Air Force criteria for judging KC-45A bids

By Purchasing Staff -- Purchasing, 3/17/2008 2:46:00 PM

The five major factors used in evaluation of the formal bids were: mission capability, proposal risk, past performance, cost/price and integrated fleet aerial fueling rating. The Air Force said that Northrup scored strongly in four of the five evaluation areas, including “a great advantage in cost/price.”

The Air Force KC-45A tanker contract is the first phase of a replacement program for aircraft dating back to the 1950s (about 700 aircraft). They were built chiefly by Boeing. The cost for the first 179 replacement planes (not including maintenance and support costs) is estimated by the Air Force at $35 billion. The current contract for the first 64 has a price tag of $12.1 billion.

The process used by the Air Force to acquire the first lot of 64 tankers essentially involves five major stages:

1. A Request for Information (RFI) issued in April 2006 soliciting (a) a concept for an aircraft and (b) a concept for refueling capabilities of the aircraft
2. Issuance to the RFI respondents of a formal solicitation for building the first 64 of the planned 179 tanker aircraft.
3. Contract award (February 29, 2008)
4. Delivery of 4 System Development aircraft
5. Order for 64 production aircraft.

For procuring large, complex weapons systems the Department of Defense has increasingly favored a performance-based acquisition. In layman’s terms, this means telling bidders what the military requires the weapon to do (e.g., strike a target at 50 miles etc.) rather than specifying how it should be built, of what materials and strength.

The purpose of issuing an RFI is not to obtain formal proposals but rather to determine (a) who is interested and can credibly produce the weapons system and (b) to solicit industry views on how the performance requirements might be modified to better serve the government’s needs.

For a general description of how the Air Force buys, click here.