Hacker News Reader

Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

> The government treats them with kid gloves because of item #1; who else would the USAF order tankers, AWACS and other logistical aircraft from?

The military tried to order tankers from a different manufacturer, but Boeing owned enough senators to put the kibosh on that and make them re-run the competition.

View on HN

Not just senators, they also had a mole in the tender process passing secrets and making decisions that Boeing then "hired" on an inflated salary. They were later convicted for fraud for their part and Boeing was fined but they still got to keep the contract.

Is this in reference to the Lockheed Martin/Airbus tender?

Northrop Grumman/Airbus.

I feel like any tender that doesn't feature an aircraft designed and made by an American company (preferably in the US) is going to fail on that quality alone.

Generally speaking, if you can, you should source items vital to your national defense/foreign policy from domestic sources. The problem emerges when there's only one domestic source and it exists for the sole purpose of delivering value to shareholders by any means necessary, with no real accountability.

I assume that airbus and Northrop Grumman teamed for those reasons. Airbus also has a major presence in Alabama if I'm not mistaken. BAE is based in London but has a lot of US defense contracts as well.

The ship of shareholder value has sailed a long time ago and won't be coming back any time soon.

Airbus has factories in the US and employs a lot of Americans.

Having factories and employing Americans != being American.

Everything the US military uses is manufactured in the United States, but many things are designed by foreign firms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com