WASHINGTON — Questionable “competence” within U.S. Air Force procurement ranks helped turn a competition to build a fleet of next-generation nuclear ballistic missiles into a one-horse race, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said here Wednesday.
Proposals to build and deploy the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), silo-based missiles designed to replace the nuclear-tipped Minuteman III fleet starting in 2030, are due in a matter of weeks. Northrop Grumman will be the only bidder.
Boeing, which built every Minuteman missile the Air Force ever deployed, was Northrop’s sole competitor for the GBSD until July. The aerospace giant — a major constituent in Smith’s Seattle-area congressional district — publicly and acrimoniously withdrew from the bidding.
“Part of the reason that Boeing withdrew their bid is the Air Force inadvertently sent proprietary information to Northrop that was Boeing’s,” Smith told reporters at a round-table discussion on Capitol Hill.
“‘Oh, ooh, sorry did we send that letter to the wrong person?’” Smith asked rhetorically, apparently roleplaying the part of the Air Force. “And now we got a sole-sourced $100 billion contract.”
Smith has dinged the Air Force recently for its handling of proprietary GBSD data. In a late-October speech to the nuclear-disarmament-advocating Ploughshares Fund, Smith clucked his tongue over a “documented” mishandling of sensitive Boeing data during the GBSD competition.
The Wednesday event, however, was the first time the House Armed Services chair drew an explicit link between that apparent information fumble and Boeing’s decision to give up on priming the GBSD’s $25 billion engineering, manufacturing, and development (EMD) phase.
The Air Force plans to award the GBSD EMD contract in August.
Spokespersons for Boeing and the Air Force did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
In withdrawing from the competition, Boeing said it could not compete for the contract on price because Northrop owns its own solid-rocket motor business: the former Orbital ATK. the GBSD, like Minuteman, will be solid-fueled.
Boeing has lobbied the Air Force, unsuccessfully so far, to scrap the GBSD competition and force Boeing and Northrop down into a 30-day skunk-works to come up with a “national” GBSD team. Northrop, which in September unveiled a GBSD team that included Boeing rival Lockheed Martin, has also spurned the idea of a national team.
