A Mission to Rebuild Reputations

The Air Force said it was trying to make the tanker competition a model for acquisitions by having more back and forth between the service and each bidding team, so they clearly understand what the Air Force sought and the degree to which their proposals met the requirements.

Ken Miller, a former top Navy official hired by the secretary of the Air Force two years ago to improve the transparency of its acquisition process, said he's had more than 100 meetings in the past year with congressional leaders to update them on the process. A winner was expected to be chosen in October, but the Air Force postponed the decision until early this year.

"We've had a lot of people interested in the tanker," Miller said. "It's been a perception issue to deal with. We've been much more cautious and deliberate in everything we do."

The Air Force has had a bumpier road finding a new search-and-rescue helicopter. Its acquisition process has come under scrutiny at three congressional hearings.

It awarded the contract, known as CSAR-X, to Boeing in November 2006. But two competitors -- Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky, a unit of United Technologies -- filed two rounds of protests with the Government Accountability Office, alleging in one that the Air Force improperly evaluated the costs of maintaining the helicopters. The GAO sustained the protests both times -- a rarity, experts say -- and in October the Air Force asked the teams for new bids on the deal. A winner is expected to be chosen this summer.

Sue C. Payton, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, said the Air Force "could have done better" in the helicopter acquisition by having more debriefings earlier in the process to explain to bidders where they stood "relative to their cost and relative to their strengths and weaknesses." In current competitions, she said, "we will make sure that we're communicating exactly why someone loses, so they don't ever get up and walk away from a table and not know why there weren't selected as the winner."

Under Close Scrutiny

Competitors and analysts have sharply criticized the Air Force for making what they say are changes in the requirements to favor Boeing, a claim the Air Force denies. The Project on Government Oversight, a government watchdog group, said that by changing a requirement that the helicopter be judged partly on the basis of how quickly it could be ready to go on a mission, the Air Force "weakened one of the most important requirements" of the contract "to allow Boeing to compete."

Miller, who is special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force for acquisition governance and transparency, said no changes have been made to the Air Force's requirements on the helicopter to benefit Boeing.

Observers say the Air Force is trying to avoid any actions that would prompt protests on both deals. "They know their relationship with Boeing is hypersensitive," said Phil Finnegan, a defense analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax. "The Air Force is going to do everything to make sure it doesn't look like anything is tilted in the least toward Boeing."

Boeing says it has made improvements to strengthen the ethics and integrity in its policies and procedures. It combined three divisions to create the Office of Internal Governance, which employs 600 people and helps ensure that all employees get ethics training and that deals are executed fairly.

The Air Force shifted its selection process from one person with virtually absolute power, as Druyun had, to decisions made by the top acquisition official who gets input from advisers.

"We want to be more transparent, have more communication, more checks and balances to improve our process and credibility," Miller said.