Good news all around for Boeing this week. This comes the day after the GAO cleared the maintenance contract on the KC-135.
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Boeing Tanker: Beans, Bullets, Oil, and politics .. and did we mention: politics ??
- Thread starter Morgan81
- Start date
Bravo to Boeing for going for the throat. Boo to the Air Force for sucking enough to let it happen. Shenanigans on the whole government procurement process. They'll end up with a plane that satisfies all of the criteria, but fulfills none of the missions to their fullest. Long live the KC-130.
Xtndr50boom
Voted 8.9 average on the Hot-or-Not scale
Depends on who you talk to, and who pays them. As for this boom operator, my mind is set with the airbus. Don't like the company, but I think they put out the better product in this case
Xtndr50boom
Voted 8.9 average on the Hot-or-Not scale
Personally I'm not interested in anything relating to Scairbus. The parent company of....ummm A4s summed it up well.
More KC-10s anyone?
Xtndr50boom
Voted 8.9 average on the Hot-or-Not scale
Who says a Navy NFO can't be the CSAF? You want the job? You're probably at the top of the list if you haven't steered illegal contracts to your buddies or misplaced a nuke here or there
Boeing Tanker Protest: Reading the Entrails...
OK, so it was a crappy night of television, even with 141 channels. So I say "Why not read the GAO decision upholding Boeing's protest of the tanker award?" Since I too have reached the end of the Interweb and was bored, I said why not? Ahh, the life of a spy...
I found it here: http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/311344.htm
BLUF? The errors of the Air Farce were nowhere near as egregious as the general press reporting have made them out to be. Were there errors? Yep, but we're not talking major KPP (that would be Key Performance Paramater...) stuff here - it's really more along the lines of splitting hairs than anything else. When I first heard about GAO sustaining the protest, I wanted to see (more) heads roll in the AF; now I'm not so sure. As usual, the big takeway is that you should only rely on major media at your peril, and if the actual source documents are available, you should go read them and form your own opinions.
It will be interesting to see if Boeing actually wins on the recompete - Airbus seems to have had a good proposal, and in the end the competition was really close. There's no guarantee at all that a 777-based variant would in fact win over the A330 design.
(Warning - the language of the decision isn't exactly gripping, edge-of-the-seat, I-wonder-who-shot-JR kind of stuff. Pretty dry, in fact. But if you've ever gotten gas from a tanker, or flown as a PAX in one, you can certainly follow the verbage. I think it's also useful to "see the military acquisition sausage-making up close" sometimes, especially if your ass depends on what comes out of the other side of the grinder. I'll paraphrase Fox News here - I'll summarize, you go read yourself and decide.)
The Boeing protest centered around 6 major issues: Fuel Offload vs Unrefueled Range, Overrun & Breakaway Capability, Operational Utility, Product Support, Evaluation of MILCON Costs, Evaluation of Boeing Non-recurring Engineering Cost. Interestingly, and not widely reported, was that Boeing complained about 6 other specific issues that were *not* sustained by the GAO, as having no basis.
Fuel Offload vs Urefueled Range: It would seem to be a no brainer that if my tanker can give more gas after flying longer than your tanker, I should get credit. In fact, the GAO says "no" - the way the Request for Proposal was worded was such that as long as each tanker met the minimum requirement, then no "extra credit" was allowed. Even though common sense might dictate that you would want a tanker that could give more (as long as you met the minimums), the AF was not allowed to give any extra credit to Airbus on this point. If they had just thrown a few extra words in, to the tune of "the more the merrier over the minimum", then there would be no issue. The AF argued "common sense" on this point and lost - Boeing's protest, while supported, is kind of disingenuous IMO.
Overrun & Breakaway Capability: This one is really getting into the weeds. The gist of it was that baseline procedures have tankers accelerating away in level flight during emergency breakaway and overrun situations, and that the A330 was going to be about 25 knots shy of the 355 knots the AF has as its current standard overrun/breakway speed. This was an implied requirement, since all the requirement in the RFP said was that the "proposed aircraft would be able to refuel all current Air Force fixed-wing tanker-compatible receiver aircraft in accordance with current Air Force procedures." This was a tough section to read, since they redacted it quite a bit. It sounds like the AF went back to NG and said "You're not meeting this requirement", and NG proposed meeting it by possibly descending and accelerating, rather than by accelerating in level flight. Since under current procedures the *receiver* is supposed to descend, this would be a non-starter. But you also have to ask "How tradeable is the 355 KIAS requirement?" Are there solid operational reasonings behind that number with today's a/c, or is it possibly a legacy of older platforms? I don't know, I'm no tanker dude. What would happen if the procedure was simply re-written to say that the tanker would accelerate to 330KIAS? In any event, GAO concludes that the "NG proposed aircraft would not be able to refuel all current Air Force fixed-wing tanker-compatible receiver aircraft in accordance with current Air Force procedures." Sounds a lot worse than the real issue at the heart of this concern.
