Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/air-force-tanker-contract-stirs-controversy Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript An Air Force decision to award Northrop Grumman and its European partners a contract to build $40 billion worth of new aircraft is drawing criticism from U.S. producer Boeing as well as members of Congress. A Washington state congressman and a defense expert discuss the dispute. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: Trouble over the Air Force decision to buy a new airplane. Ray Suarez has our story. RAY SUAREZ: This is the tanker that Northrop Grumman and its European partners hope to make for the U.S. Air Force. The KC-45 is the next-generation of an existing military tanker, Grumman's KC-30.The Air Force announced Friday it plans to buy 179 of them. They'll cost at least $40 billion.GEN. DUNCAN MCNABB, Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force: The KC-45, built by Northrop Grumman, will provide our nation and partners the critical ability to reach across the globe and project our combat capability or our humanitarian friendship rapidly and effectively. RAY SUAREZ: The Air Force picked the Northrop Grumman consortium, including the European giant EADS, over the U.S. manufacturer Boeing.General Arthur Lichte is commander of the U.S. Air Mobility Command. GEN. ARTHUR LICHTE, U.S. Air Force: I can sum it up in one word: more. More passengers, more cargo, more fuel to offload, more patients that we can carry, more availability, more flexibility, and more dependability.And so, from my aspect, the team did tremendous work, and now we will take that and put it into the fight. RAY SUAREZ: In Washington state, where the Boeing tanker would have been built, the announcement drew heated response from workers and their union.LARRY BROWN, Political Director, Local 751: There's a good chance that this program is going to be turned around and be built here at Boeing in America by American workers, as it rightly should be. TOM WROBLEWSKI, IAM District President: This is an unjustified gamble which puts our Armed Services at risk. American taxpayers should be outraged because they deserve better. Are you outraged? GROUP: Yes! NORTHROP GRUMMAN PROMOTION NARRATOR: Mobile, Alabama, will be the home to the KC-30's new assembly and production centers… RAY SUAREZ: Northrop Grumman says this contract will bring jobs to the U.S. Sixty percent of the labor and parts building will happen here. NORTHROP GRUMMAN PROMOTION NARRATOR: … and will also employ an additional 20,000 Americans. RAY SUAREZ: Now the Pentagon's purchase is coming under sharp congressional attack because it would give thousands of jobs to EADS and its subsidiary, Airbus.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), Speaker of the House: … if we continue to outsource these contracts, we are exporting jobs out of our country. I mean, we will not have — let me say it another way — we will not have the industrial and the technological base necessary to ensure our national security because it will fade, it will diminish, it is not strengthened. RAY SUAREZ: The Air Force insists it made the right decision. JOURNALIST: And the foreign element? Do you think that you're going to get some blowback from Capitol Hill about this? GEN. ARTHUR LICHTE: This is an American tanker. It's flown by American airmen. It has a big American flag on the tail. And every day it will be out there saving American lives. RAY SUAREZ: Air Force officials also said jobs were not a factor in awarding the contract.