John Noonan – who has really grown up in the world – writes in the Weekly Standard that the way to untie the USAF tanker replacement’s Gordian acquisition knot is to buy from both Boeing and EADS:
With Airbus and Boeing producing capable aircraft with unique advantages, Congress could split the baby with a 50/50 buy from Airbus and Boeing, replacing both the KC-10 and the KC-135. It should also be noted that the Air Force rejected a mixed-fleet replacement for the KC-135 in 2007, claiming that it would unnecessarily inflate costs. But that math is fuzzy and didn’t factor in replacing the KC‑10 as well. With a budget to buy 15 airframes a year, splitting the fleet would force strong competition between Boeing and Airbus to control construction and sustainment costs.
One fact that has emerged from the gnarly world of defense acquisition is that competition is a proven cost-control mechanism. The so-called F-16 “engine wars” during the 1980s ended up saving the Pentagon billions, as did comparable fights over cruise missile and Navy systems contracts. As the KC-X program is projected to last 40 years, allowing for either EADS or Boeing to have a monopoly on logistics, maintenance, and refurbishment, contracts could significantly inflate both the ownership and operation price tag.
Well, CNO is faced with the same dilemma when it comes to the Littoral Combat Ship. Still, it seems to set a bad competitive precedent for a major aircraft acquisition to let both offerors win. And as objective quantity for both Boeing and EADS goes down, unit cost will inevitably rise.
At this point, I’d settle for a coin toss.
The weekly “one-upsmanship” ads in Aviation Week & Space Technology are getting ludicrous.
Try living in the DC Metro area. Multiple ads. Every. Damn. Day.
It’s gotten to the point where I hope the corporate headquarters of both companies catch fire and they award to the contract to Cessna for no reason whatsoever.
This! Well said, Spade.
“and they award the contract to Cessna”
LMAO… I can hear the comms now. “Ace101, Texaco, I’ve only got 20 pounds give and yer gonna hafta slow below 100 knots to get it.”
ROFLMAO! Good one!
Well, while it would work well for the Air Force to buy both birds, the problem for the Navy is that it shouldn’t be buying either of the LCS designs.
+1
Wonder who’s running the acquisition fustercluck over at Navy these days; LCS, JSF, and LPD-17, to name a few.
I wonder if “engine wars” would help or hinder the F-35?
Done been decided. I think P&W got all the marbles based on their F119 engine, whereas GE was the also ran in both cases; F120 & F136. I remembering reading years ago that P&@ got the nod on the F119 so as to keep a certain Florida town from going belly up. Dunno how true it was, but it didn’t help GE any.
P&@—>P&W
{sigh}
For the tanker, buying a mix might be best to spread risk and the numbers make it possible (buy say 150 of each).
For the LCS, it doesn’t make sense as the numbers are far lower (though 300 of those would make the navy big again).
However, I’m dead against the Airbus tanker for political reasons.
If the USAF buys a French aircraft (and it is, the EU being a French protectorate) it makes itself dependent on French approval to use the aircraft.
Had the tanker fleet been Airbusses instead of Boeings and McDs in 2001, the Taliban and Saddam would still be in place today, as the French government would not have given approval to use “their” tankers in support of any offensive operations against Afghanistan or especially Iraq, the same way the UK banned Indonesia from using their Hawk fighter jets from use in operations against Al Qaeda backed insurgents in Bandar Aceh around the same time.
That might be a valid point, if we were buying a French aircraft. Airbus is comprised of elements from EADS & BAE Systems. As you know the latter is British. EADS is a conglomeration of Aérospatiale-Matra (France), DaimlerChrysler Aerospace (Germany), and Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA (Spain). France is only one partner amongst many.
I’ll also point out that the RAF, RAAF, UAR Air Force, and Royal Saudi Air Force have already ordered the KC-45.
