Alabama Aircraft Industries, Inc. filed a new legal protest against the Air Force March 12 concerning a $1.1 billion maintenance contract for the KC-135 tanker. The Birmingham News reported March 13 that the AAII filed the protest—its second complaint since last September in the ongoing dispute—based on the belief that USAF failed to comply with an earlier Government Accountability Office ruling in the company’s favor. AAII (formerly Pemco Aviation) lost out to Boeing last September in the original competition, but won a protest with the GAO last December over how the Air Force evaluated the risk in Boeing’s proposal. USAF agreed to go back and reevaluate, but after doing so, it concluded earlier this month that Boeing deserved the contract. Birmingham-based AAII says it needs the contract to maintain full employment. GAO has 100 days to rule.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…