Air Force Picks Foreign Bid to Build Tankers

US firm blasts 'unfair' award of Air Force contract to Europeans

(NEWSER) - Boeing isn't taking its loss of a $35 billion military contract to Northrop Grumman and Airbus lying down, Reuters reports. A company vice president said he was "as confident as he could be" that Congress would overturn the Air Force's decision to buy refueling tankers from Boeing's European rival. The firm charges that the Air Force broke federal and military rules in the decision-making process and ended up choosing a riskier plane than Boeing was offering. More»

Campaign boss lobbied against Boeing for European Airbus

(NEWSER) - John McCain is being dragged into the feud between Boeing and the Air Force, reports AP. A firm headed by McCain's campaign finance chairman, Tom Loeffler, was paid $220,000 to lobby on behalf of the Airbus, the successful European rival to Boeing's 767 fuel tanker. McCain had helped block an earlier, flawed Boeing contract for the tanker, and sent letters to the Pentagon in 2006 urging them to change bidding procedures that Airbus said were anticompetitive. More»

(NEWSER) - The Pentagon will re-open a $35 billion contract to build the Air Force's fleet of new refueling tankers and pick a new winner by the end of the year, congressional sources say. The Office of the Secretary of Defense—not the Air Force—will oversee the new competition between Boeing Co. and a team led by Northrop Grumman Corp. More»

Lawmakers are angry, but making aircraft giant compete is a good thing

(NEWSER) - There’s fury on Capitol Hill (and the campaign trail) over a $40 billion Air Force contract going to a European team, Mark Thompson notes in Time, but it’s entirely appropriate for the military to get the best technology it can. Indeed, anger over the snub to Boeing shows lawmakers at their worst, worrying about hometown pork instead of defense needs. More»

$40B contact took years of careful planning

(NEWSER) - Years of careful strategy and an alliance between executives was the key to Airbus nailing a $40 billion deal to build Air Force planes, reports the Wall Street Journal. The Pentagon’s decision last week is “a transformational shift in the way weapons systems are acquired. It’s an acknowledgment that globalization is real," said Ralph Crosby Jr., the top US executive for Airbus parent EADS. More»