Political reasons fare poorly against more elemental issues such as logistics & cost, not to mention we would be buying the aircraft the last I heard. I fail to see how any particular company could tell us how to utilize the planes.
The United States has purchased more than one European design before, and we’ve yet to pick a lemon.
Airbus is French to the core (politically at least). It may have departments in other nations, but all the policy decisions are made in Paris, as they are for most everything EU.
The French government at times uses them as a foreign policy instrument to gain landing rights in foreign countries.
More than once has an Airbus sale been granted to a national airline on the condition that Air France would get increased landing rights on top slots on their nation’s airports for example.
“The United States has purchased more than one European design before, and we’ve yet to pick a lemon.”
But always for sideshows, or for use in region.
Like purchasing Rapier SAMs for defending UK airbases, which made perfect sense as the RAF had the things in stock so resupply was far easier than having to ship replacement parts and missiles from the US.
Or purchasing Fokker F-27 troop transports for the Golden Eagle demonstration team when there was no para capable transport of a suitable size in the US inventory (these were btw license built by Fairchild who I think went on to sell a number of them to commercial customers, not built mostly in the Netherlands and the parts assembled in the US).
It was never core strategic assets without which the US armed forces’ power projection and delivery systems can not function properly on a global scale.
Canberra, Harrier, C-27J Spartan…
France wouldn’t be able to say you can’t use them, but all of the sudden the supply of spare parts that are French made could just stop, for political reasons, especially is using Performance Based Logistics which the military is more and more fond of these days.
The Canberra is the biggest foreign aircraft I can remember the US using (in terms of operational role and numbers bought.)
This was Boeing’s contract to lose from the get-go, and boy if they didn’t do everything they possibly could to not only lose it but lose it without style either. From picking an unsuitable base design for little other reason than commercial orders were flatlining and they didn’t want to shutter that line (would’ve taken more capital costs to shut down one line and ramp up production of a 777 based tanker for example) to using blatant and ridiculous bribes for a contract that, at the time, would’ve been theirs even if their proposal was a piece of human crap with mis-matched wings from different plastic models in a box with “to: aIr Foorce” written in crayon on the top. Ugh.
…So we get the spare parts from the UK, Australia, or the Saudis. Not to mention how the US can economically retaliate if EADS really does decide to get pissy.
I still don’t see it as a legitimate issue.
What, from their *operational* fleets? I hope you’re not serious on that suggestion. Spare parts usually come from the actual supplier once your on hand contingency inventory is exhausted and parts start breaking beyond capability of maintenance/repair.
You may not see it as a legitimate issue and such is your right. From where I sit, I sweat it.
Casey, when was the last time the US made a major foreign purchase? The AV-8A? The rest of our “imported” gear… the B-57 Canberra, T-45, LAV’s and Strykers… all based on foreign designs… were also all almost completely license built in the US, right down to engines and spares. Self sufficiency in defense production used to be de facto US policy, and it still should be. I’m very pro-free trade when it comes to civilian goods, but military equipment and supplies? Nuh uh. Build it here, all of it. If a domestic design doesn’t fit your needs, fine, license a foreign design… but build it all, HERE. Others have already laid out the reasons why, so I won’t repeat them, but I will note that the Airbus/NG proposal doesn’t fit this criteria. They’re opening a “factory” in Alabama to give the appearance of American production, but with the exception of the cockpit gear and engines, the vast majority of the planes would still be manufactured by Airbus in Europe (spares too), and then simply shipped to Mobile for final assembly. It’s the equivalent of Chrysler ordering cars from Mitsubishi, slapping a Dodge badge on them, and then selling them as Chrysler products. It’s still a Japanese car underneath, in both design and construction. So just slapping a “Northrop Grumman” logo on the Airbus tankers doesn’t erase the fact that they’re Euro machines.
Logistics hell, if you ask me. The Lazy B should never have been allowed to get away with suing over a lost contract, which was a result of lazy and presumptuous bidding. EADS still has the better product, IMO, and the foreign market was growing based on their product’s proven reliability.
