Mobile Group Launched 2008 Campaign During Tanker Contract Dispute
Archived WKRG coverage reported on a Mobile group that launched a 2008 advertising campaign supporting the Northrop Grumman/EADS tanker project.
As the Air Force tanker-contract dispute continued in 2008, a Mobile-based group launched an advertising campaign to support the Northrop Grumman/EADS proposal, according to an archived local news report.
Mobile firefighter Bryan Lee and several local partners formed the nonprofit Alabamians to Build American Tankers. Lee told the station the group wanted to counter claims that a Northrop/EADS win would cost American jobs and to educate Congress about concerns it had raised about Boeing’s past record. The group planned radio advertising in the Washington, D.C., area as the renewed bidding process began.
The statements and allegations in this account are attributed to the group and its organizers. This historical report does not determine the accuracy of their claims.
Why bidding was reopened
The Air Force had selected the Northrop Grumman/EADS tanker in February 2008, with final assembly planned at Brookley in Mobile. Boeing protested, and in June 2008 the Government Accountability Office sustained parts of the protest and recommended a new competition, which the Pentagon reopened in July.
That rebid was canceled in September 2008, and Boeing won a later competition in 2011. Mobile’s aerospace hopes were realized in a different form: in 2012 Airbus announced a final assembly line for A320-family jetliners at Brookley, and the plant opened in 2015.
