Air Force officials continuing source selection for new tanker

AFNS ^ | 12/1/2010 | AFNS

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Air Force officials have said the KC-X source selection process will continue despite a mistake in November, where a limited amount of identical source selection information was provided to both KC-X offerors concerning their competitor's offering.

Air Force officials are ensuring a level playing field with regards to the information actually accessed by one of the offerors. The information concerned was limited to a single page of non-proprietary data on a CD that did not include any offeror-proposed prices.

"This clerical error does not affect our source selection schedule," said Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford, the military deputy from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition. "There are unrelated aspects of the source selection that will take slightly longer than originally anticipated, which push the award to early in 2011."

Air Force officials have analyzed the information that was actually accessed by one of the offerors and have taken steps to ensure that both competitors have equal access to this information.

Service acquisition officials have also undertaken a detailed review to determine how this error occurred, and are taking steps to prevent it from happening again.

Both offerors recognized the error and contacted the Air Force Contracting Office responsible for this acquisition program.

The KC-X remains the Air Force's top acquisition priority, officials said.

The aircraft will be capable of operating day and night, in adverse weather conditions and hostile environments over vast distances to enable rapid, global deployment, employment, sustainment and redeployment of U.S., allied and coalition forces.

[OldDeckHand]

This may be the longest procurement search in the history of procurement searches.

At this rate, the F-22s are going to be in and out of service before the KC-135s get retired.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Ping

[battlecry]

It is already tainted by the “inadvertent” release of proprietary information. I wouldn’t be surprised if both teams are already working on the protests.

[CharlesWayneCT]

This tanker thing is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with government. Down to the daily advertisements I hear from Boeing on the radio, selling me about how much better their plane is. Apparently, they won’t win by being better, they think they win by convincing me to lobby my congressman to force the military to circumvent the normal procurement process and just pick Boeing.

Oddly, in the commercial they claim the EADs plane is more expensive than theirs — but they don’t have access to the bid data, so how could they possibly KNOW that? In fact, how could they really know anything about this bid?

[Yo-Yo]

At this rate, the F-22s are going to be in and out of service before the KC-135s get retired.

This KC-X contract was never meant to retire all of the KC-135s.

[NeverForgetBataan]

“Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford, the military deputy from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition”
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Whoever is responsible for this freaking KC-X mess needs to be demoted to the clerk in charge of copying and collating for the first assistant to the secretary of the general manager of the department that oversees hiring clerks, secretaries, buyers and managers at the Air Force office of Procurement for paperclips, pens, pencils, aaaaaaaaaaand.............post-it-pads.