Who Should Manage the Tanker Competition?

As readers of the POGO Blog are well aware, the Air Force's midair refueling tanker contract is one of the most hotly contested acquisition programs. This acquisition has been plagued with problems, with POGO and our congressional allies uncovering the now-infamous Boeing tanker lease scandal that resulted in Air Force procurement official Darleen Druyun going to jail for steering the deal to Boeing while negotiating for an executive position with Boeing. Last June, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained Boeing's protest of the Air Force awarding the contract to Northrop Grumman. And earlier this month, Senators Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) slowed down the confirmation of Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition chief Ashton Carter over concerns with the fate of tanker competition. Now comes news from Defense Tech that DoD is trying to determine whether the next competition for the tanker should be managed by the Air Force or Carter.

The missteps that have occurred with the tanker program have of course been one of the main reasons that the Air Force's acquisition system has been under such close scrutiny, and it is also part of the impetus behind the Air Force's Roadmap to Recapture Acquisition Excellence. The tanker contract could be an opportunity for the redemption of the Air Force's acquisition system to demonstrate that they have improved their management and can do this program right.

But what is also interesting about the oversight dispute is how this isn't only a debate over who will be ultimately responsible for the program, but that it will also determine how much this program will be impacted by the new Weapons Acquisition Reform Act of 2009. One of the major revisions to the Senate's initial version of the bill in the Senate Armed Service committee's mark-up was changing language that would require the newly established Director of Independent Cost Assessment to conduct independent cost assessments for all major defense acquisition programs (MDAPs) to only those programs where the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT &L) is the Milestone Decision Authority (MDA). As Travis Sharp at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation pointed out in his analysis, this language was changed because DoD argued that giving the Director this large of a purview would discourage the services from improving their own cost estimate competencies.

But as a result of this change in mark up, if DoD chooses to give the Air Force management of the tanker program, there will be no mandatory role for the new Director of Independent Cost Assessment to provide oversight and implement policies and procedures to make sure that the cost estimation process is reliable and objective. One can't help but wonder how much DoD had the tanker program in mind when requesting this change to the legislation. As we have repeatedly said, the real test of the new legislation will be in its implementation, and DoD's decision over who manages the tanker program may serve as an important indicator as to how committed they are to improving financial management in their major acquisition programs.

-- Mandy Smithberger

Comments

[KSBR skeptical]

Why on earth should the warfighter/customers, OSD, and the American taxpayers trust the Air Force to manage this? The AF needs training wheels for a good long time. We need a complete clean-out of the wastrel, dithering generals and colonels (when it comes to acq, not their expertise as warfighters) and somnambulent careerists in program exec offices and contracting and legal who combined their talents to give us 2.5 disasters since the sorry tanker saga began. Let the AF uniformed and civilian people act as interns or trainees, and certainly as the source, if not writers, of requirements. But don't let them grab the yoke or stick of acq strategy or execution and certainly not analysis of bids. The GAO indictments of their performance--from bad arithmetic to unbalanced communications with offerors to shifting requirements in a suspicious and incompetent way--still have meaning and sting. Rebuilding AF procurement is a great idea. But this
procurement is too important to the Air Force to let the Air Force run it.