Boeing PR on the Tanker Debrief

Boeing: Uncertainty About Process Remains After Air Force Tanker Debrief
Friday March 7, 5:52 pm ET

ST. LOUIS, March 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — The U.S. Air Force has completed a debriefing for The Boeing Company (NYSE: BANews) during which acquisition officials sought to explain why they selected a team of Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) for a contract to replace aerial refueling tankers.The debriefing on Friday came one week after the Air Force’s surprising announcement that it had chosen the Northrop-EADS team over the Boeing KC-767 tanker offering.

“We spent several hours with Air Force leaders, listening and probing, all in an effort to better understand the reasoning behind their decisions,” said Mark McGraw, Boeing vice president and program manager of the KC-767 tanker. “While we are grateful for the timely debriefing, we left the room with significant concerns about the process in several areas, including program requirements related to capabilities, cost and risk; evaluation of the bids and the ultimate decision.

“What is clear now is that reports claiming that the Airbus offering won by a wide margin could not be more inaccurate,” said McGraw.

Boeing officials said that they will take the next few days to evaluate the data presented and will give serious consideration to filing a protest.

“Our plan now is to work through the weekend to come to a decision on our course of action early next week,” said McGraw. “It will be a very rigorous and deliberative process to ensure we’re balancing the needs of the warfighter with our desire to be treated fairly. For decades Boeing has been recognized as a defense company that never takes lightly protests of our customers’ decisions.”

A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems (http://www.boeing.com/ids/) is one of the world’s largest space and defense businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is a $32.1 billion business with 71,000 employees worldwide.

Great analysis of impact of tanker loss

The Puget Sound Business Journal in Seattle has a superb report today on the impact to Boeing (with focus on Puget Sound) of the loss of the tanker contract.

Reporter Steve Wilhelm surveys local Boeing suppliers who work on the 767 program and finds out that, despite to histrionics and hand-wringing by the politicians, the impact won’t be all that much. (Boeing, notably, has said that losing the tanker contract won’t matter, either from a financial perspective.)

This story is worth the read. Not that it will quell the crying from the politicians, and in partiular Sen. Patty Murray and US Rep Norm Dicks. They should be embarrassed.

More bad news for Boeing

It’s a busy Friday.

Goldman Sachs’ aerospace analyst reports that power-on for the Boeing 787 will likely slip from March to June and first deliveries from 1Q09 to 4Q09. Production problems continue with airplanes 1-6, with—of all things—wiring being an issue. Remember wiring brought the Airbus A380 program to a standstill for two years. With this latest delay, if correct, we’re now looking at at least 15 months. (We’ve heard 18 months.) Perhaps it’s time to name the airplane the 787-380. Boeing says it is assessing the program schedule and will have an update at the end of the month. This is what we ambiguously alluded to in our previous post about a bad week for Boeing.

Boeing is to get its debrief today from the US Air Force on why it lost the tanker contract. In a news report, tanker spokesman Bill Barksdale says Boeing is leaning against a protest but will decide after the debrief. Maybe what’s best for the war fighter will prevail after all; Boeing set the bar during the competitive phase by saying throughout the competition that the Air Force should do what’s best for the war fighter. The KC-30 award was the USAF’s decision along this line.

We’ve been told one consideration of the Air Force was the production problems associated with the 787. We’re told that the USAF visited the Everett (WA) factory, where the KC-767 would have been built and where the 787 is being built. Given the disarray in the 787 program, we’re told the USAF essentially asked itself that if the KC-767 program had troubles, would Boeing assign the first team to the KC-767 to resolve the issues—or considering the 787, would the first team be assigned to the 787 and the second team to the KC-767? We’re told the Air Force concluded the tanker would take a back seat to the 787, on which Boeing has bet the future of the company. A note of caution on this point: we have a sole source on this score, but we’ve been receiving information from this source for more than a year and the data has always proved correct. Boeing has previously acknowledged that engineers from its defense unit were diverted to the 787 program, thus perhaps lending weight to the Air Force concerns.

