irtuskEADS Won’t Protest Loss of Tanker Contract to Boeing
The European military contractor that lost a bid to build Air Force refueling tankers said Friday that it would not protest the awarding of that contract to the Boeing Company, ending years of struggle that had highlighted flaws in the Pentagon’s contracting procedures.
. . .
Mr. Crosby also said that after the Air Force had worked through a complicated formula to compare the bids and calculate the present value of the eventual cost of the planes, it judged the cost of buying Boeing’s planes to be $20.6 billion compared to $22.6 billion for EADS.
Mr. Crosby also questioned whether the Air Force’s focus on obtaining the cheapest plane through “a protest-proof acquisiton methodology” was the approach to meeting the military’s needs. But he said: “It’s clear there is no foundation for a protest. We believe the Air Force has been absolutely scrupulous in applying its rules.”
exactly. this competition wasn’t about what was best for the airforce or what the airforce really wanted, it was about making decision ‘protest-proof’ so they could have something
irtuskUPDATE 4-EADS near decision to concede Boeing tanker win
Europe’s EADS (EAD.PA) is poised to concede defeat in a decade-long battle with Boeing Co (BA.N) by deciding not to appeal a $30 billion U.S. tanker contract, sources familiar with the matter said.
The parent of Airbus could announce as early as Friday that it will not protest last week’s surprise decision by the Air Force to award Boeing a contract for 179 new refueling planes, said the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
irtuskReuters broke the story in Europe and then AFP quoted a source “close to the matter” who said “apparently” a protest will not be filed. But it also quoted a spokesman for EADS NA saying no decision has been reached. The French news agency has excellent sources within EADS, the parent company. An EADS NA spokesman told me the company is still weighing its options. But the initial sense from company officials after Boeing was named winner was that EADS was leaning strongly toward filing a protest.
irtuskJust out of curiosity, with digital cockpits and FBW, is there any value in actually trying to simulate another plane?
For instance if it was simulating an F-16 the digital controls would try to simulate an F-16s layout as much as possible and the FBW would try to match the (relative) flight characteristics as much as possible. If the bigger engine of the F-16 took a little longer to spool up, it could add in a delay on the throttle response (overridable by jamming the throttle past the stop of course), stuff like that. And then if it was simulating an F-35 the cockpit displays would change to resemble that and so on.
Is that completely impossible or not what they’re trying to do (they aren’t trying to teach them to fly the F-16, just how to fly in formation) or maybe possible in the future or something . . .
irtuskWouldn’t there be a huge problem with the enemy radars spotting such a huge aircraft long before it can enter enemy air-space?
Well this is being envisioned for a ‘defense of Taiwan’ scenario, so no
A B-1 is too big and costly for such service.
Just like the proposed Tu-160P(tu-161) idea is..
So a P-8 then :diablo:
irtuskYoure idea was already tried, it was called the F-20 Tigershark, it did not sell because it turned out to not be significantly better than the F-5E
Pretty sure it was because it couldn’t compete with the F-16.
irtuskLooks like a deal similar to what Belgium has agreed on with Luxemburg. One A400M is getting paid for by the Luxemburgers, but it will be integrated in the Belgian airlift squadron.
Combined with SALIS, this seems to be an unprecedented level of joint ownership for an airplane
it seems slightly amazing that they’re so expensive that whole countries can’t afford one by themselves
irtuskBoeing says that, despite the recent award of the long-awaited U.S. Air Force KC-X tanker contract, they have no “known” plans to re-activate the hybrid KC-767 prototype airframe built seven years ago in advance of the company’s initial failed lease-buy tanker plan.
. . .
Boeing spent its own dollars building a prototype that incorporated the baseline features of what was the KC-767A including a standard length -200 fuselage with strengthened floor and added main deck cargo door, -300ER strengthened wings and a flightdeck provisioned for the layout and displays of the -400ER cockpit.
. . .
Boeing has moved further and further away from the original variant, with changes reflecting features of later 767-200LRF long-range freighter configurations, and in its latest form, flight deck avionics derived from those of the 787.
Boeing admitted in 2005 that after recouping the scrap value along, its net loss on building the aircraft would have been $54 million.
