Air Force Offering Final Meetings With Northrop Grumman Over Tanker

The U.S. Air Force will give Northrop Grumman "one more pass" at negotiations on how the service will retool its $200 billion refueling tanker competition to avoid the company's withdrawal from the duel with Boeing, according to industry insiders.

Despite very public accusations from Northrop Grumman that the Air Force's current draft request for proposals for the 179-aircraft KC-X competition ignores attributes of its Airbus A330-based solution, Air Force officials are concerned that dragging out negotiations with the company could appear to unduly favor its joint bid with EADS North America, industry sources say. The company has proposed language to the Air Force on how to change its performance metrics to satisfy the company's concerns. "The revised KC-X draft RFP still does not enable the full and open best-value competition that United States Air Force has established as its preliminary objective," according to the Jan. 4 response to the Air Force's second draft RFP on the program, a copy of which was obtained by Aviation's Week's Aerospace Daily and Defense Report. "A stated linkage of quantitative values must be written into [the RFP]. Without this most basic consideration for a best value assessment of the [formal RFP], Northrop Grumman will be forced to no bid this procurement." The correspondence was signed by Paul Meyer, general manager and vice president of Air Mobility Systems.