[SHIT_TALKER]

Don't forget Eisenhower's original wording described it as the military-industrial-congressional complex. The KC-X would be flying if the original contract to EADS had not been scuttled by Congress:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X

[lotharbot]

The original contract to EADS was scuttled because of the Government Accountability Office, which found that the selection process had been handled improperly -- specifically, that the Air Force "did not assess the relative merits of the proposals in accordance with the evaluation criteria identified in the solicitation", and that the Air Force "conducted misleading and unequal discussions with Boeing" [0].

I lived in Seattle at the time, and it was widely remarked by Boeing IDS employees that the protest Boeing filed was a remarkably unusual step. They lose out on contracts all the time and just move on to the next thing; it's generally considered bad form for a defense contractor to throw a fit about losing out on a contract. But there were a lot of shenanigans, as detailed in the GAO report, which is why the decision was ultimately reversed.

[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20080625201918/http://www.king5.c...