There is encouragement in the fact that Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp. are going to submit new bids for a controversial Air Force tanker contract. The Pentagon is scheduled to make a decision on the successful bidder by the end of this year.

That’s good news in states such as Kansas and Washington where Boeing employs thousands of people and contributes so much to the regional and national economies. The terrible news is that the U.S. Air Force leadership is in such disarray that it allowed things to deteriorate to this point and force a re-bid process.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that this time his office, and not the Air Force, will oversee the competition between Boeing and the team of Northrop and the Airbus parent unit, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. Senior civilians at the Defense Department made it clear they have no confidence in the Air Force’s ability to manage the contract properly. What a black mark against a once-proud and productive branch of our service!

Of the decision to rebid the project, Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., says, “I think it’s better. No one has any faith in the Air Force.” Little wonder, considering all the bungles the USAF has been privy to in recent times.

The Government Accountability Office last month listed “significant errors” the Air Force made in the original award to the Northrop team. The GAO says Chicago-based Boeing might have won the contract originally if the Air Force and its leaders had not made mistakes in evaluating the bids.

Those mistakes set the stage for a lot of important wage-and-salary producing activities to be diverted to foreign interests rather than to domestic sources where our economy is in such need of enhancements. Questions also were raised about the idea of placing responsibility for a key U.S. military weapon in the hands of a foreign contractor.

Kansas leaders such as U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, thankfully, were quick to leap when the Air Force process was first announced, and because of hard work by Roberts and other Kansans, the door has been re-opened.

It could be that the Air Force blindly stumbled into making a right decision that slights Boeing and rewards the Northrop operation with its foreign linkages. But considering all the mistakes that were found in the original process, there is good reason to be skeptical.

Meanwhile, Secretary Gates and others in authority need to look carefully for other potential Air Force blunders. Our nation and the people who serve it are entitled to far better performance than we are seeing at this point.