Senate Confirms Top DoD Arms Buyer
Alabama's two senators lifted their "hold" April 23 and the U.S. Senate promptly confirmed Ashton Carter to be new chief weapons buyer at the Pentagon.
The confirmation of Ashton Carter to become the next acquisition chief at the Pentagon had been delayed for weeks by Alabama Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions. (ROB CURTIS / STAFF)
The Harvard professor and theoretical physicist is expected to be sworn into his new post April 27 or 28, a Pentagon spokeswoman said.
Carter's nomination became a hostage in a bitter political struggle over which plane the U.S. Air Force is going to buy to be its next-generation aerial refueling tanker.
Carter's confirmation was delayed for weeks by Alabama Republican Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, who wanted Defense Secretary Robert Gates to agree to aircraft selection criteria that could help Northrop Grumman win the $35 billion tanker contract.
The two senators wanted a promise that the Air Force would buy tankers on the basis of "best value," and not just on the basis of lowest price.
"Best value" could help Northrop and its partner Airbus beat Boeing. Northrop argues that its KC-30 is bigger and more modern and can carry more cargo, and thus is a better value than Boeing's 767. But Boeing's plane may be cheaper.
Sessions and Shelby met with Gates April 23 and afterward announced they would lift the hold they had placed on Carter's nomination. Both said they were pleased by Gates' reassurances.
Sessions called Carter "a capable and qualified nominee" and said that Carter, too, had promised to conduct a fair and transparent tanker competition.
Even if the senators didn't extract a pledge to decide the tanker contest on best value, they "achieved their main goal," said defense analyst Loren Thompson. "They signaled that if they don't get what they want, they can create trouble."
Even without an explicit pledge to base the tanker decision on best value, "I think they got what they wanted or they wouldn't have released the nomination," said Joel Johnson, executive director, international, for the Teal Group consulting firm.
Gates essentially promised to make the decision on more than just price, Johnson said.
Buying tankers for the Air Force has proven troublesome.
Northrop won the tanker competition in early 2008, only to have the contract voided after Boeing filed a bid protest. In 2003, Boeing was on the verge of securing a lucrative deal to lease tankers to the Air Force, but the arrangement collapsed amid a conflict-of-interest scandal that sent two Boeing executives to prison.
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