On the Boeing Win

It will be called the KC-46A, and it appears that it was all about the relative size of the two aircraft:

A congressional source said Boeing was the “clear winner.” Lynn repeated the mantra and told reporters during the press briefing “that I think what we can tell you is Boeing was the clear winner” when asked how close was the competition.

The difference between the two bids may have come down the difference in fuel consumption, speculated Loren Thompson, defense consultant and analyst at the Lexington Institute. “The Airbus plane burns over one ton more of fuel per flight hour than the Boeing plane. Multiply that by 40 years and that’s a lot of money,” Thompson said. Boeing has argued for some time that its fuel consumption rate would save taxpayers “tens of billions” of dollars over the life of the program.

The first part is true, the 767 consumes less fuel per flight hour, but, and this is the reason that no one is buying it commercially any more, it costs more per pound of payload, or, one would assume, pound of fuel offloaded to tankers.

The Pentagon is saying that they are expecting a challenge, though I think that this less likely from EADS than it is from Boeing.

As to why Boeing won, I think that it comes down to the following:

• If the primary criteria is lifetime cost per aircraft sortee, i.e. a simple price shootout, then the smaller 767 wins.
• Boeing has a lot more Congressional support than EADS does, because they have been cultivating Congress for decades.
• EADS's position is such that it less likely to make a formal challenge to the award, I figure about 30% for EADS, as versus 90% for Boeing, because they do not have the existing relationships with the Congress and the DoD, and so are more concerned about creating enemies.

In the greater scheme of things, if this was just a price shootout, that might be a good thing, if further competitions, on systems that are more exclusively military in development, it might be a good thing.

In any case, you can read Boeing's press release here.