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The U.S. Air Force's top civilian warned his aerospace suppliers to expect an increased Pentagon focus on affordability amid mounting international competition. Nearly all components of the service's budget, including personnel costs, are growing faster than the overall Air Force budget, Secretary Michael Donley told a kickoff meeting of a Senate caucus aimed at promoting a strong, secure and competitive U.S. aerospace industry. "Global competition alone would make it imperative for our friends in the defense industry to reduce costs if they want to continue to be competitive in an increasingly sophisticated and capable international market for defense goods and...

Delays and cost overruns for the Lockheed Martin F-35 have not changed the US Air Force's plans to deactivate about 250 fighters later this year, says its chief of staff, Gen Norton Schwartz. The USAF, however, has begun destructive tests on Boeing F-15s and Lockheed F-16s to prove the viability for a potential service life extension programme, says Schwartz. "At 10-15% of the cost [of a new fighter] you could perform a service life extension programme," Schwartz says, "which would get us close to where we need to be in, we think, a more affordable way." Schwartz rejected buying the...

When the Pentagon’s top buyer appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, most observers expected Ash Carter to tell lawmakers just how much each F-35 costs and how much the plane is likely to cost over time. That didn’t happen. Winslow Wheeler, a bipartisan conagreassional defense budget expert now at the Center for Defense Information, penned a detailed analysis and commentary picking apart the Pentagon’s numbers and their underlying assumptions. One area sure to spark disagreement is his discussion of F-35 production. This plane is supposed to be the first advanced fighter built on the closest thing to an assembly...

South Korea has been digging into North Korean weapons smuggling efforts, and has found an elaborate, and widespread network of organizations and people that make it all work. What gave South Korea an opportunity to penetrate this web of deception was the recent seizure of an Il-76 transport carrying 40 tons of North Korean weapons. The weapons laden Il-76 jet transport seized in Thailand last December turned out to be the third such aircraft to pass over Thailand recently. U.S. intelligence has been tracking cargo transports flying out of North Korea, and an increasing number of these flights take the...

DOD’s major weapon systems programs continue to take longer to develop, cost more, and deliver fewer quantities and capabilities than originally planned. DOD also continues to face long-standing challenges managing service contracts and contractors. For example, the oversight of service contracts has been recognized as a material weakness in the Army... Several underlying systemic problems at the strategic level and at the program level continue to contribute to poor weapon systems acquisition. The total acquisition cost of DOD’s 2007 portfolio of major programs has grown by 26 percent over initial estimates... DOD largely continues to define warfighting needs and make...

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday that the Pentagon will hold a new, fast-tracked competition to replace the Air Force's aging fleet of aerial refueling tankers, a move that overturns the previous award of the contract to Northrop Grumman. The decision follows criticism of the selection process by the Government Accountability Office and underscores the sharp divisions over the contract. The deal to replace the Air Force's entire fleet could be worth up to $100 billion over the next two decades. Gates said he expects the Pentagon to choose a new winner by the end of the year. On...

U.S. Barriers Hamper Our Military Spending by David J. Bercuson (Canadian) LEGION Magazine Published in January/February 2007 Over the past decade or so, the United States has often complained about Canada's foot dragging on defence matters. The Americans had two chief beefs: first, that Canada was engaging in virtual unilateral disarmament; second, that Canada was failing to bear an appropriate share of what they refer to as the Global War Against Terrorism. Now that Canadian troops are heavily engaged in the fight to block a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan--Canada is one of the very few North Atlantic Treaty Organization...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations, stung by a growing scandal in its purchasing department, imposed job restrictions on Friday on all staff involved in buying goods and services for the world body. The new rules, which take effect immediately, prohibit U.N. employees involved in any aspect of procurement from soliciting or accepting a job offer from any vendor doing business with the United Nations. The regulations also bar departing procurement staff from seeking or accepting a job for a period of one year from anyone involved in selling goods or services or seeking to do so. They also...

Indian Navy eyes 100 aircraft by 2020 IANS Tuesday, July 18, 2006 08:08 IST NEW DELHI:After the Indian Air Force (IAF), the Indian Navy is looking at acquiring close to 100 aircraft in a mix of fighters, patrol planes and trainers by 2020. On the shopping list are 40 to 50 MiG-29K fighters, 30 long-range maritime patrol (LRMP) aircraft and 10-15 Hawk advanced jet trainers (AJTs), navy chief Admiral Arun Praksh told India Strategic magazine in an interview. According to him, as the IAF was acquiring the Hawk trainers, it was logical for the navy to go in for either...

 The Army’s Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker, has recently done something extraordinary within the realm of Beltway politics – he told the truth about our Army’s readiness. His message before the House Committee on the Armed Services was simple and disturbing: Five years after 9-11 and the US Army, the service that bears the largest burden in this conflict, is still struggling to build a force capable of conducting a long -term global war within established budget constraints.  This grim assessment may be hard for some to accept, but we need to know the unvarnished truth if we are to be...

WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain on Wednesday warned of ``an emerging scandal’’ in defense procurement and vowed to block the nomination of a high-ranking defense official until he gets answers in a contract dispute involving Lockheed Martin’s C-130J transport. The accusations by the Arizona Republican, considered a leading unannounced contender in the 2008 presidential race, injected a surprise burst of drama in what was expected to be a relatively tame confirmation hearing for four defense nominees before the Senate Armed Services Committee. McCain told Michael Dominguez, President Bush’s nominee to become deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness,...

"Stanford engineers steered the world toward a new era of driverless vehicles Saturday when their robotic Volkswagen SUV was the first to cross the finish line after a 132-mile race across the Nevada desert...The best showing last year was turned in by a Carnegie Mellon robo-Hummer nicknamed Sandstorm, which went just 7.4 miles in that 142-mile course before it strayed off the road and spun its wheels until the rubber burned. Yet even that ignoble finish fired the imaginations of inventors and hobbyists, who responded in even greater numbers to DARPA's 2005 challenge. In contrast to the 15 teams that...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The top U.N. management official said Wednesday he has ordered a new investigation of the procurement division in light of a senior officer's guilty plea for taking massive bribes from United Nations contractors. The review by Christopher Burnham will add to the extraordinary level of scrutiny on the procurement department, which first gained serious attention over its involvement in the scandal-tainted U.N. oil-for-food program. It was thrust into the spotlight again on Monday, when one of its staff, Alexander Yakovlev pleaded guilty in federal court to three counts of money laundering, wire fraud and conspiracy to...

For the second time in as many days, General Assembly leaders have charged that Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is ignoring laws it passed, this time a measure rescinding Maryland's participation in a contentious trade agreement pending in Congress. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch insisted in a joint letter yesterday that the governor withdraw Maryland's agreement to participate in the Central American Free Trade Agreement. "Maryland law now requires that the state be removed as a signatory to the CAFTA agreement pending before Congress. It has come to our attention, however, that, to...

The U.S. military is the toughest and most professional in the world, but one force it usually can't beat is the bureaucracy back in Washington. The Defense Department has 200,000 acquisition personnel, whose insistence on doing everything "by the numbers" slows to a crawl efforts to get vital equipment such as armor into the field. But the bureaucracy can be defeated, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demonstrated last week when he invoked his new "Rapid Acquisition Authority," allowing him to cut through the red tape to meet urgent battlefield needs. By invoking this power, Mr. Rumsfeld has given the Secretary...

The Pentagon's internal watchdog has begun investigating two additional contracts handled by convicted former Air Force official Darleen Druyun and could add three more deals to its growing list of possibly tainted procurements, the Pentagon said on Monday. Druyun is serving a nine-month prison term for violating federal conflict-of-interest laws by negotiating a $250,000-a-year job with Boeing Co. while still overseeing its business with the Air Force. She also admitted steering contracts to Boeing as far back as 2000. "In the course of our review, in an effort to be as thorough as possible, we decided to take a look...

About Those Un-Armored Humvees This press conference by Major General Stephen Speakes and several other officers, which took place on Wednesday, is worth reading in its entirety. The purpose of the press conference was to address the issue of "un-armored" vehicles that was raised by a National Guardsman in a question directed to Donald Rumsfeld a week or so ago. The overall impression I get is that the Army is responding appropriately to the risks posed by improvised explosive devices, and there is basically no story here. The facts regarding the Guardsman's own unit also appear to be quite different...

WASHINGTON - The Air Force continues to order a new type of cargo plane despite spending $2.6 billion to buy 50 planes that do not meet the military's requirements and cannot be flown in combat zones, Pentagon investigators said. Contractor Lockheed Martin hasn't delivered any C-130J planes that met requirements in the eight years since the program began, the report said. The Air Force and Lockheed Martin disagree. Problems with the propeller-driven cargo planes include faulty computer and diagnostic systems and inadequate defense measures, the Pentagon's Office of Inspector General concluded. So far, none of the planes has been cleared...

May 22, 2004: The U.S. Department of Defense is going through a rather extreme reorganization at the moment. It’s much more extensive than most people realize. A side effect of this is increased hostility towards current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But not because of disagreements over Iraq or the war on terror, but because these reforms threaten defense spending in many Congressional districts, and if that money goes away, it could mean lost elections for the incumbents. Rumsfeld wants to speed up the procurement (which can now take well over a decade) process and make be more responsive to...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. There was a media firestorm last week when it was “discovered” that the United States was only going to allow American firms and those from allied countries to bid on $18.6 billion of Iraq reconstruction projects.  Yet, this was old news. When the Pentagon set up its Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, its mandate was to make contracts only with American firms.  The U.S.  Agency for International Development had similar rules.  As USAID administrator Andrew Natsios said last April,.  “Some countries have complained that they were not invited to bid...