By Amy Butler

Boeing's protest of the U.S. Air Force's selection of a Northrop Grumman/EADS North America design for its $35 billion KC-135 replacement was filed March 11 with congressional referees at the Government Accountability Office.

The protest procedure requires the Air Force to issue an immediate stop-work order and discontinue communications with the Northrop/EADS team pending either the issuance of an Air Force waiver deeming the work essential to national security or a ruling from the GAO.

The GAO has 100 days to decide whether the Air Force followed proper procurement processes leading to its selection of an Airbus A330 design for its future aerial refueling tanker.

Boeing officials say they've not requested a specific remedy in their protest. The company's options depend on whether GAO finds procedural problems in the source selection. But two Boeing vice presidents say they simply want to compete with a better upfront understanding of the Air Force's requirements.

AF defends choice

The selection of an A330 design surprised Boeing, which felt the aircraft was too big. The Air Force, however, defends it choice, saying the competition was transparent and that the excess cargo and passenger carriage options of the A330 design provided more value.

The Air Force unfairly altered its assessment of how the Boeing's 767-based model and the Northrop/EADS aircraft would operate in "real world" scenarios, said Mark McGraw, vice president of Boeing's tanker programs. The company's ratings on this evaluation criteria factor, the so-called "Factor 5," were switched multiple times leading up to the final selection of the Northrop design, he told reporters during a March 11 teleconference.

In one instance, the Air Force actually amended its computer model for this factor to "accommodate" the larger aircraft. For example, the Air Force allowed the larger A330s to be parked closer together than originally planned, inflated the thickness of runways in the computer model (though not actually doing so in the field), and added some ramp and hangar space (in computer models, not in the field) to allow for the larger footprint of the Northrop/EADS offer.

The Air Force "disconnected the whole assessment from the real-world studies" the service had previously created leading up to the KC-X competition. Furthermore, the service didn't take into account the cost of adding the ramp space and beefing up the runways to accommodate the A330 during its evaluation, McGraw says.