Bidding for $40 billion Air Force tanker contract reopened

The Wall Street Journal (7/10, B1, Cole) reports on the front-page of its Marketplace section, "The Pentagon gave Boeing Co. a chance to wrest from rival Northrop Grumman Corp. a $40 billion contract to supply aerial refueling tankers to the Air Force, but both companies will have to hustle to meet the year-end deadline to pick a new winner." Defense Secretary Robert Gates Wednesday announced "that he would reopen the competition for the disputed tanker project with a new fast-track bidding process." In addition to "an ambitious timetable," the new procurement process will be "personally overseen" by "the Defense Department's top acquisitions official, Undersecretary John Young." The Journal characterizes this as "an unusual twist that underscores the Pentagon's lack of confidence in the Air Force's procurement officials."

According to the Washington Post (7/10, D1, Hedgpeth), "the Pentagon said it will revise parts of its request for proposals and address the GAO's criticism of how the Air Force evaluated the bids. The revised request will be issued later this month or in early August."

On the front of its Business Day section, the New York Times (7/10, C1, Wayne) calls Gates' announcement "another blow to the Air Force, whose ability to manage huge weapons-buying programs has been questioned." Jeffries & Company analyst Howard Rubel said that the reopened competition means that both Boeing and Northrop "will have an equal opportunity to abuse each other for a while longer.'"

The Los Angeles Times (7/10, Spiegel), the Financial Times (7/10, Pfeifer, Weitzman), USA Today (7/10, Iwata), The Chicago Tribune (7/10, Johnsson), the BBC (7/9), the Politico (7/9, DiMascio), Forbes (7/9, LaMotta), the AP (7/10, Catchpole), Congressional Quarterly (7/10, Rogin, Donnelly), Bloomberg (7/10, Ratnam, Lococo), BusinessWeek (7/10, Salzman), the U.K.'s Guardian (7/10, Milner), the Washington Business Journal (7/10), Florida's St. Petersburg Times (7/10, Levesque), the Orlando Sentinel (7/9, Burnett), and Kansas's Wichita Eagle (7/10, McMillin) also report the story. The Seattle Times (7/10) runs an assortment of reactions to the decision from federal lawmakers.