Value for the Money

Let's play a hypothetical situation for a moment. Let's assume that you have a choice between two cars. The basic requirements that you have is that it carry a family of four and give you cargo capacity enough to lug around a week's worth of groceries and additional items as needed. These are the minimum expectations that you have for your target vehicle. Now supposing you were to look at two options. The first is an older model car that has been around for a while and meets all requirements in a proven chassis that can carry the required load though not much more than your current vehicle.

Now supposing for a second option (and for slightly more money) there is another vehicle which offers greater cargo capacity and passenger capacity along with a modular design which means you can alter the vehicle to carry more cargo or passengers depending on your requirements. Price wise it isn't all that much more either, plus it uses newer technology and again a proven chassis. Now for the final comparison, assume that the older model is still in the speculative design phases while the other one is already out and available for production should you wish to purchase it. What would your decision be?

This speculative analysis is more or less what the Department of Defense was faced with when it was comparing the bids of Boeing and Northrop Grumman/EADS for the KC-X Tanker Replacement for the United States Air Force. Looking to replace their aging fleet of tankers that are older than most of the current crop of Air Force officers (and their parents in some cases) the DoD has been looking to get a contract awarded for nearly a decade to no avail. In the wake of ethics scandals at Boeing and complaints that Northrop Grumman/EADS went 'beyond' the quoted requirements in their design, the competition has been languishing. In 2008 it seemed that there was finally a breakthrough and that the decision had been made but once again questions as to the motivation of the decision were raised and the contract was again rescinded.

Now the way I see it, I have a stake in this decision. As a taxpayer, it's my money (in some way, shape or form) that helps fund the purchase of these aircraft. That being said then it makes sense that the efforts by President Obama and the rest of government to bring transparency to some levels of government spending would get so much press time. Unfortunately what is often spread in the media is spun to such a degree that even spiders would be jealous. The reason I say this is because one of the reasons why there was such resistance in some levels of Congress to the NG/EADS award was due to the assumption that this would mean that foreign made products are taking potential jobs away from American workers and that's definitely not the case. While some components would be assembled in European factories, the actual assembly was slated to occur in the United States. Unfortunately that won't happen now because Northrop decided to withdraw from the competition after the latest batch of product specifications came from the government.

According to statements from the company, the decision was made because it seemed that the new specifications were heavily in favor of what Boeing was going to propose and so Northrop decided that it didn't make sense financially to continue investing in something that was clearly leaning away from them. While I agree with that, I think it completely reverses what Obama and a lot of Congressional leaders like McCain had been pushing for in the first place which was an end to the monopoly that certain defense contractors had over certain sectors of the defense industry. The reason this whole scandal started was because there was evidence that no competition was originally held and an under-the-table deal meant money was given to certain officials to ensure that Boeing won the contract in the first place. By constantly playing a shell game and changing requirements, it gave the illusion that change was happening but it clearly wasn't. It was simply business as usual.