America's New Tanker: Needed Now

One of the key arguments offered by supporters of Boeing's bid to supply the Air Force the next generation of aerial refueling tankers consisted of a protectionist attack on winning bidder Northrop Grumman due to the company's decision to engage Airbus parent company EADS as a key subcontractor. These often shrill attacks focused on a supposed threat embedded in the fact that EADS is a foreign supplier.>> The fact that Boeing's supporters will likely revive that argument when the competition resumes is why a report issued this week by respected aviation industry analyst Scott Hamilton is particularly noteworthy. He begins his analysis by highlighting a new Airbus venture in China but says "Before the Airbus bashers wind up, Boeing is every bit as involved in this trend." He points to Boeing's "contracts with the Japanese" which are already "leading the way for this nation (Japan) to build new commercial airliners.">> Further, he highlights what we can only describe as Boeing hypocrisy when he points out that Japan builds the fuselage for the Boeing 767, parenthetically adding that this is "something Boeing acknowledged but tried to downplay during the US KC-X tanker competition." In other words, per the Boeing defenders, it is wrong and somehow unpatriotic for Northrop Grumman to get its fuselage from Europe, but the same standard should not apply to Boeing, which gets fuselages from Japan.>> And, of course, there is Boeing's longstanding quest to send as many American jobs to foreign shores as possible. Hamilton points again to the fact that "Boeing has aggressively outsourced production and engineering jobs," and forced American workers to train the new foreign employees.