Supposedly in a meeting between DoD and Air Force officials with members of the Alabama Congressional delegation it came out that the U.S.A.F. will adjust the KC-X RFP to keep Northrop Grumman (NOC) and EADS (EADS.P) in the competition. This of course is a report by Senator Sessions (R-AL) from the meeting. There is no official response as to how the U.S. officials will react to Northrop’s threatened non-participation.

It is in the best interest of the U.S. Government to have two bidders for this program and this may be a necessary step to assure that.

It has been reported that last week Boeing (BA), Northrop Grumman (NOC) and EADS (EADS.P) had a series of meetings with the Air Force to discuss the draft KC-X RFP and the final one. After these meetings EADS and Northrop made clear that their threat not to submit a bid without changes to the RFP language was not an idle negotiation ploy as some have said. The companies believe that the current RFP is biased towards the smaller, cheaper Boeing 767 rather then the larger Airbus 330.

The discussions also indicate that the final RFP will come out before the end of January. Without two bidders it will be hard for the Air Force to proceed so they need a proposal from Northrop and EADS. At the same time they must have an RFP that will hopefully be protest proof and get the needed capability quickly.

The Boeing plant located in Wichita has a long and distinguished history of supporting that company’s military programs. It is safe to assume that if Boeing does win the KC-X contract that some of the work will be done there. That means that Kansas’ leaders are very interested in Boeing winning the deal. In the spirit of this it was reported that the Kansas Governor, Mark Parkinson, recently met with the Air Force Secretary. The former Governor of the state, Kathleen Sebelius, is now a cabinet secretary in the Obama Administration which certainly allows for some low key lobbying.

With the continued economic problems facing the country good manufacturing jobs are hard to come by and this means that mayors, governors and legislators will all be doing their part to support the different bidders in this process.