In short, Boeing got away with resorting to blatant chicanery, and has developed a gluttonous appetite that knows no bounds. They have grown so large in their own minds, now believing they have no natural enemies who can take them.
McDonnell Douglas used to believe that…and look where it got them.
J.T, since we’re considering splitting babies, how about buying the ‘French’ Airbus, and then following Spade’s suggestion and asking Cessna to reverse engineer the sucker a la the J11B? Seeing as China is to Russia as France is to the US?
Since the KC-45 is partially an NG design, and the A330 has world built components, reverse engineering might not be even necessary for some things. I wonder how many of the Tier 3 or higher contractors on the KC-45 are US based companies?
Or Chinese?
40 years? What manned aircraft are they gonna gas up in 40 years?
If the USAF can buy an EADS tanker because it is “better” then why can’t the USN buy a European designed FFG with some teeth instead of the Little Crappy Ship? Certainly not hard to find something “better” than what we’re about to buy.
Europe has no FFG designs in the works. Euro militaries are cutting back so deep they may not have navies in the very near future, nor indeed any armed forces good for more than traffic control during natural disasters.
I’ll bet there’s a shipyard in Germany or Spain that could come up with one to put into “the works”. In deep cuts and desperation there is opportunity.
Don’t take my word for it, ask mean old Mr Potter in Bedford Falls.
Splitting might be amusing, if you made each year’s purchase numbers contingent on meeting certain cost and customer satisfaction goals on planes already delivered.
Constant transformation and improvement of synergies, or whatever the buzzwords are in this decade of Hope and Change
IIRC, one of the big reasons why Airbus wants this contract is to justify building a production facility in the United States. Mississippi, I think.
That being said, my history is good enough to remember that the Navy used to do this as a matter of policy. Hold a design contest, give the winner a big production contract, give the runner-up a small one. It kept the winner honest on both cost and performance…at a minimal expenditure of Navy oversight. The current system of having to monitor every move the vendor makes is backbreakingly expensive.
1. Buying the Scarebus only encourages the French to continue their illegal subsidies of the Scarebus in the commercial world, thereby allowing them to have unfair advantage over AN AMERICAN company, i.e., Boeing.
I have seen little that would seem to make the Scarebus better than the Boeing, other than “it’s bigger”. It was my experience in the AF that usually, the NUMBER of tanker airframes available, NOT the SIZE, was the limiting factor in most ops. No matter how well designed, you CAN’T have the larger aircraft at TWO LOCATIONS AT ONCE.
3. If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going!!
And, Oh, yeah….
4. I can’t think of ANY other Scarebus in the US inventory, thus complicating the supply chain problems in supporting that version.
That’s a bit of a mis-step. I doubt there will be much in the 767 based design that is identical to the 707 based design. There isn’t even much advantage from civilian to military part sharing due to regulatory issues.
Supply chain problems aren’t a good argument for or against the ‘bus.
so isn’t buying two different tankers just what we used to do back in WW2? We had the B-17, B-24, the B-29, B-32. we had multiple varieties of fighter/strike aircraft
As I understand it that policy was based on putting the most airframes possible into the air as quickly as possible given the factories which were extant.
Today’s decisions are said to be based on economic efficiency as well as either keeping a number (one is a number!) of assembly programs in use or building newer ones.
Can’t USAF rule out the Airbus on grounds of psychotic flight control reversion laws? Maybe they like it as a UAV.
Look at our little Johnny, all grown up…
Why not show the Chinese how to make the tankers and then we can all buy from them as we do with everything else?
But before that, what is wrong with keeping American jobs and know-how here and employed? Defense related items should be home made to avoid the kinds of worries that arise with fickle allies.
Given the outlook for DOD funding, and the nearly inevitable collapse of all federal spending (other than interest to the Chinese and entitlement programs), we should aim for the most tankers we can get as soon as possible, regardless of where they come from.
