By Marina Malenic
NEW YORK–The Air Force said yesterday that it has sought to “level the playing field” after accidentally providing companies competing for the KC-X tanker replacement program data about each other’s bids by later intentionally releasing the information to the firms.
Air Force Col. Les Kodlick, a spokesman for the service, told Defense Daily that one of the firms had mistakenly opened a computer file containing information about its rival’s airplane last month, while the other had not. Kodlick said forensic specialists inspected the companies’ computers and found that Boeing [BA] employees had not opened the misdirected file, while EADS employees had “inadvertently” done so. Air Force and other Pentagon officials then decided to remedy the situation by intentionally providing each firm the other’s data, he said.
The spokesman added that the Air Force still plans to award a contract for the 179 aircraft early in the new year.
Air Force Secretary David Van Buren, speaking at a conference in New York hosted by Aviation Week/Credit Suisse, said he still has “great confidence in the [KC-X] program office and in the great professionalism of both companies,” despite the incident.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz last week said the data contained in the misdirected documents was not “proprietary” pricing information. He told reporters that two Air Force personnel had been removed from the program over the incident (Defense Daily, Nov. 24).
EADS North America CEO Sean O’Keefe has said his company executives have not yet ruled out protesting the release of the information (Defense Daily, Nov. 23). Company spokesman Guy Hicks said yesterday that workers at EADS had acted “appropriately” during the incident.
“The moment we understood we had data not intended for us, we followed proper procedures and dealt with it,” said Hicks.
Speaking at the conference in New York, Dennis Muilenberg, chief of Boeing’s defense unit, would not rule out the possibility of protesting any potential outcome of the contest over the incident.
“The recent occurrence…has been a concern to us,” said Muilenberg. “We know with very high confidence that our Boeing people did not look at any of our competitor’s data.
“As to the rest of the incident, we still have some open, unanswered questions,” he added. “And until we get a full picture and response to those questions, we’ll have to keep our options open.”
Company spokesman Bill Barksdale added that Boeing is “very proud” of how its employees handled the data. He emphasized that the workers are “highly trained in handling classified material.”
“As soon as they saw that the file did not belong to Boeing, they immediately removed the disc and locked it in a tamper-proof safe without opening any files or viewing any data contained on it,” Barksdale told Defense Daily.
Neither Boeing nor EADS would comment as to whether they have now studied their rivals’ data as provided by the Air Force.