Tanker Announcement at Noon

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates will discuss the "way forward" on a challenged $35 billion program to provide the Air Force with a new fleet of refueling tankers at a 12 Noon CST briefing, a Pentagon official said on Wednesday.

(Watch it live on News 5 at Noon & wkrg.com)

"He will give you his thoughts on the way forward with respect to the tanker," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

The Air Force in February picked Northrop Grumman and its European partner EADS over Boeing Co for the work.

Boeing protested the contract award. A Government Accountability Office review found "significant errors" in the selection process and urged the Air Force to rerun the contest.

The Air Force surprised the defense community when it chose Northrop and EADS, the European aerospace giant, to build 179 tanker aircraft used to refuel warplanes in mid-air. The 15-year contract is the first of three acquisition phases for what the Air Force calls its number-one purchase priority.

The GAO, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, said in upholding Boeing's protest last month that the company would have had a "substantial chance" of being selected if not for flaws in the evaluation process.