Air Force preps options for tanker competition

[unhappycamper]

Air Force preps options for tanker competition
By John T. Bennett - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Sep 17, 2008 7:00:03 EDT

The Air Force is preparing a list of ways the next administration could replace the KC-135 aerial tanker fleet, including blueprints for competitions that would last as few as eight months to ones that could span 48 months.

The “range of options” includes “a cold start to an to a more abbreviated process … that could include just an RfP,” Gen. Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff, told reporters during a Monday press briefing at an Air Force Association-sponsored conference in Washington.

On Sept. 10, Defense Secretary Robert Gates halted a competition between Boeing and a team composed of Northrop Grumman and EADS for a $35 billion, 179-plane contract. That race was launched earlier this summer after congressional auditors upheld Boeing’s protest of the Air Force’s decision on Feb. 29 to buy the flying gas stations from the Northrop-EADS team.

At the Sept. 15 briefing, Schwartz said Air Force officials hope to meet soon with the Northrop-EADS team to work out the details of terminating the February contract, but no date has yet been set.

When a reporter asked the air chief and Michael Donley, the acting Air Force secretary, “how dead is the tanker competition?” an intense-looking Schwartz replied sternly: “It’s not dead.”


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/09/defense_tanker_091608/%2e