Air Force Warns
Boeing’s New CEO That It’s Not Happy Either
By
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General cites troubled tanker as CEO copes with Max airliner
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‘We also rely on a relationship of trust,’ he wrote to new CEO
An KC-46
tanker at the International Paris Air Show on June 17, 2019.
Photographer:
Per Gram
The Air
Force’s top military officer has sent Boeing Co.’s new CEO a blunt reminder
that the ill-fated 737 Max passenger jet isn’t the only troubled project he has
to rescue.
There’s also the company’s failure to provide a
combat-ready refueling tanker, nine years after Boeing won a competition for
the $44 billion project.
“We require your
attention and improved focus on the KC-46” tanker, General David Goldfein, the
Air Force chief of staff, warned in a letter four days before Dave Calhoun took
over as chief executive officer of the company. “The Air Force continues to accept
deliveries of a tanker incapable of performing its primary operational
mission.”
Calhoun has been entrusted with turning around a
company that is reeling from a pair of
crashes of the Max that killed 346 people and resulted
in the grounding of its best selling jet, sent its stock into
a swoon and raised questions about its commitment to safety one of your largest military customers, we also rely on a relationship of
trust and confidence in not only Boeing’s products” but also the long-term
sustainment effort needed for equipment that “our warfighters require,”
Goldfein said in the Jan. 9 letter made available to Bloomberg News.
Calhoun is leading a once-proud company whose
reputation for engineering prowess is now in tatters. On top of the grounding
of its best-selling plane, Boeing has suffered delays to its 777X jetliner and
an embarrassing mishap that caused its new space capsule to
miss a rendezvous with the International Space Station.
The letter got Calhoun’s attention: He met with Goldfein on Wednesday, according to a Boeing official familiar with the issue. The same day at the White House signing ceremony for the initial trade agreement with China, President Donald Trump singled out Calhoun, quipping that “he’s got a very easy company to run. He just took over Boeing.” The president added, “Let me tell you, it’s not your fault, you just got there.”
Larry Chambers, a
spokesman for Chicago-based Boeing, declined to comment on the meeting with
Goldfein or the letter. “Boeing is fully committed to addressing the Air Force
concerns with the KC-46 program and devoting resources required to make the
KC-46 fully mission capable,” he said.
Brigadier General
Ed Thomas, a spokesman for Goldfein, said “at this point the chief intends for
any communications with our industry partners to be between himself and them.”
Multiple Cameras
In the letter,
Goldfein expressed concern about the tanker’s crucial “Remote Vision System”
and “additional unmet requirements.” The plane has multiple cameras used by an
airman sitting at a console behind the cockpit to guide a 59-foot-long extended
boom to connect with a plane needing fuel and then to monitor the procedure.
Shadows or the glare
of the sun can hamper the cameras’ view on occasion, possibly resulting in
scraping the plane being refueled or difficulty in performing the operation,
according to the Air Force. Boeing officials have said they’ve deployed a
software solution expected to overcome the main hurdle.
Despite agreement
on a plan to repair the Remote Vision System, Goldfein said in the letter, “to
date, progress has been unsatisfactory. More than a year has elapsed and Boeing
has yet to provide” a design “that instills confidence in the way forward.”
“None of the
timelines” in the agreement “has been met,” he said, “and Boeing’s latest
proposal slips delivery of the final fix to the warfighter by over two years,”
which he called unacceptable.
Thirty Tankers
The Air Force has taken delivery of 30 tankers to
start aircrew and logistics training even as Boeing continues to work on fixes.
The service last year started to withhold a percentage of final payment per
aircraft that’s now at about $800 million,
according to Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek.
“If we elect to
continue accepting aircraft deliveries at the current rate” the service will
possess 70 “partially mission-capable” tankers by next year, Goldfein wrote.
The tanker also
has started combat testing conducted by Pentagon evaluators and so far “over
500 deficiencies have been tracked to date and we’ve only just begun” that
evaluation, Goldfein wrote. A Boeing official said none of the deficiencies are
of the most serious category.
Goldfein told Calhoun he expects lawmakers to question
during fiscal 2021 budget hearings why the Air Force continues to take delivery
of an aircraft “not meeting multiple key performance parameters and a host of other
requirements.”
Without a change
in course, Goldfein wrote, “we will not be able to answer positively and we
will have to acknowledge our serious concerns in two areas -- trust and
safety.”
— With assistance by Alan Levin
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