By Emelie Rutherford
Boeing [BA] yesterday denied it narrowed its protest of the Air Force’s tanker award to Northrop Grumman [NOC], saying it has filed updated protests after seeing materials allegedly supporting its appeal that deal with issues including the boom of the Northrop Grumman plane.
Mark McGraw, vice president and program manager for Boeing Tanker Programs, said he “really wanted to emphatically deny that there has been any narrowing of our protest. In fact, we continue to update and expand our protest.”
McGraw told reporters in a conference call it is a “good sign” the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday so “quickly” denied motions filed last week by the Air Force and Northrop Grumman seeking to dismiss parts of Boeing’s contract protest.
Northrop Grumman downplayed the GAO’s Wednesday denials of the two motions for partial dismissal, saying in a statement the denials came after a supplemental filing by Boeing that “streamlined its original protest and eliminated many of the elements that were central to the Air Force and Northrop Grumman motions.”
Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Col. Jennifer Cassidy said as a result of the GAO’s motion denial “the Air Force better understands the protest issues” and will submit its formal response to the GAO by the April 16 due date.
McGraw said since Boeing filed its protest March 11, company lawyers have seen more data on the Air Force’s Feb. 29 contract award to Northrop Grumman. Yesterday Boeing shared part of a redacted version of the second supplement protest, which replaced the earlier iterations. McGraw said additional supplemental protests have been written, with a third version filed and a fourth one likely being filed by today.
The second supplemental protest alleges the Air Force erred in evaluating proposal attributes including aerial refueling and airlift capabilities. McGraw yesterday highlighted concerns the Air Force allegedly had with aspects of Northrop Grumman’s proposal, including its design for its boom–a probe through which fuel passes from the tanker to the aircraft that needs gas.
“I looks like …the Air Force initially had, even very late in the game, had Northrop as a medium risk there, primarily driven by these concerns about the boom,” McGraw said. “And [the service] really just lowered it to a low risk when Northrop made a commitment to develop this new boom or provide the EADS boom for a fixed price. Now I would think that would take care of maybe any cost risk, but still should have kept any schedule risk to develop a new boom, or obviously the technical risk that the Air Force was very concerned about.”
McGraw claimed the Air Force was “overly harsh” on Boeing’s proposal “in many areas,” including its past-performance rating and assessment of its life-cycle cost.
The Air Force awarded the contract for the KC-45A aerial-refueling tanker, a pact estimated to ultimately be worth more than $35 billion, on Feb. 29 to Northrop Grumman and a team including foreign firm European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS).
The Air Force maintains Northrop Grumman provided the best value when weighing deciding factors–mission capability, proposal risk, past performance, cost/price and performance in a simulated war scenario–and that it followed a transparent and fair process.
Northrop Grumman spokesman Randy Belote yesterday said his company “was rated superior in four out of five evaluation criteria so for Boeing to suggest that the award outcome should have been different is illogical.”
Belote said that Boeing refuses to address its low marks in the area of program management and risk.
“Boeing chooses to ignore what concerned the Air Force, including Boeing’s failure to deliver on its commitments to Italy and Japan to provide a plane that is not the same as what has been proposed to the Air Force; the fact that the plane Boeing is proposing for the Air Force has never been built; and, the fact that Boeing has not yet built the boom it proposed to provide,” Belote said.
“By contrast, Northrop Grumman and its partners have built, tested and flown the KC-45 and we have built and successfully passed fuel through the boom that will be used,” he said.
The motions for partial dismissal Northrop Grumman and the Air Force filed with the GAO March 26 reportedly argued many of the claims in Boeing’s protest should have been raised before Boeing submitted its final bid.
McGraw yesterday said “there wasn’t really what I would call good open dialogue” during Boeing’s pre-award meetings with the Air Force.
Asked to elaborate, because Boeing previously praised the amount of dialogue with the service, McGraw said “the Air Force would kind of talk around what they really wanted,” and that “a little more direct communication could’ve saved us all a lot of time and maybe lead to taking care of some of the things that maybe someone on the Air Force side feel we never properly answered.” Asked if Boeing complained about this communications dynamic during the competition, he said, “complain’s maybe a hard term,” but that “we were pretty blunt on occasion.”
The GAO has until June 19 to render its decision on Boeing’s protest.