The Air Force will not be in the position to award the KC-X tanker contract until early 2011, putting off the selection of either Boeing or EADS North America as the tanker supplier that USAF and Pentagon officials expected to make this fall. “Certain aspects of the source selection have taken longer than we originally anticipated,” said USAF spokesman Col. Les Kodlick, reported AFP. He added, “So right now we expect an award to occur early next year.” Coinciding with this announcement came word that earlier this month the Air Force mistakenly sent Boeing confidential documents meant for EADS and visa versa due to “an unfortunate clerical error,” Kodlick told The Seattle Times (see report). These documents were technical assessments of each company’s bid and reportedly included confidential pricing data. Kodlick said this gaffe is not the cause of the source-selection delay. (See also AFP report, Associated Press report via The Seattle Times, The Press-Register of Mobile, Ala., report, and Reuters report)
As near-peer adversaries have increased their reach and lethality, the U.S. Air Force is accelerating the tanker fleet recapitalization and aggressively pulling forward the Next Generation Aerial Refueling System (NGAS) to meet the threat. Globally operating the KC-46A has advanced mission...