The U.S. government piled on $5.2 billion in added costs to our KC-X tanker proposal but only boosted the Northrop-Airbus proposal $772 million, a recent Reuters article points out. This example of disparate treatment is about as good as any to explain why we’re protesting the $35 billion air tanker contract.

Members of the media are starting to take note. In a straightforward account, Reuters reporter Andrea Shalal-Esa recently fleshed out the whopping differences between the two competing proposals. As Shalal-Esa observed: “The Air Force’s evaluation and adjustments to the two bids…are at the heart of Boeing’s contract protest filed March 11 with the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.’’ The GAO is set to rule by June 19.

In protest documents we have filed with the GAO, we have said the government unfairly increased the cost of our 767-based tanker. The government cited higher risk associated with the development and production of our tanker, as well as a disagreement about anticipated repair costs, which all led to evaluators unfairly assigning us a much higher cost than we could ever have imagined.

The same evaluators, on the other hand actually lowered Northrop-Airbus estimated operation and support costs by $1.4 billion. They lowered the operational costs of an airplane that is larger than our 767, burns 24% more fuel, requires more support and parking space and proposes a high-risk, itinerant and intercontinental production plan. In total: the Northrop-Airbus tanker life-cycle costs will cost the U.S. government $49 billion more than our more efficient tanker over 40 years. Go figure.

We believe, as we have testified in our protest, that the evaluation clearly favored Northrop and was “plagued by unreasonable cost assessments, disparate treatment, misleading discussions, and a fundamental failure to follow the evaluation criteria.”

According to Shalal-Esa, among costs added to the Northrop bid included $333 million to beef up defensive equipment and the projected life cycle cost of Northrop’s proposal to $108.01 billion. That figure includes $68.3 billion to operate and support the new flying fuel stations over the next few decades. But it keeps the “most probable life-cycle cost” for Northrop’s bid ever so slightly below our $108.04 billion bid.

As we continue to insist: It doesn’t add up. Even key defense experts are beginning to question the math, and the logic. The Reuters article quotes Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, saying our protest made clear the process was not as transparent as the Air Force had hoped.

Observed Thompson: “It appears that the Air Force’s pricing methodology was stacked fairly heavily against Boeing’s bid.’’