KC-45 Protest: NPR asked McGraw Hard Questions?!

Color me surprised! (at NPR anyway)
In a National Proletariat Radio interview last Thursday, Mark McGraw, the (talkative-talking) head (for now)of Boeing's tanker effort, assaulted the integrity of AF acquisition officials again. This time he accused the Air Force contracting folks of manipulating its data for the purpose of giving the contract to Northrop Grumman. Surprisingly, the NPR interviewer (Steve Inskeep) didn't just lap up McGraw's patented line. Instead he was incredulous:

"The Air Force manipulated the cost data," McGraw said when asked what complaints he has about the Air Force's evaluation.

"What motivation would the Air Force have to falsify the intelligence, so to speak, about which plane was better," Inskeep asked.

"They artificially inflated our numbers," McGraw responded.

"When you say the Air Force manipulated, the implication of that word is they didn't just have a disagreement with you, they went out of their way to fake this. What motivation would they have to do that," Inskeep asked.

(Blah Blah Blah)

"What they do is called 'risk you up'," McGraw said. "If they don't accept your numbers they will add to it. What they did is they kept risking us up to make our numbers higher," McGraw said.

"Why would they do that?"

(McGraw Blah Blah Blah)

"I don't know," McGraw admitted. "We think we were not treated fairly."

(McGraw Blah Blah Blah)

"I'd like to know why you suspect that would happen," Inskeep asked. "Why would they be motivated to deliberately distort their findings?"

(McGraw Blah Blah Blah)

Some of interchange in the 'blah blah blah' is in some ways even more negative. McGraw trots out the 'commercial pricing rejection' issue again (Which I slapped around here). McGraw never really answers the question of "why" except to postulate that somebody on the Acquisition team 'became enamored' by the NG offer, or the AF was 'overly impressed' by the NG lower development costs.

Interesting. Boeing's complaint seems to always comes down to how they were graded. Remember how your kids used to think you 'were so unfair' and 'didn't understand' them? That's what McGraw sounds like to me. I didn't buy it from my kids either.

To listen to the entire interview (about 6 1/2 mins) click on this post's title or here: