even for the Pentagon (possibly), it could be the largest project for many years.
By all indications, the competition was close, with each plane having its advantages.
Boeing had a political advantage, with its competitor seen as foreign.
Even though the EADS bid entailed work at General Electric near Cincinnati (not necessarily providing new jobs, but providing work), two Dayton-area congressmen who have been involved in military affairs leaned toward Boeing: Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, and former Rep. David Hobson, R-Springfield. They noted the domestic-versus-foreign issue.
EADS insisted it would do the work mainly in this country. But that would have entailed building a new plant in Alabama. Boeing had more existing employees and interests behind it.
President Obama was sympathetic to the Boeing bid during the 2008 campaign. (Boeing is headquartered in Chicago.) Organized labor praised the Boeing selection.
Of course, there’s a problem with giving too much weight to nationality considerations: it reduces competition. Boeing is seen as having had to keep its bid down because of the competition from EADS.
But expert analysts are saying the Pentagon’s decision can be defended on the merits of the bids, most specifically, the long-term costs.
So there is room to hope this decision, which should have been made a decade ago, has finally been made — pending, at least, the arrival of a Sen. Patty Murray on the other side.
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