There is no question that the Boeing plane is better for the taxpayers and the Air Force. The Boeing plane is more manueverable. It will not require the building of bigger hangars and runways. The fuel efficiency of the Boeing plane is superior at a time when fuel prices are going through the roof. The tanker pilots I know want the Boeing plane to be chosen!!

Two potential reasons behind the Air Force's possible attempt to circumvent established contracting procedures come immediately to mind. One is a lofty political promise made to the European Union by our national leaders, a promise that -- of course -- is too complicated for common taxpayers to understand. The other lies in a possible web of interpersonal relationships at the USAF's highest levels, relationships similar to those behind a $50 million contract to produce a jumbotron audiovisual presentation for the Air Force Thunderbirds.

It is getting increasingly difficult to get bidders on government contracts, and as a consequence the effectiveness of competition in getting the best possible deal for the procurement dollar is waning.

But even so, it is ultimately self defeating when you modify an RFP for no other reason than making a noncompetitive offering competitive. Not only do you procure something that does not correspond to the validated need, but you discourage future bidders when your source selection criteria are totally contrary to your RFP guidelines, as clearly happened in this case. And when you collude with one bidder to the disadvantage of another, or do not hold one bidder to the letter of the mandatory items in the RFP, as was done in this pathetic abortion of a source selection process, you imperil not just this procurement, but all future procurements.

I'm sorry, but it's been that way forever. If you don't have time to do it right, where on earth are you going to find the time to do it over?

This thing needs to be restarted from square one. The individuals who were involved should be disqualified from future procurement programs. Of even greater concern were the blithe reassurances given by senior Air Force leadership early on in this dispute. Their statement about the EADS deal being "substantially more advantageous economically" comes to mind. Given the size of the program, the apparent economic advantage of the EADS offering was trivial, and even that small advantage was totally the result of MULTIPLE ARITHMETIC ERRORS that the Air Force admitted to when the GAO questioned them. In fact, the Boeing offering was economically superior (although again, only at the margin).

Either the senior Air Force personnel involved were duped by their own people (which doesn't speak well for their stewardship of a $40 billion lead-in to a $100 billion procurement program) or they were coconspirators in one of the more egregious violations of accepted procurement practices in recent years (which would in fact be worse than mere incompetence).

Clearly, a start has been made to the restoration of USAF credibility by the firing of the USAF Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Air Force, but this should only be the start. The Air Force needs to do some housecleaning of their own. Everybody involved in this travesty should be questioned under oath about what they knew and when they knew it. Then they should have to explain just why they thought that this was in accordance with procurement law. As a former USAF procurement officer, I can tell you that this is a more scathing GAO report than I saw in over twenty years. This wasn't merely the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Laws were broken here.

I agree with the statement of George H. Laws were broken here. And they should be held accountable. This has become the norm and this is corruption at its finest level. The promises to the European Union by our so called "leaders" isn't that complicated that the "common taxpayers wouldn't understand. It's because they have kept the average taxpayer who is struggling to keep his head a float, too busy to get involved with what the Air Force is doing or what Congress is doing for that matter, until after they have voted on it. He doesn't care for the most part until it affects him directly, such as losing his job at Boeing because they have to cut back on employees. Then and only then will he be interested enough to care. So our high mucky muck officials are doing the same thing they have always done, "sell out to the group who lines their palms with the most seaweed". The bids should have to start over, but be looked at by an independent company.

You ask me to complete a survey and I get this.

Liberal democrats were better in the ol' days........

FREE MARKET FORCES

I have worked as a low level government procurement official and can assure anyone that is interested that there can be and are pressures exerted from superiors for the selection of specific contractors. As a member of the contract evaluation team, I have been pressured by superiors to alter my evaluation of the proposal to skew it toward the preferred contractor. Given the size of the air force contract, there must have been extraordinary pressures exerted. The evaluation team, assuming there was one, has my sympathy.