Abercrombie Champions Dual Tanker Buy

Abercrombie Champions Dual Tanker Buy: Neil A

bercrombie (D-Hawaii), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's panel on air and land forces, has joined the chorus of those influential lawmakers calling for DOD to purchase new tankers from both Boeing and Northrop Grumman instead of taking another stab at a winner-take-all competition that could again become mired in controversy and delays. "I think that a consensus is developing" in the Congress for a dual-buy, Abercrombie told reporters after speaking at a defense industry conference in Washington, DC, March 11, Reuters news wire service reported that same day. Abercrombie joins John Murtha (D-Penn.), head of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee, who has already endorsed a dual buy as the best means of ending the current stalemate between Boeing and Northrop and their supporters in Congress. Thus far, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has opposed the idea, saying it’s a more costly option. But, speaking at the same defense conference yesterday, Murtha said he was working to include billions of dollars in the next war supplemental to jump-start the dual-buy tanker acquisition, Reuters reported yesterday.

3/13/2009

Verbatim

Preemptive Action
"Since the [Defense] Department's acceptance of the independent estimates last fall, we've been, in just about every respect, acting as if the program were in a Nunn-McCurdy breach. ... We've been taking all of the mitigating and corrective action that we would take as if there were a Nunn-McCurdy breach."
—Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, discussing with reporters the restructure of the F-35 strike fighter program announced in February 2010 and the probability that the program will soon exceed Nunn-McCurdy cost-monitoring thresholds that would necessitate, per US law, a program review and corrective steps, Washington, D.C., March 2, 2010.

Verbatim

Message for Grandma
"She has working for her as a citizen in the United States an Air Force Reserve that has some very talented, capable, patriotic, and willing individuals doing the business to keep this nation free. Just like her generation—the 'Greatest Generation'—was, I am very proud of the folks that we have got. If not the second greatest, then they are an extension of the greatest generation and they are ready, willing, and able to do the things that she would want them to do to make sure we keep our freedoms."
—Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, Air Force Reserve chief, responding to a reporter's question on what the reporter should tell his 85-year-old grandmother to convey to her the importance of Air Force Reservists to the nation's security, Orlando, Fla., Feb. 19, 2010.