GAO Protests often fail, Boeing concedes

Reuters published this piece late Thursday about Boeing’s concession that protests over government awards often fail.

Boeing, of course, is talking about its protest to the Government Accountability Office over the USAF award to Northrop Grumman for the KC-45A tanker contract.

This isn’t news–Boeing said as much when it filed the protest in March. But as the clock ticks down to the June 19 deadline for the GAO to release its findings, we’ve noticed something else that’s been ratcheting up significantly: the press, politician and labor activity on Boeing’s behalf.

In recent weeks, there have been an increasing number of Op-Ed pieces, actions by state legislatures condemning the award, calling for investigations, and this week alone the launch of a new pro-Boeing website, the issuance of a “white paper” (see our previous item on this one) and the 180 degree about-face by Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, who must be dizzy from about-facing so often. (He was for Boeing before he was for Northrop before becoming for Boeing again.) There was even an e-mail blast to Members of Congress that was all about the dastardly EADS (Northrop’s prime sub-contractor and parent of Airbus) and very little about the attributes of the KC-767, signed by about a dozen military types from several branches of the service of various ranks.

We’ve seen this same pattern of activity before. In the weeks leading up to the February 29 tanker award announcement, similar pro-Boeing stuff was coming from similar constituencies with similar messages. We concluded then that Boeing was laying the groundwork with Congress in case the award went against it (which we, and universally all other observers, did not expect). We believe this ratcheting up of activity is in the expectation that Boeing will lose the GAO protest–and this time Boeing expects that as well. (Which means that we, having called it wrong on the award, won’t be surprised if the GAO upholds the protest.)

We understand that the GAO has completed its work, but don’t know this definitively. Watch for even more activity on behalf of Boeing between now and the June 19 deadline for the GAO to announce its decision.

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