Trimble Questions New Group Lobbying For KC-X Split Buy

UPDATE: Stephen Trimble has said the following in response to this post: I’m a headline! (Although I wasn’t really trying to “denounce” anybody — just raising questions.). So, I’ve changed “Denounce” to “Question” in both the title and the first sentence.

At Flight Global, Stephen Trimble has written a blog post questioning the formation of a new group that is lobbying for a split tanker buy:

Just when you might think the “split buy” idea for KC-X is dead and buried, it seems to be back today.

A self-described non-partisan coalition called American Jobs Now! has launched a well-funded push on Capitol Hill called “Build Them Both”. This is not a fly-by-night lobby group.  Carrie Giddens, formerly communications director for the Iowa Democratic Party during the 2008 presidential election, is the newly-hired organizer. The group also published full-page advertisements in Politico (which published today) and tomorrow in The Hill newspaper. The ad says a split buy “will speed the delivery”, “retire an outdated fleet” and “will save taxpayers” money. Above all, the split buy will create “100,000 new US jobs”.

Let’s put our questions about those facts aside, just for the moment. (Not to get nit-picky, but surely a single project to build, at most, 25-30 aircraft a year will not consume one-seventh of the US aerospace workforce. Besides – wink, wink – those 100,000 aerospace workers are already busy building the last 40 F-22s.)

The big question, of course, is which side is this group on?

Trimble spends the rest of this column trying to get a clear answer to this question. If you are interested, go to Flight Global to read the rest.