Air force tanker: a competition, but not really.

• Position: Washington PULSE

Politics is a huge piece of an upcoming competition between Boeing and the European conglomerate Airbus to build possibly hundreds of aerial refueling tankers for the U.S. Air Force. Many industry insiders agree that it is unlikely that Airbus will win the contract, and that the tanker competition is only a facade.

The Defense Department in fact does not care if there is competition as long as it gets the product it wants, said Pentagon acquisition chief Kenneth Krieg. In the tanker program, he said, the goal was to "create an interesting model for more than one...