Rapid Fire 2011-10-03: Materiel Readiness | Commercial Item Handbook
Oct 03, 2011 09:00 EDTRelated Stories: Britain/U.K., Budgets, Daily Rapid Fire, Legal, Logistics, Logistics Innovations, Oshkosh, People, Small Business
- NATO’s Undersea Research Centre (NURC) in Italy is testing small autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) equipped with sonars to detect mines in shallow waters, among other applications.
- The British Royal Navy plans to make up to 3,250 people redundant in the next 3 years.
- When dealing with US federal contracts, it takes a lawyer to untangle whether and why a business is considered small or not.
- If a US House or Senate Appropriations Committee marks a program below its President Budget amount, how do the services and DoD appeal? It’s a complex process but the Defense Acquisition University has a good walkthrough.
- After a delay of more than 2 years, the US DOD releases a new 2.0 draft [MS Word] of its Commercial Item Handbook and is asking for comments by Nov. 30, 2011. The first version was published 10 years ago and covers “any item of a type customarily used by the general public, or by nongovernmental entities, for purposes other than governmental purposes”. This includes but is not limited to Commercially Available Off-the-Shelf (COTS) products.
- Lousy logistics loses wars. The US GAO reckons the Department of Defense has improved its prepositioned stock management but should provide more visibility to Congress on the status and condition of prepositioned materiel. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the US Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) have been working this year on a Comprehensive Materiel Response Plan (CMRP) which should address the GAO’s concerns. To catch up on the DLA’s daunting work, this presentation [PDF] by director of DLA Logistics Operations Brig. Gen. Lynn Collyar comes handy. The current Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness (ASD L&MR) Alan F. Estevez was appointed last August (he was formerly deputy but acting ASD) and pointed to the CMRP as a useful tool in his Senate testimony [PDF]. See also his Logistics Strategic Plan [PDF].
- The United Auto Workers Local 578 union met with Oshkosh management on Saturday after having decisively rejected the company’s contract offer on Friday. They agreed to more talks tomorrow and Thursday.
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