Operational Utility Area: Boeing satisfied one more supplemental requirement (6 vs 5) than NG did, but the AF did not seem to acknowledge this. OK, that's not good, but this by itself probably wouldn't be sufficient to overturn an award. There was, however, some poor headwork on the part of the AF contracting folks when they were discussing some "partially met" criteria on a minor requirement - they told Boeing in a meeting that they met a certain requirement, but then later decided that they only "partially met" the requirement, while at the same time allowing NG to modify their proposal so that they "fully met" the requirement. Keep in mind that this was on a tertiary requirement about the jet being "net ready" (as in "network centric warfare ready", and you'd have to read the RFP to see exactly what they were aiming at - web browsing as I lounge on a cargo pallet?) I'm not trying to excuse the behavior, only suggest it wasn't a "can the plane still fly or not" kind of issue.
Product Support: The RFP required depot-level support to be in place within 2 years of delivery of the first production a/c. The NG proposal was wishy-washy on the exact timing, and the GAO found that the AF didn't count this as a weakness. That's fair, but again, not exactly make-or-break.
MILCON: I'll spare you most of the detail, but one of the major issues was the fact that the AF hadn't taken into account the higher "seat storage cost" of the A330. What's seat storage cost, you ask? Well, those pallets that hold seats (instead of cargo) have to be stored somewhere, and since the A330 can hold more seats, you need more storage. And therefore you have to build more storage. Also, the A330 might have different batteries, and those batteries might have different handling requirements, and therfore different storage space, and therefore might need new buildings. *That's* the level of the discussion on this issue, again nowhere near the level of concern that the media reporting would have led you to believe.
Boeing Non-Recurring Engineering Cost: While upheld, this was a total cost-accounting nerd issue of the 4th order.
OK, I'm tired of typing now. My big takeway from this whole thing is that when you're spending 10s of billions of $$, it's probably a good idea to dot all the i's and cross all the t's. And it's also a good idea to make sure the taxpayers get the best value for the dollar. And that there was enough irregularity to support the protest. But there was nowhere near the level of incompetence or boobery that I would have suspected - it looked like in general the AF did a pretty decent job trying to pick the best plane, but either didn't word their RFP tight enough or have enougn mid-level controls to eliminate some decisions that were (in retrospect) not so good.
OK, so it was a crappy night of television, even with 141 channels. So I say "Why not read the GAO decision upholding Boeing's protest of the tanker award?" Since I too have reached the end of the Interweb and was bored, I said why not? Ahh, the life of a spy...
I found it here: http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/311344.htm
BLUF? The errors of the Air Farce were nowhere near as egregious as the general press reporting have made them out to be. Were there errors? Yep, but we're not talking major KPP (that would be Key Performance Paramater...) stuff here - it's really more along the lines of splitting hairs than anything else. When I first heard about GAO sustaining the protest, I wanted to see (more) heads roll in the AF; now I'm not so sure. As usual, the big takeway is that you should only rely on major media at your peril, and if the actual source documents are available, you should go read them and form your own opinions.
It will be interesting to see if Boeing actually wins on the recompete - Airbus seems to have had a good proposal, and in the end the competition was really close. There's no guarantee at all that a 777-based variant would in fact win over the A330 design.
(Warning - the language of the decision isn't exactly gripping, edge-of-the-seat, I-wonder-who-shot-JR kind of stuff. Pretty dry, in fact. But if you've ever gotten gas from a tanker, or flown as a PAX in one, you can certainly follow the verbage. I think it's also useful to "see the military acquisition sausage-making up close" sometimes, especially if your ass depends on what comes out of the other side of the grinder. I'll paraphrase Fox News here - I'll summarize, you go read yourself and decide.)
The Boeing protest centered around 6 major issues: Fuel Offload vs Unrefueled Range, Overrun & Breakaway Capability, Operational Utility, Product Support, Evaluation of MILCON Costs, Evaluation of Boeing Non-recurring Engineering Cost. Interestingly, and not widely reported, was that Boeing complained about 6 other specific issues that were *not* sustained by the GAO, as having no basis.
