NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Keeping the threat of a bid protest in his back pocket, a Boeing Co. executive said here Tuesday the U.S. Air Force can save time and money building the next generation of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles by scrapping a competition in which only Northrop Grumman is competing.
“What I am suggesting is the Air Force pull us in a room together and say, you got 30 days to go figure out what is the right integrated baseline for the country to move forward with,” Frank McCall, Boeing director of strategic deterrence systems and Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program manager, told reporters on the sidelines of the Air Force Association’s 2019 Air, Space & Cyber conference. “Starting now. Not starting a year from now after a ‘competition.’”
Employing the international gesture for irony, McCall used his hands to make air quotes when he said competition, declaring as he did: “air quotes.”
“Today there’s no competitive pressure on Northrop Grumman,” McCall said. “So the idea that competition is going to give us the best price is not viable in the current state.”
Boeing in July dropped out of the competition to build GBSD. One of only two entities permitted to bid at all — due to its work in the GBSD design competition against Northrop that began in 2017 — Boeing said its rival has an insurmountable advantage under the Air Force’s current request for proposals. That is because the Falls Church, Va.-based company owns its own business for production of the solid-rocket motors that would boost the missile: the former Orbital ATK, which Northrop bought in June 2018.
Treading carefully after Senate Armed Services Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said this summer he wanted no delay in replacing aging Boeing-built Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) by 2030, McCall said a shotgun marriage on the potentially $25 billion GBSD engineering and development manufacturing contract would make the program better, faster, and cheaper than what Northrop and its who’s-who team of defense industry teammates could offer.
Yet McCall would not rule out a bid protest, should the Air Force stand by its current GBSD solicitation and continue its policy of noninterference with industry.
