WSJ picks wrong issue in Air Force tanker debate

It’s highly unusual for The Wall Street Journal to be gulled into ignoring the most important part of an issue in favor of chasing a rabbit down a random trail. But it has apparently fallen prey to what is at stake in the Air Force’s acquisition of a tanker aircraft to replace the Eisenhower-era KC-135s, which have flown far past their useful life.   The Journal, like too many others, apparently believes it’s a question of protectionism versus open competition.

A Thursday Wall Street Journal editorial rightly bashes Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wa) for his attempt to bully US defense contractors out of partnering with EADS, the European Aerospace and Defense Systems company which is still trying to sell its Airbus 330 to the US Air Force as a replacement for the KC-135s.

There is no more urgently-needed new aircraft for all our armed services.  As then Air Force Chief of Staff John Jumper told me in a 2005 interview, "We are a global air and space power because of these tankers.  He added, "The first thing that happened in any contingency is that you put the ‘tanker bridge’ up there. We deploy tankers to places such as Spain, Hawaii, Guam and their sole purpose is to get large numbers halfway across the world without stopping."

In short, no tankers, no superpower.  And the aged KC-135s are no longer capable of meeting the mission requirements imposed by Iraq, Afghanistan and our other international defense needs.

As much as the Journal is right in bashing Dicks, it would be just as right in condemning Sen. John McCain’s (R-Az) effort to pressure the Defense Department into buying the Airbus.  McCain’s campaign in favor of the Airbus goes back to at least 2003. In 2006, before EADS won the last round of competition, McCain bullied the Defense Department out of counting the illegal "launch" subsidies paid to Airbus which artificially – and substantially – reduces the price EADS offers.  (The WTO, in a still-confidential decision, ruled those subsidies illegal last year.)

In a September 8, 2006 letter to then Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, McCain posed 13 questions to England and objected to any consideration of the subsidies Airbus received: "I respectfully suggest that Air Force follow an acquisition process based on extant legal and regulatory guidelines and remove any WTO element from its procurement evaluation supporting its tanker recapitalization program." The Air Force didn’t count the subsidies in evaluating the EADS price just as McCain demanded, which put Boeing at a big disadvantage in the price evaluation.

McCain’s pro-EADS campaign continued through the transition to the Obama administration and, last fall, he was writing to Defense Secretary Gates insisting, again, that the competition was skewed toward Boeing because the cost evaluation considered fuel consumption and the requirement for additional construction at military bases to house aircraft that couldn’t fit into the current facilities.  (The A-330 is a massive aircraft, its wingspread so large that other aircraft would have to be moved from their current European bases to make room for it. So counting the cost of rebuilding airfields to accept the A-330 is entirely rational.)

The Air Force’s decision between the Boeing and Airbus aircraft hinges on one important question, and it has nothing to do with protectionism, subsidies or any financial issue. It’s a matter of which aircraft best meets the Air Force’s – the warfighters’ – needs.  In this, the Airbus categorically fails.

As I’ve written many times before, there are mission-critical maneuvers – called "breakaways" and "overruns" – which any tanker has to perform in order to safely refuel all the aircraft in the Air Force’s inventory, including some – such as F-15 and F-16 fighters – that have to be refueled at higher speeds than slower-moving aircraft such as the C-17 and C-130.

The primary reason that the Government Accountability office overturned the Air Force award of the contract to EADS in the last go round had nothing to do with protectionism.  The GAO found, correctly, that the A-330 lacks the ability to accelerate quickly enough – and to achieve a sufficiently high top speed – to perform these maneuvers safely and in accordance with Air Force standards which it has developed in over a half-century of airborn refueling.

Since the GAO decision, more information has come out showing that the "laws" – the internal computer programming – that govern the Airbus’ flight controls make it unsuitable and probably dangerous to fly in a combat environment.

Obviously, there is a lot more to the choice between the Boeing KC-767 and the Airbus KCX than just who gets the jobs to build it.

All the quibbling about McCain and Dicks would be relevant if the Air Force were choosing between two aircraft that could perform the tanker mission equally well.  But it’s not.

The Boeing aircraft can perform the mission.  The A-330 would have to break the laws of physics to do it.  The warfighters need the tanker that can reliably – and safely – do everything the mission profile requires. The A-330 just can’t.

Instead of trying to backdoor the Airbus into the competition again, the Air Force should be holding Boeing’s feet to the fire in a tough negotiation to get the best price on the tanker our warfighters desperately need.

Originally posted at BigGovernment.com