Murtha Wants Speedy Mixed Air Force Tanker Buy
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, told a conference in Washington on March 12 that he is in talks with House and Senate Appropriations panel leaders to increase supplemental defense funding to finally end the decade-long KC-135 replacement effort.
His idea, floated during a conference at the National Press Club sponsored by Aviation Week and McAleese & Associates, is to inflate the $67 billion supplemental request the Obama administration will send to Congress in coming weeks with funds tagged for the competition and "development work" on each team's planes. By putting the funds in the second 2009 supplemental, the Air Force would "get the planes sooner" than if appropriators waited to put the monies in the 2010 defense budget, due to Congress late in April.
Murtha's plan, if included in the final version of the supplemental, would add a new twist to the tanker saga by requiring the Air Force to buy some number of both planes. Boeing and Northrop-EADS still would compete under the Murtha plan, but not for the entire 179-plane, $35 billion contract. Whichever team the service deems "put forward the best proposal would get more" of the 179-plane pie, he said, and the other team would get a lesser number. That differs from talk of a "split buy," under which the Air Force would buy an equal number from each team.
Senior Air Force and Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, oppose buying both planes under the KC-135 replacement program because they say sustainment and maintenance costs would be too high.
Asked by Defense News whether a mixed buy would keep the team awarded fewer KC-X tankers from protesting the decision, a move that could again delay the program by years, Murtha said lawmakers were still working through details of his plan. "We hope we can work it out," Murtha said.
Asked whether a mixed or split buy would satisfy Boeing brass, Murtha grinned and replied: "Boeing will do what we ask them to do. They will be happy to get a tanker. ... Boeing has put a lot of money into this."
His comments came almost 24 hours after Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, House Armed Services air and land subcommittee chairman, told the same conference he supports splitting the contract between Boeing and Northrop-EADS. Abercrombie told reporters that because the Boeing and Northrop-EADS planes have different attributes, the Air Force could simply operate them in different regions of the globe.
Murtha and Abercrombie shot down a March 10 CQ Politics article that the White House Office of Management and Budget had ordered the Pentagon to delay the KC-X competition by five years to cut costs as part of the soon-to-conclude 2010 defense budget deliberations. "That is just not true," a stern-sounding Murtha told the conference.