Fuel Offload vs Urefueled Range: It would seem to be a no brainer that if my tanker can give more gas after flying longer than your tanker, I should get credit. In fact, the GAO says "no" - the way the Request for Proposal was worded was such that as long as each tanker met the minimum requirement, then no "extra credit" was allowed. Even though common sense might dictate that you would want a tanker that could give more (as long as you met the minimums), the AF was not allowed to give any extra credit to Airbus on this point. If they had just thrown a few extra words in, to the tune of "the more the merrier over the minimum", then there would be no issue. The AF argued "common sense" on this point and lost - Boeing's protest, while supported, is kind of disingenuous IMO.
Overrun & Breakaway Capability: This one is really getting into the weeds. The gist of it was that baseline procedures have tankers accelerating away in level flight during emergency breakaway and overrun situations, and that the A330 was going to be about 25 knots shy of the 355 knots the AF has as its current standard overrun/breakway speed. This was an implied requirement, since all the requirement in the RFP said was that the "proposed aircraft would be able to refuel all current Air Force fixed-wing tanker-compatible receiver aircraft in accordance with current Air Force procedures." This was a tough section to read, since they redacted it quite a bit. It sounds like the AF went back to NG and said "You're not meeting this requirement", and NG proposed meeting it by possibly descending and accelerating, rather than by accelerating in level flight. Since under current procedures the *receiver* is supposed to descend, this would be a non-starter. But you also have to ask "How tradeable is the 355 KIAS requirement?" Are there solid operational reasonings behind that number with today's a/c, or is it possibly a legacy of older platforms? I don't know, I'm no tanker dude. What would happen if the procedure was simply re-written to say that the tanker would accelerate to 330KIAS? In any event, GAO concludes that the "NG proposed aircraft would not be able to refuel all current Air Force fixed-wing tanker-compatible receiver aircraft in accordance with current Air Force procedures." Sounds a lot worse than the real issue at the heart of this concern.
Operational Utility Area: Boeing satisfied one more supplemental requirement (6 vs 5) than NG did, but the AF did not seem to acknowledge this. OK, that's not good, but this by itself probably wouldn't be sufficient to overturn an award. There was, however, some poor headwork on the part of the AF contracting folks when they were discussing some "partially met" criteria on a minor requirement - they told Boeing in a meeting that they met a certain requirement, but then later decided that they only "partially met" the requirement, while at the same time allowing NG to modify their proposal so that they "fully met" the requirement. Keep in mind that this was on a tertiary requirement about the jet being "net ready" (as in "network centric warfare ready", and you'd have to read the RFP to see exactly what they were aiming at - web browsing as I lounge on a cargo pallet?) I'm not trying to excuse the behavior, only suggest it wasn't a "can the plane still fly or not" kind of issue.
Product Support: The RFP required depot-level support to be in place within 2 years of delivery of the first production a/c. The NG proposal was wishy-washy on the exact timing, and the GAO found that the AF didn't count this as a weakness. That's fair, but again, not exactly make-or-break.
MILCON: I'll spare you most of the detail, but one of the major issues was the fact that the AF hadn't taken into account the higher "seat storage cost" of the A330. What's seat storage cost, you ask? Well, those pallets that hold seats (instead of cargo) have to be stored somewhere, and since the A330 can hold more seats, you need more storage. And therefore you have to build more storage. Also, the A330 might have different batteries, and those batteries might have different handling requirements, and therfore different storage space, and therefore might need new buildings. *That's* the level of the discussion on this issue, again nowhere near the level of concern that the media reporting would have led you to believe.
Boeing Non-Recurring Engineering Cost: While upheld, this was a total cost-accounting nerd issue of the 4th order.
OK, I'm tired of typing now. My big takeway from this whole thing is that when you're spending 10s of billions of $$, it's probably a good idea to dot all the i's and cross all the t's. And it's also a good idea to make sure the taxpayers get the best value for the dollar. And that there was enough irregularity to support the protest. But there was nowhere near the level of incompetence or boobery that I would have suspected - it looked like in general the AF did a pretty decent job trying to pick the best plane, but either didn't word their RFP tight enough or have enougn mid-level controls to eliminate some decisions that were (in retrospect) not so good.
Allow me to condense: it's ALWAYS money and politics. Once in a while, they switch: then it's politics and money. 