The Air Force will pay Boeing $1.387 million in compensation for the legal costs that the company incurred in its successful protest of the service’s February choice of Northrop Grumman in the KC-X tanker contest, an Air Force spokeswoman tells the Daily Report. The Government Accountability Office found that the Air Force errors in judging Northrop’s KC-30 and Boeing’s KC-767 entries call for the service to reimburse Boeing for its legal costs. The Air Force reached “an agreement with Boeing” on the amount, the spokeswoman said. The KC-X program is in limbo, awaiting the new Administration, after the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s aborted attempt to reopen the competition to revised bids and determine the winner by around the end of the year.
The Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile is behind schedule and may significantly overrun its expected cost, which could partially explain why the service is reviving the hypersonic AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid-Response Weapon.