The Department of Defence established the criteria for the plane, we issued a contract award notice and after that, we determined with them that there was only one manufacturer, to our knowledge, who could manufacture this equipment to the established specifications.
As I said a little earlier, Mr. Bouchard, I doubled the length of time usually given for the contract award notice to make sure that all manufacturers had enough time to respond. Some replied that they did not believe that their equipment met the standards. An interdepartmental committee was struck and assessed the submissions from the other manufacturers. It was concluded that only the Globemaster III C-17 met the criteria outlined in the contract award notice.