It’s a Big Deal:

It’s a Big Deal: The Air Force did its best to run its KC-X tanker competition as openly and transparently as possible in the hopes of avoiding a long, drawn-out protest by the losing offeror, Gen. Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff, said Thursday. “We have just said, we will do this the best we possibly can,” Moseley told the Defense Writers Group Feb. 28 just a day if not only hours away from the long-anticipated announcement of the winner in the multi-billion-dollar recapitalization contest between Boeing and Northrop Grumman/EADS. “We will do this in the most defensible way we possibly can. And if there [are] any issues that get protested to the GAO, let them look at it. If we have missed something, we will fix it.” That said, Moseley said he hopes there’s no protest on KC-X because of the potential for it to have the same major cost and schedule impact that its CSAR-X combat rescue helicopter recapitalization program has suffered since November 2006 due to industry protests. “We have lost $800 million in [the CSAR-X protests] and we have lost over a year to year-and-a-half of operational time on not being able to field an airplane,” he said. Equally concerning is the fact that the delays force the Air Force to keep flying its aged HH-60 Pave Hawk rescue helicopters, placing pilots potentially at greater risk. Pilots of USAF’s Eisenhower-era KC-135 tankers set for replacement would be asked to fly those aircraft for even longer if there are major delays from a KC-X protest, Moseley said. “To me, that is a big deal,” he said. “It’s a big deal for the people I ask to take the airplane to combat.” (For more on KC-X read Just Say No)

2/28/2008

Verbatim

To Be Clear
“Just like in my business, the issues that go badly get all of the attention. I think, to be clear with you, there are many things that are managed well every day in the Air Force.”
—John Young, Pentagon acquisition executive, speaking to defense reporters on the state of Air Force acquisition, Washington, D.C., Nov. 20, 2008.

Verbatim

F-22 Options
“They have two choices. On January 21st, they can obligate the $90 million and decide there's some chance ... that they will buy the airplanes and they'd rather preserve the option to buy [them] at no additional cost to the taxpayer. Or, they could chose not to obligate the $90 million and accept that they still have a decision to be made between then and March 1st. But that decision may cost the taxpayer more money.”
—DOD acquisition czar John Young on how releasing only $50 million of the $140 million authorized by Congress to keep the F-22 production line active until March 2009 still preserves options for the new Administration, Capitol Hill, Nov. 19, 2008.