Air Force delays disputed aircraft contract by 15 months

But after Hawker Beechcraft sued in the U.S. Court of
Federal Claims, the Air Force launched an investigation and cancelled the award to Embraer and Sierra Nevada
in February, citing problems with its internal documentation.

The Air Force said its final amended Request for Proposal (RFP)
will be released on April 30, allowing the companies to rebid, and the Air
Force expects to choose a recipient in early 2013.

The planes will then be delivered to Afghanistan in the
third quarter of 2014, about 15 months later than expected.

The contract dispute has created some tension between Brazil
and the United States, and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff discussed
the issue with President Obama during a White House visit on Monday.

The Kansas congressional delegation has pushed for a new
competition for the contract, making an argument that the American company
should not have been disqualified.

Embraer President and CEO Frederico Curado, who was in
Washington this week, told reporters Tuesday that the foreign allegations were
disingenuous, because Embraer and Sierra Nevada’s planes would be made in
Florida.

He also said that he had to trust that the process for
restarting the competition was not a political one.

The rival companies are at odds over the specifications of
the contract: Curado said that his company’s bid would be selected again if the
specifications are unchanged, while Hawker Beechcraft Chairman Bill Boisture
said that one of the biggest issues with the initial contract was how the
specifications were written.

“We believe strongly that the specifications should change,”
Boisture told The Hill.

The Air Force has not explained what was wrong with its
documentation that caused it to cancel the contract. The Air Force said Friday
that releasing information from its investigation into the contract dispute “would
compromise the integrity of the on-going source selection process due to the
source selection information in the report.”

The Air Force said that the investigation’s findings “were considered
in the decision to amend the current RFP.” 

“The changes to the RFP will more clearly define the
evaluation criteria and tighten the decision-making process,” the Air Force
release said. “A new source selection team was appointed to evaluate the new
proposals.”