Half Of The Tanker Pie?

Tanker Brookley Field There's more talk about splitting the Air Force tanker contract. It will reportedly bring 96000 jobs to the country.

by Tiffany Craig

Published: Mon, November 16, 2009 - 6:09 pm CST Last Updated: Thu, November 19, 2009 - 5:28 pm CST

MOBILE, Alabama - If the tanker contract isn't split, Congressman Artur Davis says there will be at least two more years of fighting and no tanker building.

Davis brought that message to Mobile in hopes of getting local support for a dual buy of the new fleet of refuelers. As it stands right now, Northrop Grumman and EADS are competing against Boeing for the entire 40 billion dollar deal.

There's some support for a split deal- but its not from the Department of Defense. Defense Secretary Robert Gates once said that he would split the deal "over my dead body."

Davis showed up in Alabama on Monday along with other leaders to push the idea. Davis says a dual buy would be a win-win. "I'm gonna be advocating that we make a major effort to get a dual award. So we can stop the politics. Stop the litigation. Stop the battles over the RFP (Request For Proposals) and let's start building tankers in Mobile. 96,000 jobs in this country would be created if we had a dual award."

Northrop won the bid last year and were about to break ground at Brookley Field. Then, Boeing protested and the whole contest was called off. A new winner is expected to be picked by next summer.

Northrop's new website is Best American Tanker.

Boeing's tanker website is United States Tanker.

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claycitymadness Says:

Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 7:05 pm

yah and two assembley lines and two sets of maintainers and two sets of tools. no, lets build one product and be done with it. oh i looked at the northrop site and coudlnt read it, it was in french

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framkly Says:

Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 4:38 pm

Mr Congressman Davis, How would you plan on doing this? Let boeing build the right wing and Northrop build the left. Sounds like a tipical Congress plan.

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