AFA: For the foreseeable future, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told me today, when push comes to shove, personnel funding should win and modernization must wait. “If you’re asking me if I have to choose between the two, then I vote for people,” she said. “I’m going to protect people.” Of course, the Air… Keep reading →

  The core task of the men and women who buy America’s weapons is to envision the adversaries and environments of tomorrow and buy forces that are up to the challenge. This involves generating a similar set of assumptions to those used by operational strategists. Today, three assumptions underpin U.S. acquisition strategy that will leave tomorrow’s forces… Keep reading →

Believe it or not, Boeing really has made progress on the KC-46 tanker, after incurring at least $1.3 billion in cost overruns. Today, it got the only kind of proof that really matters to a corporation: they got the government’s promise of $2.8 billion for doing their job. The contract award of $2.5 billion is… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: After more than a decade of missteps by the Pentagon, the Air Force and Boeing, the airborne tanker program today took a major step forward as the KC-46 passed Milestone C. “The KC-46 is ready to take the next step,” Gen. Dave Goldfein, Air Force Chief of Staff, says in a statement announcing the approval… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Boeing blew one of the most important milestones for the KC-46 airborne tanker program last week. The question is, will Boeing be penalized and, if so, how big will the penalty be? The answer, at this point, is it ain’t clear. “The KC-46 contract does not contain pre-defined penalties for missing schedule deadlines,” Air… Keep reading →

The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) has placed language in the 1,600 pages of its draft of the National Defense Authorization Act that would fundamentally alter how standard acquisition policies apply to the Air Force’s B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber. The Air Force has meticulously followed all of the rules and regulations mandated by Congress… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: When Boeing really, truly and finally won the airborne tanker competition by underbidding what was then EADS North America (now Airbus) by at least 10 percent, the chairman of the losing company, Ralph Crosby, said he believed it important that Boeing be watched closely to make sure they delivered at that price and on… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Air Force’s top priority programs — the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Long Range Strike Bomber, and the KC-46 tanker — will cause Pentagon procurement spending to balloon in the early 2020s, says one of the capital’s leading defense budget experts. Army ground combat programs are also increasing rapidly, but they are rising from such… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The authoritative Congressional Research Service has just published a report asking the questions in the headline. It;’s a basic problem we’ve written about before. The Air Force faces a funding crunch in the next six years as the F-35 and the tanker programs ramp up. the B-3 (Long Range Strike Bomber) program gets rolling and the service… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Adds Air Force, Aboulafia, Callan, And Northrop Grumman Comments WASHINGTON: To no one’s surprise, the Boeing-Lockheed team has filed a formal protest against the award to Northrop Grumman of the $80 billion Long Range Strike Bomber contract. Industry sources had been talking of strategies to prosecute or defend against a protest for at least… Keep reading →