Aircraft

Boeing's losing KC-767A tanker team has revealed a new protest claim focused on an issue used by the company's competitors last year to nullify a multi-billion dollar helicopter award.

In Boeing's newly released protest filing, the company argues the US Air Force unfairly calculated estimated "most probable life-cycle costs" (MPLCC) both for Boeing's bid and the Northrop Grumman team's winning proposal based on the KC-30, a derivative of the Airbus A330-200.

The disputed metric estimates the full cost to develop, produce, operate and maintain the aircraft over a 30-year period.

Last February, the US Government Accountability Office overturned Boeing's contract to deliver 141 HH-47 combat search and rescue helicopters, a programme that remains in limbo. In that case, the losing bidders were the Lockheed Martin US101 and the Sikorsky HH-92.

Both companies protested the USAF's undisclosed decision to estimate operating and maintenance costs for all three bids using the incumbent Sikorsky HH-60 helicopter as the baseline. The GAO ruled that the USAF erred by failing to disclose that decision to the bidding teams.

In a similar fashion, Boeing claims the KC-X source selection team decided to use the incumbent Boeing KC-135R tanker to estimate repair costs for the KC-767A.

According to Boeing's protest, the USAF's evaluation team rejected Boeing's submitted cost data for the KC-767 and made its own estimates that raised Boeing's overall MPLCC figure by $5.2 billion. As a result, the estimated lifecyle cost of Boeing's bid slightly exceeded the Northrop proposal, although both estimates topped $108 billion.

Boeing also claims the USAF unfairly rejected the company's cost estimates. One dispute involves the fact that Boeing's tanker is based on the commercial 767-200 Long Range Freighter.

The USAF wanted Boeing to justify build-up costs for the production line in detail, but Boeing submitted detailed build-up cost estimates only for military components for the aircraft. In response, the USAF "unreasonably" raised Boeing's build-up cost for part of the manufacturing system by $400 million, the company says.

In a related dispute, the USAF also refused to accept historic learning curve data supplied by Boeing Commercial Airplanes to justify long-term production cost estimates. The USAF instead "arbitrarily" raised Boeing's production costs by $1 billion.