[JJ_BPK]

Originally Posted by JJ_BPK

About the KC-45

The KC-45 Tanker aircraft will be assembled in Mobile, Ala., and the KC-45 team will employ 48,000 American workers at 230 U.S. companies in 49 states. It will be built by a world-class industrial team led by Northrop Grumman, and includes EADS North America, General Electric Aviation and Sargent Fletcher.

EADS was to provide an AMERICAN BUILT 330 shell and NOC will actually build the tanker and install all the AMERICAN BUILT mil spec parts..

But todays notice starts the whole ball over again..

From my source:

- The SECDEF is now in charge of the award and the AF will not be involved in the new selection

- The existing requirements remain intact

- The existing proposals from the companies remain intact to start

- The SECDEF will issue a modified RFP for the KC-X tanker, likely in the next month

- The only changes from the original RFP will be to address the 8 GAO findings, nothing more will change

- The companies will have a discussion period with OSD

- After the discussion period closes, the bidding companies will have a very short period of time to modify their existing proposals and issue new bids

- The Pentagon will then evaluate the revised proposals and make the new selection; target time for new award is December

Note: as the losing bidder Boeing was briefed by the Air Force on why Northrop won the contest. Boeing has now seen all of Northrop's cost figures and all other strategy into how Northrop won the competition yet Northrop has not seen Boeing's inside information. This provides Boeing with an incredible edge to modify their proposal and match how Northrop originally bid.

My guess, Boeing will strip out a lot of extras originally in their bid that they now know the AF doesn't care about reducing their overall cost and risk rating. They can now mirror many key points of the Northrop bid and really highlight a much lower cost. On that new bid, OSD will chicken out based on Congressional pressure, and Boeing walks away with one of the largest thefts in contracting history.

At this point, if Northrop is smart, they tell OSD that they must provide all of Boeing's data or enter a No Bid and get out of this mess. Even with Boeing's data, it still may be best to just No Bid and walk away.