Nonsense, this is being screwed up by shabby politics of the worst sort that has infested the pentagon for years. The morality or otherwise of the USAF is utterly irrelevant, what counts is cost and operation performance, the USAF chose what it thought was the best option (and discussions here seem to agree with the conclusion) and now they are being screwed over.

You remind me of the people that blame the police that pull over the speeders, as opposed to the speeders that were caught in violation of the posted speed limit.

If you say you want to play by the rules, do so.

Logan Hartke

As if that wasn’t guaranteed to happen. I expect Boeing is pretty much guaranteed to win.

Well great, the USAF gets the aircraft it did not select, Boeing gets handed a monopoly, the entire project gets delayed, costs will increase and all because of some pathetic childish nationalistic BS from the undereducated. Ladies and Gentlemen the flaw in democracy.:rolleyes:

Can we stop with this nonsense? You guys are acting like a fair and balanced competition that produced Northrop Grumman as the winner has been wrongfully overturned so that a rigged selection can take place where the evil lawyers and lawmakers can just make Boeing win.

That either shows that you are completely ignorant as to the circumstances of the competition (and the state of USAF procurement as a whole) or that you’re so prejudiced towards the Northrop Grumman tanker that you’ll use any excuse to make it look like actions are being taken that would prove Northrop Grumman isn’t getting a fair shot (such as a jingoistic bias).

I can make a list that wouldn’t fit in this post of examples of foreign-designed hardware that is currently in use by the United States military when a American-designed option was an alternative.

Neither Boeing nor Northrop-Grumman are strangers to the “win some, lose some” nature of US aircraft selection with company histories including such affronts to fairness as the Model 299, the XF5F, and the YB-49 where an aircraft with great performance for its time (although not without its issues), but was passed over for reasons not entirely without prejudice.

Read the GAO report (the least biased organization involved in this process) and tell me that the Air Force still knows what it’s doing. I agree that the Air Force personnel and the American taxpayer are getting a raw deal. This should have been taken care at least a decade ago. In this instance, however, it’s the Air Force that’s screwing over its own, not an outside entity. They knew they had one try to get it right and they still made idiot mistakes. Now they’re paying for it.

What I said before still applies…

Whether you agree with the decision or not, it was not merely GAO saying “because I say so”. The USAF didn’t cover all of its bases.

See the 7 points the GAO mentions. A number of them are quite valid. Certain ones, like #2 and #4 make you sit back and wonder what the USAF was thinking. They knew this competition was going to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb.

Specifically, we sustained the protest for the following reasons:

1. The Air Force, in making the award decision, did not assess the relative merits of the proposals in accordance with the evaluation criteria identified in the solicitation, which provided for a relative order of importance for the various technical requirements. The agency also did not take into account the fact that Boeing offered to satisfy more non-mandatory technical “requirements” than Northrop Grumman, even though the solicitation expressly requested offerors to satisfy as many of these technical “requirements” as possible.

2. The Air Force’s use as a key discriminator that Northrop Grumman proposed to exceed a key performance parameter objective relating to aerial refueling to a greater degree than Boeing violated the solicitation’s evaluation provision that “no consideration will be provided for exceeding [key performance parameter] objectives.”

3. The protest record did not demonstrate the reasonableness of the Air Force’s determination that Northrop Grumman’s proposed aerial refueling tanker could refuel all current Air Force fixed-wing tanker-compatible receiver aircraft in accordance with current Air Force procedures, as required by the solicitation.

4. The Air Force conducted misleading and unequal discussions with Boeing, by informing Boeing that it had fully satisfied a key performance parameter objective relating to operational utility, but later determined that Boeing had only partially met this objective, without advising Boeing of this change in the agency’s assessment and while continuing to conduct discussions with Northrop Grumman relating to its satisfaction of the same key performance parameter objective.

5. The Air Force unreasonably determined that Northrop Grumman’s refusal to agree to a specific solicitation requirement that it plan and support the agency to achieve initial organic depot-level maintenance within 2 years after delivery of the first full-rate production aircraft was an “administrative oversight,” and improperly made award, despite this clear exception to a material solicitation requirement.

