By Emelie Rutherford
The House’s lead defense budget writer plans to talk to the Pentagon acquisition chief today about ensuring there is an industry competition to build the Air Force tanker in the wake of Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC] threat to exit the two-way race.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates also told lawmakers yesterday he wants to see a competition to build the refueling aircraft and noted changes may be made to a much-scrutinized solicitation document.
House Appropriations Defense subcommittee Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) told reporters at the Capitol yesterday afternoon Northrop Grumman’s move is “a blow to the (tanker) program,” in which he said “we have to have competition.”
“I can’t imagine they’re going to (build the tankers) without competition,” Murtha said, contrasting the notion tanker bidder Boeing [BA] could receive the Pentagon contract outright.
Murtha said he planned to talk today with Ashton Carter, the defense under secretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics, as part of a previously scheduled meeting on varied issues.
Murtha declined to say, before talking to Carter, what type of role he sees Congress having in the tanker competition following Northrop Grumman’s delivery of a letter Tuesday to Carter saying it cannot submit a bid unless the draft request for proposals (RFP) is changed (Defense Daily, Dec. 2).
The lawmaker, instead, reiterated his support for having both Boeing and a Northrop Grumman-European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) team build tankers, to avoid further snags in the long-delayed aircraft-building effort.
The Pentagon is expected to release a final RFP in January, and congressional supporters of both Boeing and Northrop Grumman claim the draft document unfairly favors the other side.
Northrop Grumman President and Chief Operating Officer Wes Bush said in a Dec. 1 letter to Carter that Northrop Grumman cannot submit a bid if the draft RFP is not changed. Bush charged the document shows a preference for a “smaller aircraft with limited multirole capability” and would impose unacceptable contractual and financial burdens on the company.
Northrop Grumman is concerned the Pentagon is not planning to issue a second draft RFP or to “substantially” address its concerns in the final RFP, Bush wrote.
Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) yesterday the Pentagon “promised a fair and highly transparent process” and believes the draft RFP is “evenhanded.”
Still, Gates noted the early-stage solicitation is still in a comment period and “a lot” of input has been submitted from industry, Congress, and elsewhere.
“If we were totally locked into not changing anything, we wouldn’t have gone through the comment period,” Gates said in response to questioning from Northrop Grumman backer Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) during a hearing on the Afghan war.
“So we will look at the comments that have been made, and make a judgment at that point,” Gates added. “We believe that both of the principal competitors are highly qualified, and we would like to see competition continue in this process.”
Capitol Hill was abuzz yesterday following President Barack Obama’s Tuesday night announcement that 30,000 additional troops will deploy to Afghanistan.
Murtha visited Afghanistan for two days last week and said yesterday he remains worried about how to pay for the conflict. Yet he predicted legislation to create a new surtax to pay for the war–a proposal Murtha, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), and other senior Democrats unveiled two weeks ago–is “probably not going to be the way it’s done.”
Meanwhile, there have been rumblings on Capitol Hill against passing a fiscal year 2010 supplemental war-funding bill in the coming months to pay for the additional troops.
Murtha, though, said such an emergency appropriations measure is inevitable and would be needed even if the U.S. force structure in Afghanistan did not increase.
“Tell me how you’re going to pay for this war without a supplemental; we can’t do it,” he said during a media roundtable.
Murtha, Obey, and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) do not want the supplemental war funding to be tacked on to the FY ’10 base defense appropriations bill, though that strategy has been proposed. A House-Senate conference committee still has not met to craft a final version of that delayed base spending legislation.
Obama said Tuesday night the added troops in Afghanistan will cost approximately $30 billion this year.
“I’ll work closely with Congress to address these costs as we work to bring down our deficit,” the president said in a nationally televised speech.
Murtha pegged the cost of a FY ’10 war supplemental at roughly $40 billion, which is one-third larger than Obama’s $30 billion figure. Any supplemental funds would come on top of the $130 billion in war funding the administration requested along with the base Pentagon budget.
Murtha said he is skeptical of the United State’s chances for success in Afghanistan, and plans for his subcommittee to hold hearings on it next week.
“Before we start funding I want to…convince myself and the subcommittee that we really have something we can achieve, and (see) how do we measure it,” he said. He added he wants to put benchmarks for progress in Afghanistan in the supplemental.
Murtha predicted the supplemental will not be ready to be voted on before the new deployments to Afghanistan begin. Some lawmakers want to debate and vote on the funding first.
“If you’re going to stop the deployment, it’s not going to be (by voting down the) money,” Murtha said.