- Fri. Jul. 4, 2008
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Northrop Grumman Corp.'s top executive Ronald Sugar made one point clear to reporters this week: He's not going to take it any more.
Hoping to win the verdict in the court of public opinion, his Los Angeles-based defense firm is mounting a campaign to explain exactly why its partnership with EADS, the European consortium behind Airbus, won a $35 billion Air Force contract for a fleet of aerial refueling tankers.
But Boeing Co., the losing bidder who has filed a formal protest of the award, already has a significant head start in the contest to win over lawmakers and the general public. Should it lose its protest with GAO, the company's congressional supporters might try to undo the contract legislatively.
And if perception is reality in Washington, then Chicago-based Boeing has won the early battles in what already has become a very bitter political and public relations war.
Over the last five weeks, Boeing's surprising loss has mobilized a widespread and politically diverse coalition intent on reversing the lucrative contract.
Until now, Northrop Grumman and its supporters have largely taken the hits. When they strike back, it's been in a quieter, more subdued fashion focused on enumerating facts and figures instead of the emotion and sharp rhetoric employed by their opposition.
"I don't think we have gone out and actively pursued a new type of strategy," Alabama Republican Gov. Bob Riley, whose state stands to gain 5,000 jobs from the Northrop Grumman-EADS contract, said in an interview last week. "I think it is a disservice to our fighting men and women and to this country to become engaged in a political debate."
But that hasn't stopped Boeing supporters, who lobbed their first PR shots just hours after the Feb. 29 contract announcement.
They have been relentless since then, staging rallies at Boeing's Everett, Wash., manufacturing plant, launching an online grassroots effort and even creating a blog called "Tanker War Blog: Facts and Commentary From the Refueler Furball."
By comparison, Northrop Grumman placed a few newspaper ads and invited a few reporters to interview Sugar but took more than a month to get a more aggressive campaign off the ground.
Meanwhile, Riley and other Alabama politicians have played it low-key, so much so that Riley -- a former lawmaker who served on the House Armed Services Committee -- said he had not spoken with any governors about the issue and has not actively lobbied his old colleagues on Capitol Hill since the contract award.
"The fact is, Boeing came out firing and Northrop Grumman did not," former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss, told CongressDaily. Lott's consulting firm, Breaux-Lott Leadership Group, was recently hired by Northrop Grumman.
For the winners, it's not a matter of firing back at the same pitch or velocity, Lott said. But, as in any political campaign, the winning team needs a strategy to get its story told.
Northrop Grumman's initial strategy, Lott acknowledged, was not particularly aggressive.
Indeed, Northrop Grumman's story touting its superior product received far less attention than the one told by Boeing's supporters, with dire predictions about outsourcing thousands of U.S. jobs overseas and claims about the bidding process to cast doubt on the fairness of the Air Force's decision.
Going head-to-head in a political fight against Boeing is clearly not something Sugar is inherently comfortable with. For one thing, Northrop had no defensive or offensive public relations strategy in the works before the Feb. 29 contract announcement, he acknowledged.
"Are we a little behind? Well, sure," Sugar said. "We were not loaded for the day after we got the award to put on a counter-offensive to a rather astonishing offensive," he added.
But the long-time aerospace executive said he wants to correct a record of "misinformation" put forth by Boeing backers -- a campaign that he called a direct assault on the Air Force.
Aside from a slew of media interviews, op-ed columns and a new ad campaign, Northrop's more aggressive approach was apparent outside a news conference called Monday by a coalition of conservative organizations backing Boeing.
To ensure any claims by the Boeing supporters would not go unanswered, Northrop operatives crashed the event to give reporters a four-page handout headlined, "Setting the Record Straight On Northrop Grumman's KC-45 Tanker Win."
Riley, who said he does not want a major military procurement decision turned into a political football, vowed to begin playing politics if the Boeing camp launches an "all-out assault" on the Air Force contract in Congress.
"If this is going to get into a political fight, then we are going to get engaged," Riley said. But for Northrop Grumman-EADS supporters, several analysts suggested they still are safe playing it cooler than their Boeing opponents.
After all, they can claim victory -- at least for now.
"I think they might be in the comfortable position of having the position of reference. Once a service has made its procurement decision, it's not unassailable but it's pretty tough to change," said Richard Aboulafia, an aircraft analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. "If you're occupying the high ground, why waste the ammunition?"
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