Accountability!
Guess what company was just awarded a $2.56 billion contract from the U.S. Air Force? Why, Boeing, of course! The fact that the aircraft company’s corruption and incompetence have been almost continuously in the news for years now, that it finally dismissed its lying CEO recently and that the company currently has NASA astronauts trapped in outer space appears to trouble the United States government not one bit. (Here is the first Boeing story posted about here on Ethics Alarms in 2024.)
The contract is for the production of two rapid prototype E-7A Wedgetail AEW&C (Airborne Early Warning & Control) aircrafts, similar to the one pictured above. I’m sure it will reassure you to learn that the Wedgetail is based on Boeing’s 737 design that has been working out so well lately.
The deal actually is an extension of the contract for the E-7A Rapid Prototype program that the service started in 2023 to develop a replacement for the aging E-3 Sentry AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System). Boeing planes had been falling out of the sky, killing people, and having other structural problems well before that. The new contract includes lifecycle development, training and support for the Air Force’s E-7A fleet that will replace the E-3.
“Global operators are proving that the E-7 AEW&C is a critical node for air superiority in the modern battlespace,” said proud Boeing Vice President and E-7 Program Manager Stu Voboril. “In our partnership with the U.S. Air Force, we’re focused on stable, predictable execution to deliver crucial mission-ready capabilities today. This will put us on the path for the long-term growth of the aircraft and mission.”
How nice. Except that Boeing has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that it cannot be trusted, that its culture is rotten to the core, and that its dominance of U.S. aviation has made air travel less safe. Or, to be optimistic about it, maybe the company just cuts corners, hires inept workers and skimps on oversight procedures when it is only dealing with civilian aircraft, and it really does a good job and pays attention when the company is working for the military.
To get a sense of how head-exploding this news is (or should be: it seems like the public’s collective heads are remarkably explosion-proof lately), here are four of the most recent news stories I plucked off of Google about Boeing, all in the last 24 hours, that don’t involve the company getting a huge contract from the Air Force:
- “NTSB member compares Boeing safety lapses to a game of Whac-A-Mole”
- “Flight Attendant During Boeing Blowout Didn’t Feel Safe on 737 Max”
- “Boeing’s manufacturing woes long preceded door-panel blowout”
- “Flight Attendants in Boeing Disaster Feared Passengers Had Been Sucked Out Hole in Plane”
To be completely fair, the Air Force doesn’t have much choice in the matter because our government doesn’t enforce the anti-monopoly laws any more, at least not in this area. Jazz Shaw explains,
“If you want really large planes for any purpose, Boeing and Airbus are pretty much the only two games in town. And Airbus is already swamped with orders. To get another airline manufacturer up and running with the ability to safely produce aircraft of that size in any usable quantities would likely take decades at a minimum. Boeing no doubt knows this and they are able to just bide their time and issue the occasional apology when things go south, along with paying some fines. They know that the government can’t hit them with anything too damaging that might put them out of business because the societal impacts would be too intense. So at least for the time being, things are unlikely to change.”
In other words, there is no accountability at all here. Boeing will still be fed giant contracts by the government despite a pattern of mismanagement, negligence, incompetence and dishonesty. If there are no adverse consequences for unethical conduct, unethical conduct continues and metastasizes.
Ethics Alarms 
Pick one from Column A or Column B. Boeing or Airbus. No substitutes.
Boeing gobbled up all its U.S. competitors years ago. Airbus IS all the former European competitors. Hey, at least the U.S. didn’t give the contract to the Chinese!
Question: What happens to the highly-qualified, experienced engineers if they are required to attend ‘How to perform in drag’ meetings?
They have to explain that as aerospace engineers, it is their job to minimize drag at all times except when vehicles need to slow down.
The Boy (that’s our 20 year old son) and I were discussing the recent disaster wrought large by that stupid, incompetent, jerk of a hurricane named Beryl. I mean, what a stupid name! But, I digress. He and I were talking about Center Point Energy’s response to the storm. It had at least a week’s notice before it decide to say “hello” and “go to Hell, Houston”. It was not a massive storm and it was fairly fast. Beryl, though, wiped out the electric grid for the majority of the Houston metropolitan area, leaving something close to 2 million people without electricity (your humble correspondent did not have power for over a week and half).
In our discussion The Boy and I talked about why Center Point was unprepared for the storm as hurricanes, flooding, and other weather-related conditions wreak havoc on the power grid. I said that it was a perfect example of why monopolies are inefficient. If there is no competition for goods or services, then the providers of those goods and services have no real incentive to modernize or keep up with equipment conditions. Why should Center Point send tree crews out all the time to cut limbs away from power lines? Why should it make the cash outlays to bury cables underground to avoid trees falling on the lines or taking out transformers? It is cheaper to pay out of region crews to come in and clean up afterwards.
jvb
Do they have the public utilities commission in their pocket as well?
Isn’t it The Railroad Commission in Texas?
My father likes to show pictures of a residential powerpole with transformers, etc and dare people to guess if it is from 1950 or 2020.
The Boeing that builds commercial airlines and the defense contractor Boeing Defense, Space & Security are practically separate companies. The two are highly compartmentalized and share little of the same structure, probably for security reasons. BDSS is in charge of building military aircraft like the AWACS, not commercial airliners. Of course, BDSS is the one responsible for the Starliner debacle, so they don’t seem to be any more competent than the commercial division.
Sounds like Boeing is too big to fail now. So of course they can keep failing without a fault! Maybe they can get some Russian Ilyushin jets into the bid process, just for fun. What’s the worst that can happen, they fall out of the sky?
What’s Lockheed doing…just fighters, military cargo, and Skunkworks stuff?