Boeing unsuccessful in appeasing Shelby

Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems president Jim Albaugh on Friday sought to appease senior defense appropriator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) after the lawmaker had reacted harshly over comments made recently by Boeing representatives. 

{mosads}But Shelby will not have any of it, saying that Boeing’s response missed the point of a scathing letter he wrote earlier in the week. The back and forth typifies the cutthroat competition for the Air Force’s new midair refueling tanker.

On Oct. 3, Shelby sent a letter to Boeing CEO James McNerney, urging him to express disapproval of “offensive remarks” about Mobile, Ala., and its workforce made recently by some Boeing representatives.

“If comments made last week were in any way taken to be a lack of confidence in the workforce, it was not intended,” Albaugh said in response. Albaugh represented the company because McNerney is currently traveling overseas.

Boeing officials said last week at an Air Force Association conference that Mobile could be a risky site for building the aircraft.

Boeing’s rival for the contract, Northrop Grumman, plans to assemble and modify its KC-30 tankers in Mobile. Northrop partnered with EADS North America, a subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, which also owns Airbus. The Northrop team’s offering is based on an Airbus 330.

Boeing is offering the 767 aircraft, which is being built in Everett, Wash., its longtime production base. The plane also would be modified for military use in Wichita, Kan.

During a news conference last Monday, Mark McGraw, Boeing’s vice president of tanker programs, showed an aerial photo of Brookley Field Industrial Complex in Mobile alongside pictures of Boeing’s factory in Everett and its finishing center in Wichita. McGraw was quoted in news reports as saying, “KC-30 production is still fundamentally in Europe with a site down in Mobile that’s still empty.”

McGraw also was quoted as saying that Northrop Grumman and EADS are going to have people in Mobile working on an airplane that they have never dealt with. “I think that translates into higher risk,” he said.

The Mobile Press Register quoted another Boeing official, Gary Mears, as saying:

“You’ve got all these sections coming into Mobile with people who’ve never seen them before. It’s like being in the living room on Christmas morning, surrounded by boxes and you’re trying to put a tricycle together for the first time. It adds risk, and the Air Force is going to look at that.”

Shelby blasted those remarks.

“I consider your company’s comments to be both inappropriate and grossly inaccurate in their characterization of the dedicated people of Mobile and Alabama,” Shelby, a strong supporter of EADS and Northrop, wrote to McNerney on Oct.3.

While Albaugh praised the highly skilled Alabama workforce, he did not back down from the assertion that assembling the tanker at a new facility would be a high risk.

Shelby responded that the assertion that building the tanker in a new facility in Alabama is risky “has no foundation in fact and is unsupported by historical performance.”

“Perhaps Boeing’s time would be better spent delivering its two year-delayed tankers to Italy and Japan as opposed to inaccurately depicting the workforce in Mobile and focusing on the imagined shortcomings of its competitor,” Shelby said.