Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) is introducing an amendment to the fiscal 2010 senate defense spending bill that would block the use of funds for the U.S. Air Force's KC-X competition unless the service agrees to disclose pricing data about Boeing's proposal in 2008 to rival Northrop Grumman.

Only a week after the release of the KC-135 replacement draft request for proposals (RFP), politics is taking center stage to potentially influence the way ahead on the program, estimated to be worth $35 billion to the winner. Northrop and its partner, EADS North America, would assemble their tankers in Sessions' state.

Meanwhile, a prominent former Pentagon acquisition chief is raising questions about the methodology proposed by the Air Force in navigating through the politically thorny competition.

Jacques Gansler held the top acquisition post at the Pentagon, which is now occupied by Ashton Carter, from 1997-2001. He says he is surprised that the Air Force disclosed Northrop's pricing data for its winning proposal to rival Boeing during the company's debrief after losing the competition in February 2008.

"They were wrong knowing there was a protest [coming] to give out the pricing data," he told Aviation Week. Boeing's protest set off a chain of events that led the service to terminate the $1.5 billion development contract. Those negotiations are still ongoing.

Pentagon officials say the data release to Boeing was legal and "created no competitive disadvantage because the data in question are inaccurate, outdated and not germane to this source-selection strategy."

This issue, however, hasn't been dropped. Northrop CEO Ronald Sugar is continuing to press the matter with senior Pentagon officials, says Randy Belote, vice president of strategic communications for the company.

Meanwhile, Gansler is critical of the scoring method outlined by the Air Force to determine the winner. It calls for a pass/fail rating on 373 requirements.

The price of the bids that pass all of those requirements will be adjusted based on performance in various wartime scenarios and peacetime operations.

"My impression is they are trying to avoid a protest instead of trying to do the best thing for the warfighter," he says. This method, according to Gansler and some industry officials, is not a true "best value" approach.

"You can't treat a sophisticated item like a tanker as though you are buying Kleenex," he says. "It is not a commodity… The idea of simply awarding something so important and sophisticated to the lower bidder is not the way to do it."

One official familiar with the Northrop/EADS team says the Air Force's source-selection methodology favors a smaller and, thereby, less expensive aircraft. "Every gate is a price gate," this official says.

Northrop has not yet threatened not to propose a bid for the competition. However, during the last competition the company did threaten to pull out, prompting a change in the proposal scoring method that contributed to the company's eventual win.

Gansler suggests that the most likely way to move ahead with the program and reap the benefits of consistent competition is for the Pentagon to swallow the additional cost to fund both development programs up front. Annual competitions for production lots would then garner savings in the long term, he suggests.

Gansler, who is not affiliated with either team, is now director of the University of Maryland's Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise.

Image: Boeing