The chief of the US Air Force on Tuesday said two officials had been removed from a refuelling tanker program after the wrong documents were sent out to aerospace rivals bidding on the huge contract. "Clearly this was a disappointment, a profound disappointment," General Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff, said of the embarrassing episode.
He said two individuals working on the program have been "removed" and will be held responsible for the document mix-up, but he said the competition had not been undermined and would go ahead as planned. The Air Force sent the wrong letters this month to Boeing and EADS, which are vying for the lucrative contract to build a new fleet of refuelling tanker planes.
The information related to "an efficiency analysis" of the aircraft proposed by Boeing and EADS, which looked at how many tankers would be required to carry out a particular air refuelling scenario, he said. But the general insisted no pricing or proprietary information was revealed in the "inadvertent disclosure."
"We have gone through an internal and independent review of what occurred. As a result, over the last 24 hours or so, we have endeavoured to ensure we have a level playing field between the two offerers," Schwartz told reporters. He also said the mix-up was not the reason behind a delay in a final decision for the 35-billion-dollar contest. A final award had been scheduled in November or December but is now promised for early next year. The document foul-up is the latest setback for the politically-charged contest for the tanker, which has been marked by scandal and intense lobbying in Congress.
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