Update 12:50p:

Yvonne Leach, spokesperson for the 787 program, wrote to say the wiring angle reported by Goldman is wrong and requested a correction. We independently have information from two sources along the same lines. While reporting what Goldman had to say, we simply had to go with our best information. But Yvonne’s statement the information is “wrong” is duly noted.

Update 3:06p:

Here’s a further comment from Yvonne Leach on the wiring issue.

In response to what you’re hearing from your two sources, we are not experiencing any more wiring issues than are typical on a new airplane program. Further, compared to the first 777 the amount of wiring work is no different.

While we have had some change in wiring specifications on 787, again it is no more than what we typically experience on any airplane. In fact, I was told that you could go to any airplane program production line as a new customer and the level of wiring change would be similar.

We have in fact, completed some wiring on Airplane #1. For instance, the majority of wiring installations are complete on the wings and the
crown/41 section does have wiring installed.

Remember that engineering changes have to be implemented throughout the fleet so to say we may have to “rewire” airplane #2 could be misleading. We wouldn’t be starting over (as in rewiring) we would simply be implementing a change.

 

Analyst predicts new 787 delay

Call it the Boeing 787-380. Reuters reports that Goldman Sachs is predicting another round of delays for the Boeing 787. See the story here.

And the fury continues

The political fury over the USAF award of the KC-45A tanker to Northrop Grumman/EADS/Airbus continues.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA, our senator, BTW) has made overturning the award her mission in life. We generally support Murray on other issues, but she’s over the top on this one. Her assertions about Airbus are often off target and irrational. But she should not be underestimated, as EADS North America and Northrop often do. She is the No. 4 ranking Democrat in the Senate and knows how to game the system. She’s a real danger to this contract and Northrop/EADS/Airbus better get their allies in gear to protect their award.

US Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA, but not our Congressman–ours is the lightweight Dave Reichert, a Republican, whose familiarity with Boeing stems more from flying between the two Washingtons on Boeing 737s than anything else) is more rationale and far more dangerous to the Northrop crowd. The Seattle Times has a good story today about Dicks vs. the USAF on this issue. Dicks also released correspondence between Boeing and the USAF over criteria issues that is worth reading. This letter may be found here.

Some members of Congress, including Murray, are complaining that the USAF did not consider the “illegal” subsidies case the US has against Airbus before the World Trade Organization, noting that such consideration was removed from the RFP at the request of US Sen. John McCain, urged on by Northrop. We wrote about this issue at the time and, in response to a reader just yesterday, we wrote the following to him:

 The original language asked the submitters (Boeing and NGC) to assess what the penalties would be if found “guilty” by the WTO. At that time, the cases hadn’t even been argued, let alone decided and penalties were anyone’s guess. Furthermore, there was no guarantee that if any penalties were assessed, they’d be enforced or even applied to aerospace. Under WTO rules, penalties may be applied to any industry. I could just see Europe applying the penalties to Washington apples and the US to French wines. In the case of the WTO adjudication of Embraer and Bombardier, the WTO found both parties guilty (which is what I think will happen in the Airbus-Boeing WTO case) and neither country imposed any penalty. The original question was impossible for Boeing or NGC to answer and absurd to include. The clause finally included was that the costs of any penalties assessed could not be passed on to the AF. This was the proper action.

Our link below to a Commentary on 767/777 tanker possibilities also includes the original WTO language referred to above.

It’s important to note that no decision has yet been issued by the WTO even today, although the US case against Airbus and the EU case against Boeing were argued last year.

Note we also said the EU case against Boeing. Although some members of Congress want to insert legislation that no contract should be awarded to a company being sued by the US over trade issues, this conveniently ignores the fact that Boeing is also being sued by the EU over trade issues. (Technically these “suits” are government-to-government complaints, not government-vs-company, but the practical effect is that Airbus and Boeing are the defendants even if this isn’t the case in the strict legal sense.)

