Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Delivering another major blow to the Air Force's star-crossed KC-X tanker program, a bipartisan group of seven senators has called for the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate the service's inadvertent release of bid evaluation to rival contractors last year.
Few new details about the Air Force's inadvertent disclosure of KC-X evaluation data to rival contractors emerged today during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the snafu.
The Air Force plans to deploy a new high-power, airborne camera system to Afghanistan in the coming months, despite problems revealed in a critical testing memo last month, according to a service officials.
The Pentagon will not send political appointees or anyone from the inner circle of the KC-X tanker program to testify at a high-profile hearing on last year's snafu in which the Air Force inadvertently sent bid evaluation data to the wrong parties, instead opting to send a uniformed acquisition official and a senior cyber crime official.
The Air Force claims fixes are on the way for a new wide-area airborne surveillance sensor pod that service testers lambasted in an evaluation report last month.
A new Air Force sensor designed to give commanders a bird's-eye view of the battlefield below them cannot track people once they exit vehicles and has trouble seeing all targets at night, according to draft report by service testers.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has scheduled a hearing next week to review the Air Force's inadvertent disclosure of KC-X tanker evaluation data.
The Air Force does not expect a congressional investigation into the service's inadvertent disclosure of KC-X tanker evaluation documents to hinder its plans for a much-anticipated contract award expected in the coming months, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said this morning.
The go-to-war date for the Air Force version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is likely to slip even further as the Pentagon restructures the program yet again, a senior defense official said today.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has given the Air Force the go-ahead to begin developing a new stealthy, nuclear-capable bomber that will be built using existing technologies.
House and Senate authorizers want the Air Force to look into the "feasibility and desirability" of transferring one of its most important major combat operation missions to the Air National Guard, according to a copy of the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill.
The Pentagon has told Congress it has shifted nearly $300 million within the Air Force budget to free up funds needed to award the much-anticipated KC-X next-generation tanker contract, according to budget documents.
The Air Force is considering a long-discussed merge of its two major helicopter acquisition programs into a single effort in hopes of being able to save money on the purchase of more than 200 choppers in a time of flattening or even shrinking Pentagon budgets over the next decade, according to service documents.
The Senate Armed Services Committee late last week voted to advance Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler's nomination to become the chief of U.S. Strategic Command.
The Pentagon is in discussions with engine maker Pratt & Whitney about the potential for lowering the cost of the company's F135 power plant in the next production lot of Joint Strike Fighters, according to senior industry officials.
The Pentagon is poised to hold another top-level meeting on the Joint Strike Fighter program to allow officials to weigh recommendations that will influence the funding for the multibillion-dollar effort in the Defense Department's fiscal year 2012 budget proposal, according to a senior Air Force official.
The Air Force's top uniformed official said this morning that neither Boeing nor EADS received each others' proprietary pricing data when the service inadvertently disclosed KC-X tanker bid evaluation data to the wrong companies.
EADS has been sharing KC-30 flight testing data with Air Force acquisition officials evaluating bids for the service's multibillion-dollar tanker competition, according to a top industry executive.
Former Lockheed Martin F-35 boss Dan Crowley has been named president of Raytheon Network Centric Systems effective Nov. 1, according to a Raytheon statement released late this afternoon.