ARLINGTON, Va., July 1 (UPI) -- The Government Accountability Office's stinging rebuke of the U.S. Air Force tanker competition published in June was so sweeping that some observers say a new award may not be made for years.

That would be very unfortunate, because the 500 Eisenhower-era Boeing KC-135 tankers in the force comprise the oldest large fleet of jets in the world. There's no way of knowing how long they will last, and the joint force depends on having aerial refueling capabilities around the globe on a daily -- indeed hourly -- basis. So instead of engaging in an extended post-mortem, policymakers need to fix the problem fast. Looking at the five evaluation factors used in the competition, it is clear what changes need to be made.

Mission capability was the factor weighed most heavily in comparing the two proposals, and it should continue to occupy center stage. But the GAO says evaluators did not apply capability measures as stated in the original request for proposals, and thus misled the involved companies as to what features would elicit the best scores.

This is a simple problem to fix -- not by developing new capability metrics, but by finding competent evaluators to apply the existing ones. If re-competition is used as a pretext for drafting revised metrics, it will introduce new uncertainty into a process that must be brought to closure.

Proposal risk was the second most highly ranked metric in the competition. The U.S. Air Force found the two proposals had equal risk, but only after forcing Boeing to raise the cost of developing its tanker. The GAO says that insisting on such an increase was unwarranted because there was no evidence Boeing's cost estimates were unrealistic.