Tanker-contract quest rambunctious
Posted on Sunday, February 3, 2008
WASHINGTON — With the Air Force ready to award a rich contract for a new fleet of tanker planes, the two bidders, Boeing Co. and a team of Northrop Grumman Corp. and Airbus, are engaged in guerrilla marketing.
Under Pentagon rules, once the companies submitted their final bids on Jan. 3, communication limits were imposed between the bidders and the Department of Defense officials who will select a winner.
The companies get around the restrictions by sending blast e-mails to reporters and trade journals widely read by Air Force officials and by advertising in specialty publications, on buses and subways and local radio stations.
It’s guerrilla marketing for the contract that could top $ 100 billion, making it potentially one of the largest defense programs in Pentagon history. The Air Force is scheduled to award the contract as soon as the end of this month.
The subtle — and sometimes not so subtle — marketing campaigns aim to persuade the Air Force that their respective tankers have low technical risk, one of the five official yardsticks that the service will use in determining which bidder will win the contract.
For example, Boeing officials in late January touted what they said was a major technological step for a their new tanker jet, the KC-767, by issuing a news release stating that they had conducted a nighttime refueling, a first for the KC-767 tanker.
Boeing spokesman William Barksdale said the nighttime refueling was a “huge” advancement.
Within hours, Northrop Grumman-Airbus, which is promoting its own KC-30 tanker, derided Boeing’s claim for the KC-767.
“Boeing announced today that their boom successfully passed fuel at night,” said Randy Belote, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman, in an e-mail statement. “One would hope that, after more than five years, they have made some progress.”
Japan agreed five years ago — and Italy six years ago — to buy the Boeing tankers, but the company has encountered delays in construction.
Accompanying the Northrop Grumman-Airbus e-mail was a cartoon depicting a Boeing tanker model as a patchwork of parts and pieces of several 767 versions, with the word “Frankentanker” written along the side. Huge cartoonish stitches held the pieces together.
In case anyone missed the point, Belote’s e-mail asserted that the Boeing tanker offered to the Air Force “is an amalgamation of parts from 767-200 / 300 / and 400 aircraft and is being comically referred to as the KC-767 Frankentanker.”
The spokesman also charged that the Boeing plane’s Pratt & Whitney engines were technically risky, that the company still has not delivered a tanker plane to Japan — a year behind schedule — and that the plane Boeing would offer the Air Force would be substantially different from those offered to Japan.
“More risk for the Air Force ?” Belote asked.
Asked why the Northrop Grumman-Airbus team made those charges, Belote said his team wanted to correct misperceptions about Boeing’s tanker.
“We watch very closely the information that is passed around on Capitol Hill and via KC-767 supporters,” Belote said. “Quite frankly much of it fuzzes the facts and, in some cases, has been designed to misinform and mislead. We believe that ‘straight talk’ allows for the best competition.”
Boeing has raised questions about its competitor as well. In the fall, a group of retired Air Force officers hired by Boeing said that KC-30 was technically risky in part because Northrop Grumman-Airbus’ U. S. Gulf Coast work force didn’t have sufficient expertise to build such a plane.
The companies also get around the communications restrictions with the Air Force by taking out ads in specialty publications like The Hill, a newspaper whose audience includes members of Congress, their staffs and executive branch officials. The tanker rivals regularly run full-page ads that extol the virtues of their planned tankers.
If Air Force officials take the Washington-area Metro subway to work, they may see an advertisement praising one of the tankers. At the Pentagon subway stop, huge advertising placards often feature one of the two competing tankers. Boeing recently touted its tanker in an advertisement on Washington’s only all-news radio station.
The initial contract for 179 tankers is expected to be worth about $ 40 billion. With possible future orders, the contract could eventually top $ 100 billion.
Boeing’s KC-767 is based on a version of its 767 commercial airliner, while the Airbus and Northrop Grumman KC-30 is based on the Airbus A 330 commercial airliner.
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