Air Force Will Choose Winner In Battle For The Tanker

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has restored the Air Force's authority to select the winner of the $40 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers between Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

By: Jamie Burch | WKRG-TV
Published: September 16, 2009

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates has restored
the Air Force's authority to select the winner of a $40 billion
contract for aerial refueling tankers between Boeing and Northrop
Grumman.

Gates last summer stripped the service's authority to award a
contract in the wake of a Government Accountability Office report
that found the Air Force failed to evaluate both proposals on the
same merits.

Northrop, and its partner European Aeronautic Defense and Space
Company N.V., beat out rival Boeing Co. for the deal last February.
Boeing later successfully protested the award.

If Northrop Grumman/EADS win a second time, the planes will be built at Brookley Field in Mobile.

Gates says the Pentagon "cannot afford the kind of letdowns,
parochial squabbles, and corporate food-fights that have bedeviled
this effort in the past."

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)