This article first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.
House defense appropriators have directed the U.S. Air Force to consider “industrial base concerns” in its next evaluation of a replacement air refueling tanker.
The directive was contained in the $487.7 billion fiscal 2009 defense appropriations bill approved July 30 by the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.
Fully funds tanker program
The measure, which is not expected to make it to the House floor before the summer recess that begins Aug. 4, is $4 billion below President Bush’s budget request and $28.4 billion above the fiscal 2008 defense spending measure enacted.
The bill, which must clear the full Appropriations Committee before consideration by the full House, fully funds the tanker program at $893 million. Lawmakers also directed USAF to comply with findings by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which sustained Boeing’s protest of the decision to award a $35 billion contract to a team headed by Northrop Grumman and Airbus parent EADS.
Boeing supporters and Buy America advocates in Congress complained that the Air Force failed to take U.S. industrial base issues into consideration when it picked the Northrop Grumman-EADS offering. Air Force officials insisted the law did not require them to do so.
Redistributes F-35 funds
The fiscal 2009 spending bill also fully funded the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter but redistributed funds within the program. Airframe production funding was cut $786 million and $430 million was directed to continue development of an alternative engine. The measure also includes $320 million for risk mitigation in the test program, including the restoration of two test aircraft eliminated by the Defense Department last year.
Read the rest of this story, see what makes a “kick ass missile,” a “submerged” USAF bomber and the MAV’s antics from our Aviation Week friends on Military.com.
– Christian
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Ok, anyone in the Buy America group should just shut their mouths in this tanker fight. Bottomline is this, the tankers, no matter who wins this contract, WILL be built in the United States. Let us not forget where Northtrop has the factory, and just because an EADS platform is a european design, the vast majority of the assembly is done here. So if the concern is American jobs, then they obviously have not read the setup Northrop/EADS has for this.
Ed,
No, the KC-30 will NOT be built in the US. It will be MANUFACTURED in Europe & sent to the US for FINAL ASSEMBLY & INTEGRATION.
No matter how you EADS/KC-30 Kool-Aid drinkers want to try & spin this the KC-767AT WILL support more US jobs than the KC-30 (MANUFACTURING, ASSEMBLY & INTEGRATION vs just FINAL ASSEMBLY & INTEGRATION) & place ~$10 BILLION or more (just from the developement & procurement) into the US economy as apposed to Europe.
Now as I have said before, the issue of where the tanker platform comes from is VERY MUCH a secondary concern to getting the RIGHT tanker.
That is all fine and good maybe they should have considered the industrial base, but that should have been outlined before the contract. Also, if they don’t want true competition just say so. It would have saved alot of time and money. And just for the record Alabama’s industry should be considered as well. And the best plane should win. I think Boeing has been resting on it’s laurels. I don’t hope that Boeing does badly but it does outsource thousands of jobs.
Best Regards,
Margaret
‘Minor mods’ in this case being installing all of the fuel tanks; fuel bladders; defensive systems and military required hardware which – as per the contract – is built exclusively in the US. In short, pretty much rebuilding the thing.
NG is the Prime Contractor, controlling all funds and program controls on the overall effort. EADS provides the bus, and NG makes it a weapon system. NG is responsible for providing to the government ALL contract deliverables, and that includes ALL technical data that must pass through them. NG is responsible for putting the civilian bus together with the military capabilities and making it work: it’s called “integration”. Only someone who knows absolutely NOTHING about integration would ever simplistically state “NG will NEVER do anyhting [sic] but install the hardware that AIRBUS has already designed for the A330 tanker”.
By dollar content, the KC-45 is about 70% US. If the work on future freighters gets shipped to the US, that ought to be the equivalent of quite a few more percentage points as well, eh?
This faux concern over American content is hilarious. I visited NG (then Northrop) in the late 80′s-early 90′s on an AF program at their Hawthorne plant. NG was building 80% of the 747-400 airframe and shipping the pieces to Washington for final assembly. We got the nickel tour and our executive host told us that they would probably get out of the airframe business soon thereafter, because although Boeing was very happy with their work, Boeing was planning on offshoring the same work for their newer planes to Asia. I believe NG sold that part of the business to Vought in the mid-90s?
Congradulations to the boeing PR weenies who have managed to convince so many people that a yestertech 767 is a vital piece of the US industrial base, particularly when the same company is offshoring so much of it’s real techno tour de froce (787). That’s earnin’ yer money.
F-35 is sharp.
Why does Boeing have to field the 767,why not upgrade to the Boeing 777 for aerial tanker? Wouldn’t that be bigger & more capable than the Boeing 767? Since NOTHING has been fielded yet,what is the harm in changing models(don’t give me this bulls**t about having to refurnish a new model & “resubmitting” the Boeing 777 for testing as a choice when the 767 has already been “approved”)? Is it really THAT hard?
Yeah, lets make defense contractors compete for the business — just so long as Boeing wins regardless.
