Boeing to protest $35 billion Air Force contract

WASHINGTON — Boeing Co. on Monday said it will formally protest a $35 billion Air Force contract awarded to European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp.

The Chicago-based aerospace company "found serious flaws in the process that we believe warrant appeal," Boeing's chairman and chief executive officer Jim McNerney said in a statement.

Boeing's protest, to be filed today, compounds existing pressure on Air Force officials to explain their decision to award the high-stakes deal to a European company instead of an American one. There has been fierce backlash on Capitol Hill, led by lawmakers from Washington, Kansas and other states that would have gained jobs had Boeing won.

Northrop — which currently has 1,228 Utah employees — has said 220 jobs will be added in Utah with the contract, both in Northrop's operations and with four supplier companies. Boeing has 739 employees and 236 suppliers and vendors in Utah.

Air Force officials have said the impact on American jobs was not one of their criteria for awarding the contract. With anger mounting on Capitol Hill, top Air Force officials — including Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, Air Force Chief of Staff T. Michael Moseley and Sue Payton, the Air Force's assistant secretary for acquisition — are scheduled to testify this week at a series of congressional hearings.

The contract to replace 179 air-to-air refueling tankers is the first of three Air Force awards worth as much $100 billion to replace its entire fleet of nearly 600 tankers over the next 30 years.

Following a debriefing by Air Force officials Friday, Boeing questioned the fairness of the competition, citing "inconsistency in requirements, cost factors and treatment of our commercial data."

The company argued that the Air Force changed its method for evaluating the two tankers, even after issuing a request for proposals. These changes allowed a larger tanker to be competitive, although the Air Force originally had called for a medium-sized plane. Air Force officials have indicated that the larger size of the tanker offered by the EADS/Northrop team helped tip the balance in its favor.

"We didn't think they wanted a bigger plane," Jim Albaugh, head of Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems unit, said last week. Albaugh said this is why Boeing based its offering on Boeing's 767, noting that "we were discouraged from offering the 777," a bigger aircraft that would have been more comparable to the winning bid.