A few interesting stories today on the USAF tanker saga:
Business Week: Boeing’s tanker challenge.
Reuters: US arms buyer faults Boeing. This story quotes a Jacques Gansler of the University of Maryland who now sits on the Defense Science Board. If memory serves correctly, Northrop Grumman partially funded a study at the U of M Gansler oversaw on the tanker. No mention of this is in the story.
Note: Be sure and check out updates to posts below on the 787 and the best-and-final offer.
Update, August 31:
The Tacoma News Tribune has this long analysis on the tanker and whether Boeing should press on.
Thanks for the BW link. Very informative. I especially enjoyed Boeing’s Daniel Beck quote:
“If they do intend to offer a different platform, they would benefit from the same kind of reasonable timeframe for development of proposals that we have requested,” says Beck. “So why should they be so adamant that this be rushed?”
Gotta love the hubris. You see Mr Beck, EADS has already designed and built the A300F, the freighter version that NG/EADS could shift their bid to use. The differences between A300 airframes are better understood and the risks are known, unlike Boeing’s paper bid. These are truths that could have applied to Boeing’s bid, if they had bothered to build something for the competition as well.
From the BW article, an NG/EADS re-win would mean Boeing would have to start competing on merit again for business they simply assumed they would always have.
Not all bad in this for Boeing though –This can bode well for Boeing in the long run, if their Airplane People can bring their Money Boys to heel again.
Yes, give NG/EADS time to offer a tanker based on the A330-200F and powered by the GEnx-2B engines.
There’s the extra value that Scott said would occur by giving the extra 6 months, but the price for both Boeing’s and NG/EADS’ offerings will have to go up.