The cornerstone of America’s ability to project power for the next forty years

Scandalous air tanker decision: Despite corruption, EADS favored over U.S.-based Boeing

By Frank Gaffney Jr.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
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Within days, the Obama Pentagon is expected to decide which supplier to rely upon for what is, arguably, the cornerstone of America’s ability to project power for the next forty years: the next generation aerial refueling tanker known as the KC-X. The choice for this role – which is worth conservatively $40 billion – would seem to be a no-brainer. The obvious winning candidate to produce and maintain for decades to come 179 tankers would be a reliable, experienced and responsible U.S. manufacturer, Boeing.

It seems, however, that Team Obama is poised to entrust responsibility for this vital defense capability to a company that has none of those attributes – the European aerospace conglomerate EADS. The pretext apparently will be that the foreign competitor is offering a lower bid than its American counterpart.

This claim is preposterous on its face. The Lexington Institute’s Loren Thompson, one of Washington’s most respected defense program and budget analysts, noted recently that each of the two bidders has to satisfy 372 mandatory performance requirements. “Thus, the key discriminator in who wins becomes price.â€