Although USAF acquisition chief Sue Payton claimed that the service had worked closely with each offeror in the tanker contest to resolve questions and ambiguities, the service added a significant change in the final request for proposals, Boeing tanker VP Mark McGraw said in a teleconference with reporters Tuesday (see above). The change involved revising a model that pitted each tanker against a series of real-world scenarios. When Northrop Grumman’s KC-30 apparently couldn’t complete some of the missions—which would have given it “a zero” in those scenarios, McGraw charged—the Air Force adjusted the scenarios to allow the KC-30 to show better. Included among several tweaks to the model were adjustments that gave some overseas runways ramp space that doesn’t really exist and cutting in half the requirement for spacing between aircraft so more KC-30s could fit, McGraw said. The Air Force did not note the changes when the final RFP was released; Boeing had to “find them” on its own.
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.