The American Spectator

Reader Mail

In the Tanker

7.27.07 @ 12:01AM

COMPETITORS IN ARMS
Re: Quin Hillyer's Refueling a Political Fire:

In alphabetical order: Bell, Chance-Vought, Convair (Consolidated-Vultee), Curtiss-Wright, Douglas, Lockheed, Martin, North American, Republic, no longer exist or no longer make airframes. As admirable as Boeing undoubtedly is, competition is America, and Northrop Grumman had better get a fair shake.
-- Frank Natoli
Newton, New Jersey

I do not take issue or sides with regards to Mr. Hillyer's championing of the Northrop Grumman/EADS tanker airplane candidate over the Boeing, as I have not evaluated the two airplanes to give an informed opinion. But I do disagree, for purely logistical reasons, with his idea of splitting the contract between the two companies if it means, as Mr. Hillyer's piece seems to imply, permitting each firm to build their own unique aircraft. Doing so would result in two different airframes, requiring two aircrew training programs, separate depot and home station repair programs, two systems for spare parts acquisition and distribution, and complicate transient maintenance requirements. In other words, nearly every facet of manning, operating and maintaining a complex weapon system, and their associated costs, would have to be duplicated. And I can tell you, it isn't cheap.

An alternate plan might be for the Air Force to select one design and employ both companies in its manufacture, as was done with the Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber in WWII, where over 18,000 airframes were built by several companies, including Consolidated Aircraft, Douglas, North American and Ford Motor. This might engender the competition that Mr. Hillyer endorses.
-- Paul M. DeSisto, Lt Col, USAF (Ret.)
Cedar Grove, New Jersey

Buy American?

Interesting column, especially since the author talks about a high-value competition that is still in the source selection process. What so-called "industry experts" and "insiders" have to say about the new tanker, and who has the edge against whom, has absolutely no bearing on the final decision by the source selection authority. I'm fairly certain "industry expert" Scott Hamilton is not a source selection team member. Does he know the specifications of the proprietary information offered by both bidders? Does he know how well those specifications will meet the source selection criteria? Does he even know what the source selection criteria are? Does he know the relative scored weighting between the fuel delivery requirement, cargo weight requirement, and passenger capacity requirements contained in the Request For Proposal? That's what I thought.

The idea of awarding a chunk of the contract to both EADS and Boeing would be a huge disservice to both the USAF and the American taxpayer. Ask yourself, why are we going towards the Joint Strike Fighter concept for the F-15C, F-16, and A-10 replacement? Because the DoD bean counters have finally realized that a simple, linear logistics tail for a single weapons system platform that spans multiple services is a whole lot cheaper and faster than trying to take care of multiple fighter airframes. The same goes for a single tanker airframe -- a split award would force the Air Force to set up two separate supply points, two separate depots, and two separate maintenance chains. The resulting logistics tail, over the lifespan of the tanker weapons system (and yes, it is a weapons system) will cost many times more to the taxpayer than the actual upfront cost of procuring the aircraft in the first place.

Solution? Award the entire contract to the vendor providing the best value to the Air Force, and by way of that mammoth clearinghouse called the US Government, to the taxpayer.
-- Owen H. Carneal, Jr.
Yorktown, Virginia

Is this a paid advertisement for Airbus, or what?

I had thought that the Spectator was more neutral and fact-based than this, but now I wonder.

The author states "What I know about airplane technology could fit in a thimble, with room left over; and I used to live in Mobile." Yes, that about sums it up; writing about a subject about which he knows next to nothing, and which may happed to benefit him personally. I really wish that the Spectator could stick to a higher standard of authorship in the future.

A few points Mr. Hillyer might acquaint himself with:

* It sounds awfully American to describe the 'NGE' aircraft as from Northrop, but when you get right to it, it's an Airbus. The entire basic design was by Airbus. So call a spade a spade, please.

*Airbus is the same company that has repeatedly used huge subsidies to sell their planes at, by any rational accounting standard, a loss. Including this airplane. Is this the sort of practice a conservative would reward?

* Britain bought the A330...so what? The wing was designed and built there, so they're just shopping locally.

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