WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- On Capitol Hill, reaction to the announcement that a Lockheed Martin-led international consortium had won the contract for the design and construction of the next generation of U.S. presidential helicopters was mixed.
Some folks cared; others didn't.
Welcome to life in 21st-century Washington, where diplomatic concerns, the demands of the global marketplace and plain, old-fashioned political pressure and pork barrel regularly collide. "The $6.1 billion contract -- $3.6 billion for the fleet of 23 helicopters and the rest for research and development -- is far from the Pentagon's largest," the New York Times reported Monday, "but it is full of symbolic value."
The symbolism counts, especially after the public-relations war both sides waged trying to win the contract, but not as much as the potential for lost jobs in the states where the losing side would have manufactured the new helicopters.
The responsibility for seeing the new fleet off the assembly line and into the air over the Ellipse on the south side of the White House is a big deal. The U.S. Department of the Navy, which denies political pressure was in any way involved in its decision, felt the Lockheed Martin group, which includes a Anglo-Italian firm, was a better choice than Sikorsky Aircraft, which despite its Russian name would have built them in Connecticut.
Led by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., Connecticut's congressional delegation reacted angrily to the news one of its firms had been snubbed. Lieberman denounced the decision as outrageously wrong. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., called the awarding of the contract to Lockheed Martin an "affront to the American worker." Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, a Vietnam veteran, said, "It looks like the U.S. Navy just shot down an American helicopter."
The hyperbole masks the reality. The new helicopter, the US101, is due to enter service in 2009, overseen by a design and production group that includes Lockheed Martin, Amarillo, Texas-based Bell Helicopter and the Anglo-Italian AgustaWestland, whose EH101 helicopter is the basis for the winning entry in the Marine One competition.
The rotors and part of the transmission system for the new helicopters will be built in England. Other critical components will be made in Italy. Together, that amounts to about 20 percent of the total. The rest, the remaining 80 percent, will be built in the United States, principally in Oswego, N.Y., and Amarillo.
Lieberman and the other members of the Connecticut delegation have threatened to make common cause with U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who is a proponent of the "buy American" position, especially where national-security-related contracts are concerned. Hunter said he had difficulty understanding "why tax dollars would be used to fund further development of foreign helicopter technology," the Times and other news outlets reported, but he has not yet publicly committed to any particular course of action.
He may have support, at least from the national-security side, from other Republicans in the House who say they are concerned that European defense concerns have refused to toe the U.S. line on arms sales to the People's Republic of China. Their fear that the Marine One contract could indirectly produce benefits for the Chinese military could be enough to at least spark a hearing or two on the issue, but in the main said sources on Capitol Hill who follow the issue, the idea that members of Congress could countermand the Navy's decision seemed unlikely.
The competition for the contract was, even by Washington standards, especially fierce. It included not just lobbying of members but a public-relations campaign that included glossy magazine ads and poster-sized billboards in the Washington, D.C., Metro subway system. The prestige of the contract, though, was always secondary to its financial value. And, though analysts said over the weekend that Sikorsky would likely survive the loss of the contract, the decision to go with Lockheed Martin was a significant blow to the company, which has manufactured the presidential fleet since the Eisenhower administration.
Those who would raise the national-security issue to derail the contract face some powerful opponents, including New York Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chuck Schumer, New York Republican Reps. Sherwood Boehlert, the chairman of the House Science Committee, and Tom Reynolds, who runs the House Republican Campaign Committee, and the Texas congressional delegation, all of whom are quite happy to see jobs in their states created as a result of the contract going to Lockheed Martin.
Also on the side of Lockheed Martin are the taxpayer watchdog groups like Citizens Against Government Waste, which praised the Navy's decision.
"The winning bid means Sikorsky, a company with a checkered history that has supplied presidential helicopters without competition since the Eisenhower presidency, will be replaced," CAGW President Tom Schatz said, allowing U.S. taxpayers to avoid "what could have been another helicopter sinkhole."
Schatz put the whole matter in perspective when he said, "The long-postponed debate between the two contractors was often clouded by the usual Washington spin.
"Sikorsky draped its contract bid with American flags, insinuating that Lockheed presented a less 'American' choice," Schatz said. At the end of the day, though, that flag waving masked the reality, he continued, that Sikorsky was not up to the task.
"Congress must stay out of this," Schatz said of the rumors that the losing side was going to push for a legislative fix. The Defense Department "showed common sense by choosing a contractor that is expected to stay on budget and on schedule. With a record $427 billion budget deficit predicted for fiscal 2005, taxpayers deserve to have costs stay on the ground."
--
(Please send comments to [email protected].)