Dicks, echoing Boeing’s view (and carrying Boeing’s water in the process), complains that Boeing didn’t know the Air Force wanted a bigger airplane. This is a pretty amazing position on the part of Boeing and its supporters. We expected Boeing not only to offer the 767 but also the 777, which would have checkmated Northrop, and we said so back in September 2006. This Commentary may be found here.

Boeing, and its supporters, continue to point to Boeing’s assertions that the 767 uses less fuel than the A330, on which the KC-30 is based. This is true, but not to the extent Boeing claims. Boeing says the 767 uses 24% less fuel; Airbus says the number it closer to 6%-8%, but that the better productivity of the A330 more than offsets the extra fuel burn.

Boeing retained some obscure aviation firm to arrive at their number. We’ve been involved in commercial aviation since 1979 and we had never heard of the firm Boeing used–we had to look it up on the Internet, and discovered that it’s main focus is corporate jets. Boeing could have chosen well known, and highly respected firms, such as Avitas, Back Aviation, IBA or several others that would have given its figures credibility. But we don’t think any of these would have provided the answer Boeing wanted because quite simply the 24% figure is highly suspect.

If it were true, no airline in the world would have bought the A330, the direct competitor to the 767, for the fuel efficiency deficit of this magnitude would have been intolerable. The reality is that the efficiency of the A330 effectively killed the 767, which has a backlog of about 50 (mostly from cargo airlines). Airbus sold 66 A330 freighters alone last year and has a backlog of several hundred A330 passenger planes. Boeing took nearly 30 years  to sell 1,000 767s; Airbus has sold nearly 900 A330s in about 15 years, and sales are still going strong while 767s aren’t selling much at all.

Boeing’s fuel argument, now being repeated, is specious.

Boeing gets its debrief tomorrow. It will decide by early next week whether to file a protest.

 

Bad week for Boeing gets worse

Only two business days went by after Boeing lost the $40bn KC-X tanker contract to Northrop Grumman when word came down from the Pentagon’s top procurement official, John Young, that the military doesn’t need any more Boeing C-17 transports. This Reuters report sums up the situation nicely.

Boeing has been struggling to keep this program alive while competing for the tanker award. It’s been selling C-17s in ones and twos, hoping that the Air Force would increase its order beyond the 189 contracted for. Not so, says Young. It’s another blow to Boeing.

(A side note: the C-17 is built entirely in the USA at a production rate similar to that of the proposed KC-45 program. Boeing claims 25,000 direct and indirect jobs attributable to the C-17. Boeing claims 44,000 US jobs for its KC-767AT program, which has fewer airplanes (179) than the C-17 program, a similar production rate and less US content (the fuselage is built in Japan, the tail in Italy and other components in the UK). This is one reason why we doubted Boeing’s job claims about the KC-767AT. Another reason was that in 2001 when Boeing delivered 36 767 passenger airplanes annually, a rate two-three times that proposed for the tanker, Boeing claimed 22,000 jobs associated with the 767 program. Finally, Boeing’s claim did not square with the US Department of Commerce formula for figuring jobs created by a program. All the rhetoric by politicians today relies on the Boeing 44,000 jobs claim, which in our view simply is grossly over-inflated.)

By the way, Young used to work for the US Senate committee chaired by Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. Stevens is the senator who inserted the provision in a 2001 appropriations bill that started the plan for Boeing to lease 100 KC-767s to the USAF. From there the tanker scandal erupted, sending two Boeing executives to jail (including the former Air Force procurement officer Boeing hired after she greased the skids for that 2001 deal). Boeing CEO Phil Condit resigned over the scandal, as did an Air Force official.

The loss of the KC-X contract and the C-17 business is not likely to be all for Boeing in the coming weeks. We have solid information that more bad news is coming in The Boeing Co., and it won’t be too long before it’s public.

Meantime,  here are two interesting news stories of the many about the tanker. Click the links for the full report.

Young Fires Back At Critics of Tanker Decision

Four days after the U.S. Air Force handed a $40 billion contract for aerial tankers to Northrop Grumman and EADS, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief fired back at critics of the controversial deal. Additionally, John Young warned the ongoing backlash against the controversial deal should not drive jilted lawmakers to place restrictions on buying military items from foreign suppliers.

