U.S. Airforce to fly European tankers

[jon1856]

Originally Posted by PeppyGPhiB

The Washington Post story is especially damning of the Air Force. They failed, possibly intentionally since one of the allegations is that they misled and supplied incomplete info. to Boeing, to follow their own RFP!!! If you follow the RFP, Boeing didn't deliver the wrong plane - EADS/NG did. Yes, the EADS plane was bigger, but that's the problem - the AF wanted a small enough plane that could fit in its current hangars, take off and land on its current runways. So Boeing submitted a model based on its 767 while EADS submitted a plane that was so big it couldn't even fit in some of the AF's hangars or land on some of its runways, which means the AF would've had to build new hangars and runways. Those restrictions were included in the RFP, and instead of docking points from EADS/NG's proposal, they gave them extra credit!

In my opinion part of the reason for the dismissals at the AF last week was because someone at the GAO gave TPTB a heads up of this verdict. The senior procurement chick's head is gonna roll, I think.

Somewhere near the top of this thread, I provided the sizes of the planes in competition as well as Boeing's plane that is similar in size to EADS'.