Northrop Grumman declares it will not submit KC-X bid unless RfP is changed

Northrop Grumman has told the US Department of Defense (DoD) that it will not submit a bid for the KC-X tanker programme unless the department's draft Request for Proposals (RfP) is changed.

In a 1 December letter to Dr Ashton Carter, the head of acquisitions at the Pentagon, Northrop Grumman President and Chief Operating Officer Wes Bush said he believed the defence department had no plans to issue a second draft RfP or to "substantially address" concerns previously laid out by Northrop Grumman.

"As a result, I must regrettably inform you that in the absence of a responsive set of changes in the final RfP, Northrop Grumman has determined that it cannot submit a bid to the department for the KC-X programme," he said.

EADS has said it stands by team partner Northrop Grumman's decision.

Bush added that the DoD has shown a "clear preference" for a smaller aircraft than Northrop Grumman's KC-45 offering - which is based on the Airbus A330 commercial aircraft - "with limited multirole capability", and that the "imposition" of this "places contractual and financial burdens on the company that we simply cannot accept".

Northrop Grumman/EADS is competing against Boeing to win the USD35 billion KC-X competition to build 179 new aerial refuelling tankers. The competition was re-launched in late September, following the successful protest by Boeing against the February 2008 decision to award the contract to the Northrop Grumman-led team.