There appear to be a number of questions about the process whereby the decision was made to reject the alternative offered by the Nation’s historic supplier of tanker aircraft – the Boeing Company. These questions (for example, concerning the ability to operate on relatively short and austere runways) seem likely to result in that corporation protesting the source-selection of a much larger Airbus aircraft over Boeing’s modified 767.
Even more telling, however, may be other considerations that argue powerfully against a reliance on the EADS-dominated offering. A number of these were identified in a paper issued by the Center for Security Policy in April 2007 and re-released last week but were evidently not taken into account by the Air Force:
* One of the owners of EADS, the government of France, has long engaged in: corporate other acts of espionage against the U.S. and its companies; bribery and other corrupt practices; and diplomatic actions generally at cross-purposes with America’s national interests.
* The Russian state-owned Development Bank (Vneshtorgbank) is reportedly the largest non-European shareholder in EADS with at least a 5% stake. It is hard to imagine that, at a moment when Vladimir Putin and his cronies are becoming ever more aggressive in their anti-Americanism and efforts to intimidate Europe, we could safely entrust such vital national security capabilities as the manufacture and long-term support of our tanker fleet to a company in which the Kremlin is involved.
* The enormous U.S. taxpayer-financed cash infusion into EADS will probably not only translate into more money for the slush funds the company has historically used to bribe customers into buying Airbus planes rather than Boeing’s. It will also help subsidize the Europeans’ space launch activities – again at the expense of American launch services.
* EADS has been at the forefront of European efforts to arm – over adamant U.S. objections – Communist China, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and Iran.
* As the Center for Security Policy paper points out: “Through its aircraft production division, EADS is a huge jobs program for anti-American labor unions that form the backbones of some of Europe’s most powerful socialist parties. By purchasing products that employ these workers, we will be feeding those who would rather bite our hand than shake it.”
These and other aspects of the selection of the Airbus tanker (notably, preposterous claims about the number of American jobs that will be created by contracting out our tanker fleet to the Europeans – ) seem to assure that this decision will indeed be a political plane-wreck. The tragedy is that the replacement of our obsolescent aerial refueling fleet has already been unduly delayed. The further deferral that now seems inevitable may mean that we wind up literally sacrificing aircraft and their crews, or at least the national power-projection capability we need while this mess is sorted out.