Defense Focus: Air tanker war -- Part 4

WASHINGTON, March 19 (UPI) -- The debate over the rival merits of the Northrop-Grumman-EADS KC-45A air tanker and the Boeing KC-767 is one of the most intense and difficult in the recent history of U.S. military procurement because of the broad range and complexities of the issues involved.

The KC-45A is a far larger plane. It will have a longer range and be able to carry far more fuel. However, it will be consequentially far more expensive to operate and will require far more fuel itself. At a time when global oil prices are around $100 a barrel and could go even higher, that is a significant factor, too.

Northrop Grumman and its partner, the European Aeronautics Defence and Space Co., satisfied U.S. Air Force assessors they would be able to master the immense challenges of building different parts of the aircraft in different countries -- including Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands -- and then shipping them to a new plant to be built in Alabama for assembly and adaptation by Northrop Grumman. After all, Airbus is already built that way and the KC-45A is an adaptation of the A-330 Airbus.

However, EADS has had no experience of building aircraft for tankers. It certainly performed the impressive feat of creating a refueling boom for their prototype KC-45A and then successfully operated it for U.S. Air Forces officials. Boeing, slow and complacent in seeking what it thought was an assured contract, did not come near to doing that.

However, as we have noted before, Boeing has unmatched experience at operating the Air Force's old fleet of Boeing KC-135s -- originally adapted Boeing 707s designed in the 1950s -- and keeping them flying for decades longer than originally planned. And that expertise cannot be duplicated by Northrop Grumman and EADS.

This is very important because the recent history of U.S. military high-tech procurement teaches repeatedly that there are great risks involved when switching responsibility for major programs from companies that have successfully implemented them for decades and giving them to brash newcomers in the field.

Ironically, as we have noted before in these columns, Boeing undermined its own reputation by rashly taking on prime responsibility for the next generation of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites from Lockheed Martin in the Clinton administration's Future Intelligence Architecture program. The Bush administration was eventually forced to scrap that program after $4 billion had been spent on it.

Here, the dangers of lack of experience combined with entropy -- the inevitable tendency toward delay, disorganization and chaos of any new program carried out by a major corporation that has no prior experience with it -- will be far greater.

Construction of the KC-45A will be carried out not in the United States at all but a continent away, and in plants in different countries, none of which has had any previous experience running aircraft production lines for a military customer as demanding as the U.S. Air Force.

No high-tech program of such complexity involving so much work in so many different countries has ever been attempted before. It is straining credulity to assume that the program will flow on time as smoothly and effortless as the European businessmen convinced the U.S. Air Force that it would. Nor is it reassuring that EADS posted a $446 million loss for the 2007 financial year.

The future therefore, remains filled with uncertainty.