And:

The KC-X Tanker Deal: Tracking the Lobbyists

The $35 billion KC-45 aerial tanker deal has attracted a lot of attention and commentary lately, as one might expect. It has also attracted a lot of lobbying dollars – again, as one might expect. While the Pentagon hopes it can keep a lid on the program’s planned costs, it’s an absolute certainty that the lobbying bill will grow quite a bit before all is said and done.

Priceless Op-Ed in the SEA Times

 

 An editorial writer for The Mobile Press Register has a priceless, satirical op-ed piece in The Seattle Times about the tanker award. Read it here.

 

Business Week to Boeing: don’t protest tanker award

Business Week has an interesting commentary on why Boeing should not protest the USAF award to Northrop Grumman. This may be found here.

Boeing statement requesting immediate de-brief

Boeing Requests Immediate KC-X Tanker Briefing

ST. LOUIS, March 4, 2008 – The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] today made public a request for an immediate debriefing from U.S. Air Force officials on the KC-X tanker competition.

As of today, the company has yet to receive a briefing on why it was not selected for the KC-X program, a decision the Air Force announced February 29. The Air Force has indicated that the briefing would occur on or after March 12, a delay the company says is inconsistent with well-established procurement practices.
“A delay of this length in the formal debriefing is unusual,” said Mark McGraw, vice president – 767 tanker programs. “Consistent with past practice and recent experience, we would expect this briefing to occur within days, not weeks, of the selection announcement. Given that we are already seeing press reports containing detailed competitive information, we feel that our request is more than fair and reasonable.”
Boeing viewed the tanker competition as a priority and an opportunity to give the Air Force the best tanker to meet its requirements. The company based its proposal on the stated criteria in the Air Force’s Request For Proposal (RFP), the formal document that defined the requirements for the air tanker system.
“We bid aggressively with specific focus on providing operational tanker capability at low risk and the lowest total life cycle cost,” said McGraw. “For instance, based on values disclosed in the Air Force press conference and press release, the Boeing bid, comprising development and all production airplane costs, would appear to be less than the competitor. In addition, because of the lower fuel burn of the 767, we can only assume our offering was more cost effective from a life cycle standpoint.
“Initial reports have also indicated that we were judged the higher risk offering. Boeing is a single, integrated company with its assets, people and technology under its own management control – with 75 years of unmatched experience building tankers. Northrop and EADS are two companies that will be working together for the first time on a tanker, on an airplane they’ve never built before, under multiple management structures, across cultural, language and geographic divides. We do not understand how Boeing could be determined the higher risk offering.
“Initial reports also indicate there may well have been factors beyond those stated in the RFP, or weighted differently than we understood they would be, used to make the decision. It’s important for us to understand how the Air Force reached their conclusion. The questions we are asking, as well as others being raised about this decision, can best be answered with a timely debrief indicating how our proposal was graded against the stated requirements of the RFP,” said McGraw.

Assessing the fall-out on the tanker

In the three days since the USAF awarded the tanker contract to Northrop Grumman, the fallout has been swift and vitriolic.

Before going there, we’ve updated our corporate website with some analysis of our own. We take a look at the financial impact as we see it for Airbus. It’s less than you might think.

We also take a look at why the KC-30 won over the KC-767. We also posted a link to a Mobile Press-Register interview with the Pentagon’s top procurement officer that’s pretty instructive about how the selection process worked.

Now to the up-to-the-minute news.

Predictably, certain members of Congress are apoplectic over the tanker award to Northrop and its prime sub-contractor, EADS, parent of Airbus. This is particularly so for the delegations from Washington State, where Boeing’s KC-767 would have been built, and Kansas, where it would have been outfitted with the military hardware. Boeing’s labor unions are also, shall we say, a bit upset.

