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Nonstealthy Maneuver
Nonstealthy Maneuver: Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday laid down the same line in the sand as he did on Monday at the Pentagon and on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, telling House lawmakers that he would "strongly recommend" that President Obama veto any Fiscal 2011 legislation that sustains the F136 engine for the F-35 strike fighter. Appearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Gates said the focus should be on getting the F135, the other engine type for the F-35, done right. Keeping the F136 engine program alive for the next five fiscal years would end up costing the Defense Department another $2.9 billion that is needed elsewhere on top of the $1.8 billion that the Congress has already pumped into the project in the past several years over the Pentagon's objections, he said. The Pentagon's Fiscal 2011 budget proposal seeks to cancel the F136.
2/4/2010
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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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