Some (ie, G2 Solutions) have viewed this compromise proposal as inevitable for a long time, and now even ousted Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne agrees with them.
Kudos to my pal Michael Sirak at the Air Force Association's Daily Report for the good scoop. Read his full article here, but here's an excerpt:
Kudos to my pal Michael Sirak at the Air Force Association's Daily Report for the good scoop. Read his full article here, but here's an excerpt:
Awarding contracts both to Boeing and Northrop Grumman and having each build new tanker aircraft for the Air Force at a rate of about 15 per year makes sense and should be considered as the way ahead to resolve the KC-X tanker program's current legal impasse, former Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told the Daily Report yesterday."I think a split buy right now is something that we have to examine," Wynne, who stepped down as USAF's top civilian on June 20, said during a sit-down interview. "This is an opportunity to resolve a very tense political issue and still maintain competition."
If he only he had listened to folks like Jacques Gansler, a former Pentagon acquisition executive, and G2's Michel Merluzeau. Both came out for a split buy nearly a year ago. Here's what Merluzeau wrote in November 2007:
Read the signs: what is the best way for the Air Force to avoid a costly, time consuming, emotionally charged and at the end of the day entirely wasteful protest? Split buy.
Could it be, that Wynne went for single sourcing because that's what the uniformed ppl wanted? Could it be that he knew that Split Buy is the only politically possible outcome, but had to acquiesce to the stars who crave conformity on the ramp?
That's funny, for all the criticism in FLIGHT Magazine (see Editor comments in 29 July issue) about protectionism in the U.S. and Boeing being hypocrites on A-10, I didn't see any "split" buy for the A-400m and the C-17.
Protectionism is the EU's tacit charter.