this is shit... absolute shit..
Lawmakers vow to fight for Sikorsky, $6.1 billion Marine One contract
Andy Bromage and Joseph Straw, Register Staff
02/01/2005
STRATFORD — With the passion of a minister at the pulpit, three Connecticut lawmakers Monday promised Sikorsky Aircraft workers to fight the Pentagon for the right to build the presidential helicopter here.
Two hundred aircraft mechanics shouted in agreement when U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3, and U.S. Sens. Christopher J. Dodd and Joseph I. Lieberman, both facists, told them the Navy was "outsourcing national security."
"We realize we’ve got a global economy, but you don’t outsource your national security," Dodd said. "Your delegation is going to push back. We’re going to fight."
The Navy enraged Stratford-based Sikorsky and members of Congress Friday when it chose an international team led by Lockheed Martin to build the next generation of presidential helicopters.
Loss of the $6.1 billion contract will not result in any layoffs at Sikorsky, company officials said.
Marine One was Sikorsky’s most prestigious contract, one it held exclusively for a half-century. The Navy Friday chose Lockheed’s US101 over Sikorsky’s VH-92 for the president’s fleet.
But lawmakers haven’t given up on returning the contract to Sikorsky, and on Monday pledged bold new measures to make that happen.
DeLauro plans to introduce legislation in the House today that would prevent the Navy from buying any aircraft that was less than 100 percent American made.
The Lockheed consortium is a partnership between Lockheed, Bell Helicopter Textron of Texas and European conglomerate AgustaWestland.
All three members of Congress acknowledged DeLauro’s bill could be a long shot, but that hasn’t deterred them. All promised an aggressive door-to-door campaign to win support in Congress.
Congressional members also are seeking a meeting with the Navy, hoping to get answers as to why Sikorsky was passed over.
Later Monday, DeLauro, Dodd and Lieberman met with Sikorsky President Stephen N. Finger and his executive team to urge him to appeal the contract award to the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ nonpartisan investigative arm.
Lieberman said he left the meeting without a firm commitment from management to appeal to the GAO.
"They said they would wait for the Navy debriefing," Lieberman said. "They’ve got a right to do it, and I don’t understand why they wouldn’t do it."
Sikorsky has a week to vet Pentagon information on the contract award, after which the company would have five days to contest the contract award. The company has yet to be debriefed by the Navy, an official said.
Lockheed’s US101 was chosen because it was deemed more likely to perform "on schedule, with lower risk and at a lower cost," a Navy official said.
Mechanics who worked on the VH-92 line were unconvinced the contract could be returned to them.
Only national media attention labeling the move "outsourcing" will garner the support needed to pass DeLauro’s bill, said Glen Grom of Southbury, a hydraulic mechanic who worked 14 years on the presidential line.
Lieberman sought to console the workers by offering a preview to the Pentagon’s forthcoming budget request, which he said steps up orders for Sikorsky’s Black Hawk helicopters.
"Without getting specific, I feel very, very confident the number in the budget will be over 70 new Black Hawks," he said.
Rocco Calo, secretary-treasurer and principal officer of Local 1150 of the Teamsters Union, said workers learned a valuable lesson from the incident.
"We need to get more politically active and support the candidates who support these programs, regardless of party lines," he said. "We should have known then what was coming. We wanted to believe it would be based on merit."
Dan Gordon, head of the GAO’s bid protest unit, said his office fields between 1,200 and 1,500 protests each year, with only between 200 and 250 resulting in rulings. Most appeals deal with Department of Defense contract awards, due primarily to the fact that the Pentagon has the government’s largest discretionary budget. Only about one in five GAO rulings finds in favor of the petitioner, Gordon said.
High-profile protests fielded by the GAO include pending appeals by aviation bidders Lockheed Martin, L3 and BAE systems against multibillion dollar contracts awarded to Boeing Corp. under the tenure of former Air Force head Darleen Druyan.
Druyan has pleaded guilty to felony charges stemming from allegations she favored Boeing in a competition for an Air Force airborne tanker contract.
Richard L. Aboulafia, a helicopter industry analyst with the Teal Group Corp. of Fairfax, Va., said a protest may be ill-advised, noting that Sikorsky has pinned its hopes on bigger, more lucrative Pentagon contracts for its H-92 Superhawk.
"It looks good to the folks back home, but it doesn’t make any friends and there isn’t very much chance of success," Aboulafia said.
Andy Bromage can be reached at abromage@nhregister.com or 789-5714. Joseph Straw can be reached at jstraw@nhregister.com or (202) 737-5654.
http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13861980&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=517515&rfi=6"Loss of the $6.1 billion contract will not result in any layoffs at Sikorsky, company officials said."bullshit. Siskorsky\'s been in trouble for years, with their workers constantly in fear of being the next ones to be laid off. this certainly is not going to help. ugh.
