Anyone who claims that defense contract negotiations are uninteresting has yet to discover the battle brewing over who gets to build the next Air Force tanker.

American aerospace giant Boeing and European mega-corporation Airbus are locked in a war over who gets to deliver $35 billion worth of refueling planes to the Defense Department to replace about 80% of the Air Force’s refueling fleet – planes that average almost 50 years old, according to the Lexington Institute.

Just a few short weeks ago, Boeing and Airbus officially submitted bids to manufacture the tanker, and now both will compete to see who can create 179 tankers for less cash, who’s plane will be ready in time and who hits closer to the mark on meeting the Pentagon’s needs. Right now the momentum seems to be in Boeing’s favor, but the stakes are high.

From the Wall Street Journal:

For Boeing, the fight is to defend its home market and an area of expertise—tanker planes—that it once dominated. Boeing in 2001 beat Airbus to supply Japan with four 767 tankers. They are now in operation but differ substantially from what Boeing has offered the Pentagon…

For EADS, a U.S. win would cement its position as the new world leader in tankers. Since 2004, it has won orders for 28 tankers from Australia, the U.K., Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. The Airbus design has also faced some delays in development.

Airbus has a version of the needed tanker that they will deliver to Australian forces this week, which they say will be about 90% identical to the version they want to deliver to the Pentagon. Boeing doesn’t have a version of the tanker in production, but they say they’re more willing to wait to develop the tanker so that it could be better in line with the Pentagon’s immediate needs, though it will be based on Boeing 767 plane.

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It’s highly unusual for The Wall Street Journal to be gulled into ignoring the most important part of an issue in favor of chasing a rabbit down a random trail. But it has apparently fallen prey to what is at stake in the Air Force’s acquisition of a tanker aircraft to replace the Eisenhower-era KC-135s, which have flown far past their useful life.   The Journal, like too many others, apparently believes it’s a question of protectionism versus open competition.

A Thursday Wall Street Journal editorial rightly bashes Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wa) for his attempt to bully US defense contractors out of partnering with EADS, the European Aerospace and Defense Systems company which is still trying to sell its Airbus 330 to the US Air Force as a replacement for the KC-135s.

There is no more urgently-needed new aircraft for all our armed services.  As then Air Force Chief of Staff John Jumper told me in a 2005 interview, “We are a global air and space power because of these tankers.  He added, “The first thing that happened in any contingency is that you put the ‘tanker bridge’ up there. We deploy tankers to places such as Spain, Hawaii, Guam and their sole purpose is to get large numbers halfway across the world without stopping.”

In short, no tankers, no superpower.  And the aged KC-135s are no longer capable of meeting the mission requirements imposed by Iraq, Afghanistan and our other international defense needs.

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