Random notes on yesterday's tanker hearing, next week's Farnborough air show

Extraordinary\nhearing yesterday ... a lot of heat ... but also a lot of light ... if you had any doubts that\nDOD could re-compete the contract without political interference, the hearing offered\nample proof that the next round of bidding will be all about politics ... DOD\nfaces a really tough situation ... they want to conduct a fair and open\ncompetition in the next round and kind of pretend that politics won't be interjected\ninto the mix ... but that appears to be impossible ... the bottom line is that there\nis now an empowered and politically desperate faction in Congress, which is a\npotent combination, that will do anything to stop a contract award to Northrop\nGrumman ... and if DOD follows the ground rules laid out during the past week, it\nis hard to see how Boeing wins without substantially changing its bid ... and\neven then it's still hard to see how they can stay competitive based on the\nground rules ... and I say this for 2 reasons ... DOD intends to give official\ncredit for offering more fuel offload capacity ... that certainly doesn't hurt\nthe chances for Northrop's larger aircraft ... DOD also wants to give less weight\nin the evaluation to lifecycle costs, which include long range fuel estimates ...\nsince the 767 is the smaller aircraft, and therefore consumes less fuel, this also\ndoes nothing to help Boeing's chances in the second round ... so that's where we\nare ...

Farnborough\nAir Show is my favorite week of the year ... just the chance to see all of those\naircraft in the same place ... and the industry and military delegations from so\nmany different countries ... it's like a big playground for an aerospace reporter\n...

Every one\nof these big shows always has political drama ... back in the 2003 Paris Air Show,\nI remember it was all about Rumsfeld's decision to punish the French for their\nobjections to the Iraq\nwar by essentially boycotting the show ...

This year\nthe political drama is very likely to be about this tanker debacle ... It's difficult\nto overstate the disappointment - and to some extent even disillusionment -\nwith the US acquisition process that I hear when I talked to my European friends\nand co-workers at Flight about this whole process ... European industry, quite\nnaturally, believes the best tanker won ... and they don't see the bureaucratic failures\nidentified in the GAO report for overturning the contract ... they see political\ninterference ... to some extent, that may reflect their experience with the\nsomewhat more politicized nature of their military acquisitions compared to ours\n... but sometimes perception more important than reality and that really applies\nin this case ...

Besides the\npolitical posturing, I will be looking at a few other major themes of the show ...\nit will be interesting to see how journalists from around the world react to\nLockheed Martin's update on the F-35 program, which is scheduled for Tuesday ... I\nthink it's fair to say there is a lot of skepticism about Lockheed's ability to\npull of, in succession, an extremely complicated and aggressive flight test\nschedule, a rapid production rate increase that starts this month, while\nmanaging to keep the price tag truly affordable for the international customers\n... I've found the international press corps to be quite perceptive about these\nissues, and I expect them to be especially forceful in their questioning this\nyear ...

For me, the\nFarnborough event will be a familiar blur of press conferences, interviews,\nmeetings, cocktail receptions, working dinners and late-night writing sessions ...\nSleep deprivation and commuting hassles are only partly offset by all of the really\ngood food and, of course, the open bar at the various receptions, parties and\ndinners ...

There will\nbe a lot of \"news conferences\" offering precious little \"news\" for a reporter like\nme with a weekly deadline ...

In the\nmidst of all the commotion and noise, there are always a few moments of\ninspiration ... when the routine of reporting mere data points snowballs into something\nmuch more ... with so many official - and unofficial - sources all gathered in\none place, these kinds of shows allow you to get to the bottom of things within\njust a few days in a way you never could otherwise ... and that's probably why I never get tired of it, despite all of the exhaustion and frustration.