Originally Posted by
ORAC
KenV, my comment was in responsible to the remark about Airbus “suckering” Boeing into pitching their bid where they did. Now you are saying it was a good long term commercial decision.
Make up your mind, you can’t have it both ways. The6bwere either suckered is they weren’t. My point was tha5 they weren’t.
Northrop/EADS had already won the first competition and Boeing was determined to beat EADS in the new competition and willing to bid very aggressively on both price and schedule. Northrop had already pulled out of the final bid and had EADS pulled out Boeing would have been much less aggressive on both cost and schedule. Further, Boeing would not have included their advanced refueling boom. The KC-767 and the original KC-46 booms were both based on the KC-135 boom. But that boom had a much smaller envelope than the Airbus boom, so Boeing switched to a modified KC-10 boom. A change that was neither easy not cheap. But EADS decided to go it alone with what was essentially their original bid, which was based on the passenger aircraft and non compliant to the new RFP. Northrop pulled out because a new proposal would be expensive and bidding the old proposal would result in nothing in it for them. But bidding with the old proposal was very smart strategically for Airbus as it caused Boeing to not only offer a much better boom, but to be very aggressive on price and schedule. It was a good long term business decision for Boeing to beat Airbus with a low bid, but Boeing could have bid much less aggressively on both cost and schedule and still won, and done so with much less risk exposure.