And While We are On the Tanker.....

Both Boeing and Northrop/Grumman-EADS are expressing serious concerns on the USAF's draft tanker Request for Proposals (RFP). (paid subscription required)

We have Northrop's complaint that Boeing got Northrop's detailed pricing data when it made its challenge on the last contract, and Boeing is complaining that there requirements are all weighted identically:

The draft RFP places equal value on non-essential and essential qualities—such as sink and toilet water flow and fuel offload or past performance—respectively. “If everything is important, is anything important?” [Boeing business development vice president Mitchell] Waldman said. “In this competition, risk is essentially pass/fail.” In the last competition, key requirements were weighed as well as past performance and risk.

There are also complaints from Boeing that have not been released to the public.

The Secretary of the Airforce has stated that he is open to changing the RFP, but that would invite a repeat of the last clusterf$#@ on tanker procurement.