Senate Panel Wants More C-17s

Senate Panel Wants More C-17s: The Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel on Wednesday added $2.5 billion to its version of the Fiscal 2010 defense spending bill to buy 10 C-17 transports that the Obama Administration did not request. Pentagon leaders want to stop C-17 production at current levels (205-aircraft program of record, plus eight more funded in 2009 war supplemental). But panel chairman Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) said during the markup session that he believes that DOD “will eventually conclude” that buying more C-17s and keeping an active production line is “the right solution.” The House version of the spending bill includes money for three C-17s. If this mark survives the full Senate, then the two chambers would hash out the final number in conference. Neither the House nor Senate included funds for more C-17s in their respective Fiscal 2010 defense authorization bills. (Inouye statement and Subcommittee markup summary)

9/10/2009

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.