Patty Murray: “4 months ago when the Air Force announced that Airbus, not Boeing, would supply the next generation of aerial refueling…”

“4 months ago when the Air Force announced that Airbus, not Boeing, would supply the next generation of aerial refueling tankers, Air Force acquisition officials declared that the contest had been fair, open, and transparent. They said they made no mistakes, and they boasted that the decision could withstand any level of scrutiny. The Government Accountability Office called all of that into question in a 67-page decision that shows the Air Force competition was unfairly skewed toward Airbus from the very beginning. The decision, responding to Boeing's protest of the Air Force competition, was damning. The GAO described the contest as "unreasonable," "improper," and "misleading." It found that the Air Force significantly overestimated the cost of the Boeing tanker, that it misled Boeing while helping Airbus, and that the Air Force selected Airbus even though the company failed to meet key requirements of the contract. It concluded that: But for these errors, we believe that Boeing would have had a substantial chance of being selected for the award. It is unclear at this point whether those errors were due to incompetence or to impropriety. But one thing is definite: This contest was anything but fair or transparent. I want to know how the Air Force got this so wrong. I have already asked for a meeting with Defense Secretary Gates so he can tell me how the Pentagon plans to respond.”