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.
A legislative standoff has led to a lapse in a $4.26 billion small business innovation contracting program widely used by the Air Force and could spell the end of it entirely, industry sources warned Air & Space Forces Magazine.