The reactions are understandable, but to be honest, misdirected. As defense analyst Loren Thompson pointed out in his report of Monday, the competition wasn’t even close–Northrop won going away in the assessment of capabilities. Northrop, in using the Airbus A330-200 platform, simply had a better airplane and a better proposal than did Boeing. Northrop also has a tanker that’s in testing (for the Australian Air Force, with delivery scheduled early next year), while Boeing’s KC-767 Advanced Tanker is merely a computer airplane (we used to say “paper airplane”). The 767AT is not the same airplane Boeing sold to the Italian and Japanese air forces. Furthermore, those tanker programs were beset by aerodynamic flutter and certification issues, and delivery to each country is years late. The USAF took note of these problems and Boeing lost major ground as a result in the competition.

The Congressional reaction (and the labor unions, too, for that matter) should really be directed at Boeing. Mismanagement of the KC-767 “standard” program, an inferior proposal and a less capable plane resulted in the loss. The critics now implicitly suggest that the Air Force should buy an airplane that doesn’t meet the desires of the Air Force. Boeing, typically, continues its public relations campaign feeding this anger rather than accepting that its proposal simply didn’t cut it.

Admittedly this would not be the first time Congress has imposed an unwanted procurement on a military service branch, should Congress overturn the USAF selection. Washington Senator Patty Murray, the No. 4 ranking Democrat in the Senate, is Boeing’s most vocal supporter and the most vitriolic critic of Airbus. She wants to give the contract to Boeing. Murray’s proclivity for imposing systems is well documented. The local papers reported a recent instance in which she earmarked money for a high speed boat for the Coast Guard to be built by a small Washington State shipyard (which, not so coincidentally, was a campaign contributor). The Coast Guard didn’t want the boats, didn’t ask for the boats and when the boats were completed found that they were totally unsuitable for their intended use. Never put into service, the Coast Guard immediately surplussed the boats.

Boeing spent the last year at least in a well-orchestrated public and political relations campaign raising red-herring issues about the competition that had little to do with the technical merits of the airplanes (ie, subsidies to Airbus and inflated job figures that, in our analysis, bore little relationship to reality). On the few technical merits that were raised, the data was questionable (notably fuel burn claims) and the Air Force itself discounted much of Boeing’s information, according to Loren Thompson.

Boeing went into the competition believing it would get the award, and in this the company was not alone. Right up to the end, every aerospace analyst that weighed in believed Boeing would win. But Boeing’s over-confidence led to an arrogance, we are told, that didn’t play well with the Air Force during its information-gathering. Boeing and Northrop met with the Air Force throughout the process to learn where their proposals were good and where they fell short, allowing plenty of opportunity for additional information to be provided.

With this process, Boeing had a sense of how the competition was going and this could well explain why Boeing engaged in the heated public and political relations battle that it did, concluding that they might well lose on the merits, and this fight would shift to Congress. We opined months ago that this was indeed Boeing’s strategy, though we never wavered in our belief that the USAF would nonetheless find a way to choose Boeing.

There were signs that we picked up, though, that Boeing was worried. We were told directly that Boeing-Everett (WA), where the tanker would be built, was worried about their prospects. We also were told of the existence of a memo from Boeing chairman James McNerney writing that a loss of the tanker project would not be devastating to Boeing. We could never confirm this memo existed, much less that McNerney wrote what was purported. We were also told that Boeing considered the prospects of a win no more than 50-50, late in the game.

In the end, all the political and union posturing, huffing and puffing and threats should be allowed to simply go away. Northrop and EADS won this thing fair and square, it seems, and by a wide margin. Boeing’s proposal simply wasn’t good enough. Why should the war fighter make do with less than the best? We’ve already seen what can happen (in Iraq) when this does happen. Let’s not perpetuate the bad.That’s how the Japanese auto industry overtook the American auto industry.

Boeing should simply cut its losses and apply its energy and talented resources toward the KC-Y tanker program, slated for 2020, and develop the Blended Wing Body for this. The BWB would be a leap in technological advancement that surpasses the A330 (as the A330 surpassed the 767) and even the 787 and the forthcoming A350. Forget offering the 777 in 2020; it will be too old by then. Go with the BWB and Boeing will reclaim its leadership in tankering.