Boeing Protests U.S. Air Force Tanker Contract Award
Boeing is asking the GAO to examine several factors in the competition that were fundamentally flawed:
* The contract award and subsequent reports ignore the fact that in reality Boeing and the Northrop/EADS team were assigned identical ratings across all five evaluation factors: 1) Mission Capability, 2) Risk, 3) Past Performance, 4) Cost/Price and 5) Integrated Fleet Aerial Refueling Assessment. Indeed, an objective review of the data as measured against the Request for Proposal shows that Boeing had the better offering in terms of Most Probable Life Cycle Costs, lower risk and better capability.
* Flaws in this procurement process resulted in a significant gap between the aircraft the Air Force originally set out to procure -- a medium-sized tanker to replace the KC-135, as stated in the RFP -- and the much larger Airbus A330-based tanker it ultimately selected. It is clear that frequent and often unstated changes during the course of the competition -- including manipulation of evaluation criteria and application of unstated and unsupported priorities among the key system requirements -- resulted in selection of an aircraft that was radically different from that sought by the Air Force and inferior to the Boeing 767 tanker offering.
* Because of the way the Air Force treated Boeing's cost/price data, the company was effectively denied its right to compete with a commercial-derivative product, contrary not only to the RFP but also to federal statute and regulation. The Air Force refused to accept Boeing's Federal Acquisition Regulation-compliant cost/price information, developed over 50 years of building commercial aircraft, and instead treated the company's airframe cost/price information as if it were a military-defense product. Not only did this flawed decision deny the government the manufacturing benefits of Boeing's unique in-line production capability, subjecting the Air Force to higher risk, but it also resulted in a distortion of the price at which Boeing actually offered to produce tankers.
* In evaluating Past Performance, the Air Force ignored the fact that Boeing -- with 75 years of success in producing tankers -- is the only company in the world that has produced a commercial-derivative tanker equipped with an operational aerial-refueling boom. Rather than consider recent performance assessments that should have enhanced Boeing's position, the Air Force focused on relatively insignificant details on "somewhat relevant" Northrop/EADS programs to the disadvantage of Boeing's experience.
Labels: KC-X
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