Lawmakers pushing the U.S. Air Force to purchase Boeing-made tanker aircraft will try to insert a provision into pending defense spending legislation that would force service officials to consider a recent WTO preliminary ruling that EADS received illegal subsidies.
Speaking to reporters a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, where Boeing's tanker demonstration trailer was set up, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., said Boeing-friendly lawmakers "need to have a discussion" with congressional leaders about forcing the Air Force to take into account what the WTO ruling means for the KC-X tanker competition.
Boeing is expected to again compete for the $35 billion, 179-plane contract against EADS and Northrop Grumman.
Tiahrt said the WTO preliminary rules makes clear EADS received $5 billion in illicit subsidies from European nations, an amount pro-Boeing lawmakers say the Air Force must add onto the coming EADS-Northrop KC-X bidding price.
Earlier this month, the WTO came to a preliminary ruling that European nations had given illegal subsidies to EADS, the parent company of Airbus. EADS is again expected to team with Northrop Grumman and compete against Boeing for the KC-X contract. The preliminary ruling is just one issue clouding the politically charged competition.
Asked whether he and other Boeing proponents would soon introduce legislation forcing the WTO case into the service's tanker selection process, Tiahrt said, "Oh, I'm sure something will pop up."
For their part, Air Force officials say the WTO case - including the preliminary ruling in favor of the American claim that the Europe-to-EADS aircraft subsidies hindered Boeing - will not factor into the KC-X selection process.
The Air Force is expected any day to kick off its fourth attempt at buying about 180 new flying gas stations, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week said he wants the selection process "done right and done soon." Those comments came on the same day, Sept. 16, that the secretary formally handed back control of the coming KC-X tanker competition to Air Force brass.
Tiahrt said he and his pro-Boeing colleagues "have not had a conversation with leadership since the WTO's preliminary ruling," but said he "thinks that needs to be revisited."
During remarks with other lawmakers in front of the Boeing demonstration trailer, Tiahrt called the practice of giving the illegal subsidies to EADS "corrupt."
Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., said it would be "a mistake" for the Air Force to exclude WTO case ramifications.
He said the kinds of subsidies examined by the trade body are the same kinds that helped Airbus, a division of EADS, drive former American airliner makers like McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin out of the business of making large planes.
Dicks and fellow Washington Sen. Patty Murray said the tanker competition has broader ramifications, and that giving the contract to EADS-Northrop would hurt the American defense industrial base.
Several pro-Boeing lawmakers said the KC-X program is a "jobs program," and those jobs should stay in the United States. They doubt EADS will make good on promises to build the Air Force tankers on American soil. Tiahrt told reporters that Eurocopter, a division of EADS, "never transferred those jobs to the U.S., as was promised."
"What they say and what they do aren't the same thing," according to the Kansas congressman.
Northrop Grumman spokesman Randy Belote said the Northrop-EADS KC-45 "is more 'American' under DoD acquisition regulations than is Boeing's tanker, creates more than 48,000 new direct and in-direct U.S. jobs in areas of the country that have been hard hit by the economy."
Belote added that Northrop and EADS officials "couldn't agree more about the jobs issue, and the Northrop Grumman KC-45 tanker is the 'new jobs' program of choice." Northrop is the prime contractor under the trans-Atlantic partnership.
The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is ready to test a few components that soldiers may have in their hands by 2010.
Help
