Waiting for the Full GAO Report

It seems as though another day or two will pass before the release of the public version of the GAO tanker Decision. We have been told by several sources that the Decision is either 67 or 69 pages long. (We suppose some are counting the cover or blank page or two.)

We have held off commenting extensively on the GAO statement regarding the bid protest decision until we get a chance to look at the report, even if major portions are reacted, but here are some areas we feel our readers should be aware of:

1) The GAO statement does not mention fuel usage differences and the Air Force's use of them in determining life cycle costs. This was a an issue Boeing's strenuously raised, so it will be interesting to see how the GAO ruled on that issue.

2) The GAO statement does not mention the Air Force's use as a discriminator of the KC-30 exceeding key performance parameter objects in medevac capacity, passenger carrying or cargo hauling. The GOA reason #2 only mentions aerial refueling.

3) The GAO statement seems to say that, contrary to the KC-30 team's many claims, the A330 tanker can not refuel the V-22. (See reason #3) If so, we would offer the numerous naysayers who hurled insults/false accusation against TWB for stating just this in March, to feel free to use the comments section to make your apology. If we turn out to be wrong on this, we will be sure to apologize to the KC-30 team.(Don't worry SMSGT MAC, we exempt you from having to admit any mistake ever.)

4) Lastly, in the GAO reason #7 for sustaining the protest, it mentions that the Air Force improperly increased Boeing's estimated non-recurring engineering costs. No mention was made of the recurring costs.

There are a number of other issues, such as the findings on the use/misuse of the IFARA and the CMARPS model, that we will be looking for but the above list is a good start.

Too big, Too heavy

Jed Babbin, a man most of us admire (we are bipartisan remember) but all of us respect, has just written a great entry "Too Big, Too Heavy" about the tanker controversy on his blog at Human Events.

As a former a deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush's administration, the author of many books including "Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think" and someone who has three decades of experience in trying cases before the GAO we are not surprised to see that Mr. Babbin concluded that the current tanker contract with NG-EADS is a bad deal for the warfighters.

Mr. Babbin calls for Secretary Gates to assemble "all the combatant commanders and all of the Air Mobility Command former bosses he can find who aren’t working for one of the competitors. Get to the bottom of why the warfighters were apparently ignored. And fix this before billions of dollars and precious years are spent on what may reduce the Air Force’s ability to fly and to fight. "