A Boeing is a Boeing for the most part. When one has operated or maintained one, the learning curve is pretty doggone shallow on the rest. The USAF has militarized 747′s, 757′s, 737′s and the USN has a bunch of militarized 737′s in the pipeline. There is some parts commonality with the 767. Airbii are…to be kind…different…to operate, to maintain, and to supply.
I admit my American bias–not too interested in soothing ruffled European feathers these days…but 15,000 hours in the 737, 757, and 747-100/200/300/400 also put me squarely in the Boeing camp. Like the cupholders and tables in the Airbii though…
p.s. “Chicanery” in an aerospace contract process…perish the thought–sorry Mongo
Yeah. Ain’t it ironic? LOL!
Tell me, though, why do I always want to say Boing? Maybe cause it sounds so natural?
There are two major issues that ought to be of deep concern to all of us who gather here to debate these momentous issues.
The first is the protection of our own industrial base. In my lifetime we have gone from a highly robust, and very competitive aeronautical industry, which was capable of producing a wide range of highly innovative approaches to virtually any problem, to essentially a single mega conglomerate which does nothing either quickly or cheaply. In roughly four years of World War II we were able to design, build, test and deliver to combat multiple generations of aircraft that were the best in the world.
Today, almost all of those legendary companies are gone. And it takes decades, not months, to produce a new aircraft. And that, of course, does not count the sickening number of false starts that have died on the design boards in recent years.
We have a very limited design and production capability today, but it is ALL we have. Our aerospace industry is in greater peril today than at any time in our history. And we need to recognize that it is in our fundamental national interest to protect that capability and to ensure that those jobs are protected.
Believe me, the Europeans don’t worry about “making a profit” on this contract. They see it as a way to protect European jobs and to maintain their own industrial capacity.
Secondly, and of equal importance, is the potential that we would allow ourselves to be put into a position where our global operations requiring tanker support could become entirely dependent on a stream of spare parts all produced by labor union members across Europe who tend to be mostly socialistic. It should hardly come as a surprise that United States foreign policies and military policies have been the target of major opposition by labor groups all across Europe. How long do you think it would take before we started to face serious work stoppages, or, even worse, actual sabotage in factories where critical spares are produced? That thought alone ought to scare hell out of any planner.
I worked for a few years in industry before coming into the Navy. We all knew how pathetic design performance had become and how uncompetitive and hollowed out the whole industry had become. It was way over-consolidated from the procurement “holiday” of the nineties, and, frankly, the executives were burned by that experience into intentionally milking the gov’t as much as possible to stay in business as long as possible, and they knew they could get away with it because consolidation had effectively limited competition.
The joke amongst the line engineers went something like, what if FDR had asked an aerospace industry like the one we have now in 1942 for enough B-29′s to beat Japan? We’ll get you two prototypes by 1952 for an IOC in 1957 . . .
I guess I’ve been a bad boy again and need moderation.
To quote one of my favorite Air Force Generals:
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
But posting here is not in defense of freedom, it is the exercise thereof. Plus you be of the sub-species Gyrenicus and, ergo, desperately need moderation.
So, welcome to the ranks of the immoderate. I welcome you. I’m pretty sure VX will as well. Maybe together we can get Lex’s moderation demons locked back in his basement.
OTOH, perhaps fighting to throw them out may be why Lex is in gross overload at the moment. Such fights can be rather taxing.
Plus you be of the sub-species Gyrenicus and, ergo, desperately need moderation.
Y’all keep saying that, right up until ya need to let loose the dogs of war. Then y’all want anything BUT moderation.
{sigh} Switch on. Switch off. I guess there’s no happy medium.
Yeah but, QM, seriously, I think we can all agree that VX does need moderation, amongst many other things. Personally I like him, but can you imagine what the neighbors would think if he ever got out of here???