>>> Boeing supporters and Buy America advocates in Congress complained that the Air Force failed to take U.S. industrial base issues into consideration when it picked the Northrop Grumman-EADS offering.
Yes, but they did take into consideration the American taxpayer and the lives of the men in uniform who depend on having the best equipment at an affordable price.
And since tankers are simply modified passenger jets, are they suggesting Boeing is going to get out of the passenger jet business?
Sheesh. If Boeing gets this contract handed to them, I want my military tax dollars back.
Are you STILL talking about this? This is getting traumatic…
To say shut your mouth to people for promoting American interests over European manufacturers is silly. Northrop+EADs would use airframes built out side the country which is a large part of the labor and cost. Boeing outsources to other country much of its component manufacturing, also not that good but better than Northrop.
One argument I have yet to see raised is that with a Northrop and EADS produced plane whatever portion of the revenue that goes to the EADS wouldn’t be taxable. Boeing will pay corporate taxes and its employees will pay income tax. EADS and its employees will not, thats money siphoned out of the country; while a fully locally produced aircraft can almost be considered a discount because of the portion of funds that cycle back to the government.
Roy Smith,
Because the 767 is the right size platform with the right capability/capacity for replacing our medium intra-theater KC-135s, not the 777 which has all the same faults/disadvantages (as a KC-135 replacement) as the KC-30. Although…unlike the A330, the 777 would make for a nice large inter-theater KC-10 replacement.
SMSgt Mac,
No, by dollar amount, the KC-30 is <58% US. When NG/EADS 1st put their bid together it was <52% but they switched a few subcontractors & managed to get it up to <58%. Also note that (based on historical averages) 15-20% of the KC-30 procurement cost is from the GE engines. NG content is likely not much more than 30%.
What does Northrop building 747-400 airframe sections in the late-80s/early-90s have to do with concern over American content of the KC-X?
Gack! – the 70% was a typo. Meant to type ‘about 60%’ as I have stated here and elsewhere before and also previously on my own blog. If you want to quibble about how much less than 60% (your ref to “<58%”?) we can also introduce how Boeing’s own unions apparently believe Boeing overstates the B767′s American content and in fact believe it to be much closer to the KC-45′s. If you want to quibble more about how much money goes to NG, technically it all does– they just have to also pay all the bills ;-).
The point about the 747s was to take any non-tanker specific skills off the table as being central to the offshoring/industrial base debate. Some morons or latecomers to the discussion might think it is a critical national capability: something that must be preserved in toto because it is SO central to the national interests. It also highlights, AGAIN, the current international nature of large commercial airframe design and construction, which isolates that aspect of tanker construction from the debate even more.
This leaves us with only the militarization/tankerization of the airframe, where, co-ink-i-dink-ly, is where most of the US dollars/tech/critical skills, and in particular engineering and integration, come into play.
Fine, NG is going to use EADS boom as a starting point. Pretty smart of them, considering the boom has just now completed all flight testing for the Aussie version of the tanker [should reduce their 'risk' factors on the rebid!]. NOW NG gets to make that boom work with the rest of the aircraft systems. Too bad Boeing CHOSE not to develop a new boom unless they got the contract, eh?
Here’s another thought to chew on. If Congress can commission and accept a Heavy Bomber Industrial Base study that determined the heavy bomber industrial base ‘could’ be reconstituted out of thin air sometime in the future and the US Congress accepted that risk and potential cost of having to do so, what makes any rational person think the US just simply MUST keep the tanker industrial base in Washington and Kansas instead of merely letting it be moved to Alabama?
Let’s call this Committee’s action what it is: Boeing’s Congressfolk called in some markers and got it in the language. Now we’ll see if it survives a larger pool of sharks. I’m thinking Boeing will perhaps regret not spreading the work around the country a little more on this project.
fight to test it!
as every konwed,we need not fight!
SMSgt Mac,
OK on the typo. But the point is that contrary to what you EADS/KC-30 Kool-Aid drinkers want others to think, the KC-30 IS NOT built in the US. NG is the systems integrator, not the manufacturer of the KC-30. An contrary to NG/EADS claim that they are ready NOW, ground has not even been broken on the facilities NG would do the final assembly & systems integration from & the bulk of the work force final assembly & systems integration work force has not even been hired yet, much less trained & working. I do not have a real problem with the US vs foreign content (if the KC-30 were the right tanker but it isn’t) EXCEPT for the EADS/KC-30 Kool-Aid drinkers misrepresentation of what it is & what it means.
The work that would be done in Alabama is not what some people have a problem with, it is the work that would be done in Europe rather than the US that they have a problem with. OK, yes there are those who don’t what work in Washington & Kansas going ANYWHERE but Washington & Kansas but even they are MORE concerned about the work that would not be done ANYWHERE in the US.
Yes Boeing could have chose to go ahead, using its own funds, to develope the 767-200LRF &/or its 6th generation boom & accept the risk that it would not be selected but that is what the SDD phase of the KC-X program is for.
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