On June 18, 2008 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) completed its reexamination of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) decision to award the KC-45A refueling aircraft contract to Northrup Grumman over Boeing. The GAO found merit in Boeing’s complaint. The GAO's managing associate general counsel for procurement law, Michael R. Golden, stated:

Our review of the record led us to conclude that the Air Force made a number of significant errors that could have affected the outcome of what was a close competition between Boeing and Northrop Grumman. We therefore sustain Boeing's protest. We also denied a number of Boeing's challenges to the award to Northrop Grumman, because we found that the record did not provide us with the basis to conclude that the agency had violated the legal requirements with respect to those challenges.

The Air Force is currently reviewing this decision and has 60 days to decide how to proceed. My staff and I will continue following this closely.