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No Money for F136 in Senate Markup
No Money for F136 in Senate Markup: The intense wrangling going on among the Pentagon, industry, and Congress over the fate of the F136 engine is still not resolved after Wednesday’s markup of the Fiscal 2010 defense spending bill by the Senate Appropriation Committee’s defense panel. The subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), did not include funding for the F136, which GE and Rolls Royce are developing to compete against Pratt & Whitney’s F135 to power future lots of F-35s. But the House did include F136 funding in its version of the 2010 defense appropriations bill, thus setting up a showdown when the Senate and House meet in conference to hash out the final version of the bill. Similarly, on the authorization side, the House would fund the F136, while the Senate would not, leaving the issue open for the policy bill conference. So stay tuned. (Subcommittee markup summary)
9/10/2009
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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. |
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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.
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