Medal of Honor recipient protests aircraft decision

From a news release that came out a few minutes ago:

Hershel "Woody" Williams, West Virginia's only living Medal of Honor recipient, has expressed his disappointment at the Defense Department's decision today to choose a European company instead of the Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) for a contract to build the next generation of air tankers.

... The Pentagon announced today that it has chosen a bid from Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, which is based in France, instead of the KC-767 Advanced Tanker from Boeing, which is based in Chicago. A contract with Boeing would have supported more than 44,000 U.S. jobs with 300 suppliers in more than 40 states.

The news release had a contact name and phone number, but no indication of who sent it out.

I knew there was something coming on this, because a p.r. firm had supplied me with a long op-ed piece urging the Defense Department to go with Boeing. I declined to run it on the editorial page because of the length and because at the time we had a backlog of other material of more local interest.

Here is an excerpt from a story today on this topic by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Los Angeles-based Northrop and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., the parent of Airbus, are offering an Airbus A330 jet that would be modified into a tanker at a factory to be built in Mobile, Ala. EADS recently announced that it would also assemble A330 commercial freighters in Mobile if it won the tanker competition. That would boost the company's U.S. footprint, help it with the Airbus bottom line and gain the European defense giant more powerful friends in Congress.

Although Boeing was considered the heavy favorite, Northrop and its supporters, especially politicians in Alabama, argued that the bigger Airbus plane would make a superior tanker to the 767 offered by Boeing.

I don't have enough knowledge of any of this to offer a comment one way or the other.

I do like the line about "gain the European defense giant more powerful friends in Congress." It makes you wonder what's really going on. Maybe we'll know more over the weekend as the people who are paid to watch out for these things figure it all out.