6. The Air Force’s evaluation of military construction costs in calculating the offerors’ most probable life cycle costs for their proposed aircraft was unreasonable, where the agency during the protest conceded that it made a number of errors in evaluation that, when corrected, result in Boeing displacing Northrop Grumman as the offeror with the lowest most probable life cycle cost; where the evaluation did not account for the offerors’ specific proposals; and where the calculation of military construction costs based on a notional (hypothetical) plan was not reasonably supported.

7. The Air Force improperly increased Boeing’s estimated non-recurring engineering costs in calculating that firm’s most probable life cycle costs to account for risk associated with Boeing’s failure to satisfactorily explain the basis for how it priced this cost element, where the agency had not found that the proposed costs for that element were unrealistically low. In addition, the Air Force’s use of a simulation model to determine Boeing’s probable non-recurring engineering costs was unreasonable, because the Air Force used as data inputs in the model the percentage of cost growth associated with weapons systems at an overall program level and there was no indication that these inputs would be a reliable predictor of anticipated growth in Boeing’s non-recurring engineering costs.

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/004257.html

Say what you will about the respective planes and companies, the selection process wasn’t without its issues this time around.

Logan Hartke

I remember reading about a Soviet-flown B-25 forcing a P-43 Lancer into the ground during training exercises in the US in WWII. Apparently, the Soviet pilots were not aware that the B-25 was not, in point of fact, a bomber and flew it like it was a fighter. It’s a credit to North American that it could handle that way.

Logan Hartke

**Edited, was meant to be in the oldest aircraft still in production thread.**

Logan Hartke

The H-13 (Bell 47) Sioux and DHC-2 Beaver both predate the An-2 and they’re still in military service.

Logan Hartke

F7U Cutlass…F-89 Scorpion

Both of those aircraft got uglier as they went further in their development. The original XF-89 with the rounded nose, and clean lines wasn’t bad looking. Jack Northrop had a very elegant concept for the time. Compare it to its NF Vampire contemporary with its fuselage at one angle, too tiny booms at another angle, and that Mosquito leftover cockpit, and it looks downright nice for a 1950s nightfighter. Even the F-89As still retained much of that clean look. Then it all just went downhill. F-89B was no longer elegant, the F-89D was starting to get crowded, and by the F-89H, all hope was lost.

Yak-25 Flashlight

I like the Yak-25. It has that “girl next door” pretty look to it. The later ones, however, like the Yak-28 just looked ugly, though. Their different attitude on the ground, the glazed nose, and the spiky points where there had been graceful curves just ruined the aesthetics of that layout. It’s like the girl next door after she fell in with the wrong crowd, started smoking 3 packs a day, got a few tattoos, and had a few kids. It went from unpretentious and pretty to rough and mean.

My main beef with the Tu-22M3 was its nose radome. That’s ugly as sin. Was symmetry too hard? The cockpit’s not great, and I think the fixed portion of the wing was neat, but that nose?

As for the Victor, well, I’m in the “ugly but neat” crowd. It didn’t help that it had to compete for photographs with the Vulcan. That just isn’t fair. That’s like the F3H Demon being contemporaries with the F4D Skyray. How do you compare?

Speaking of, that’s another aircraft that looked wrong from any and all angles. Its entire tail looked too small. One engine wasn’t enough, that nose was just…funky. The wing was too big and angled funny. It had a very high nose attitude on the deck, and it looked fat around the midsection. In flight it looked better, but not great, by any stretch.

Logan Hartke

The Brazilians have at least acquired some Derbys and Pythons for their F-5EMs, although I cannot confirm if they are just training rounds or not. I imagine they have live rounds.

http://www.forum.clickgratis.com.br/clubedof5/t-72-previous.html

Logan Hartke

Large-scale use of titanium is not disputed. I understand that, but the aircraft is still mostly aluminum. My truck uses a lot of rubber. It’s still mostly steel (old truck, not plastic). Find a source that says it’s mostly titanium. Or, just consult Yefim Gordon’s bible on the Flanker and discover you’re wrong yourself.

Logan Hartke