. . .
does not plan to start assembly of the first KC-46A until 2014
irtuskEADS KC-X Debriefing Spanned Two Days
The U.S. Air Force’s debriefing for losing KC-X bidder EADS North America spanned two days to allow the service to follow up on some items with the contractor, according to a program official.
The company’s debriefing on its loss wrapped up with a session March 1, the official says. It began with a 90-min. session Feb. 28.
. . .
Typically, the companies take the position that the clock for a protest runs out five days after the debriefing, when they are made aware of how the government performed its source selection. However, this is an issue of debate
. . .
Either way, the likely deadline for a protest is March 7, according to David Van Buren, Air Force acquisition chief.
. . .
He acknowledges that EADS is “entitled” to protest, and he notes there is “not payback on these kinds of things” with regard to future access to the U.S. defense market if they do.
irtuskThat doesn’t get close to half of 669.
Ah sorry, misread the question. Was thinking it was more along the line of ‘what surveillance aircraft can use a boom’
since the remaining U-2Rs can’t be refueled
irtuskBTW, one question USAF has 669 “…bombers and surveillance aircraft…”? Where are they? I’m referring to those that can fully use the boom.
stuff like JSTARS and E-3
irtuskThe multiple simultaneous P&D operations are offset by the fact that the boom can refuel a fighter more than twice as quickly as a P&D setup.
the take-away quote from that document
However, all found that tankers equipped with multipoint hose-and-drogue refueling would refuel combat aircraft more effectively than boom equipped aircraft and could therefore allow a reduction in the tanker fleet. Reduction estimates ranged from 17% to 50%.
irtuskBut, this time around the AF refuelers told the cargo guys to pound sand and stuck to the original specs.
The original specs written by Boeing specifically to exclude the A330
irtuskAF no doubt is not basing its requirements solely on “…years of mideast operations with plentiful and close bases”.
Perhaps
but YOUR argument that the KC-30’s advantages aren’t significant “since we don’t use all the offload capacity of the KC-135R” certainly is
More germane, though is that AF has some historical data on needing lots of tankers supplying lots of receivers in a relatively short period of time. You might recall hearing of this exercise. It was called “Vietnam”.
how far was South Vietnam from North Vietnam?
now compare how far Taiwan is from Guam and Japan
do you see the difference?
If how much fuel could be carried on a tanker was the big criteria, why then AF should have been looking at the KC-747 vs. the KC-A380.
‘booms in the air’ and price is still important
what you keep ignoring is that the KC-30 offers more capability FOR (basically) THE SAME PRICE
if the KC-30 was 30% more than the KC-767, then fine
(which is why the KC-777 was always a red herring. sure it was more capable but the cost was far, far greater)
but to pretend that the extra capability of the KC-30 is worthless is beyond disingenuous
Who knows? KC-Y or Z may see the KC-330 vs. the KC-777
who knows, maybe the KC-Y/Z will never happen and our entire fleet will eventually be composed solely of KC-767s
this is the nightmare I fear most
Since I don’t believe they’ve held the debrief yet
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/02/28/eads-mum-on-tanker-debrief/
what are the “every indications” that the purchase price of the KC-767 is MORE?
it was last time
Again, this was a PRICE competition for a TANKER.
which is the freaking problem. It should be a VALUE competition
unfortunately the AF is too incompetent to figure out how to run a VALUE competition, so they had to run a price competition in order to ever actually get anything
Go back to my truck analogy. If you’re a package company that is looking at this time to update its small trucks, the Behemothazon has capabilities you don’t need and don’t want to pay extra for.
except your analogy is utterly false
the AF DOES want the extra capabilities of the KC-30 as proven by their bending of the rules last time
unfortunately they can’t figure out how to write the rules to get it without excluding the 767 which isn’t politically viable
if you have to lower the requirements to allow the 767 to compete and you can’t give ‘extra credit’ for extra value, it becomes very difficult for anything except the 767 to win
irtuskThe KC-X competition will not decide all of the tankers for the next 50 years. If the USAF decides, in the future, that they need more than the KC-46A, they have the KC-Y & KC-Z bids in which to ask for a larger tanker.
1. any future KC-Y/Z bids are purely speculative (some might say fantasy), KC-X might be all we end up with
2. for a small 4% increase in life cycle costs we end up with a much more capable tanker NOW. To me the increased capability well outweighs such a minor theoretical cost increase.
If the cost difference was 30% then I would have a different view
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