Rapid Fire Feb. 29, 2012: Foreign Entanglements
Feb 29, 2012 08:45 ESTRelated Stories: Americas - USA, Budgets, Contracts - Awards, Fighters & Attack, Legal, Lockheed Martin
- The US Air Force is setting aside its Afghanistan Light Air Support contract to Sierra Nevada before the litigation initiated by Hawker Beechcraft even completes its course: “Since the acquisition is still in litigation, I can only say that the Air Force Senior Acquisition Executive, David Van Buren, is not satisfied with the quality of the documentation supporting the award decision.” Obviously Hawker Beechcraft supports that decision while Embraer is scratching their head, while Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz is fuming. In the end it’s one more contentious foreign procurement from the USAF. But the big bucks for trade dispute lawyers are in the Boeing vs. Airbus row. “You are subsidized. No, YOU are subsidized.”
- More on ITAR/DDTC’s handling of brokering and freight forwarders: weblog posts from Customs Law, Export Law.
- Things to know about recently-published DFARS Contractor Business Systems rules.
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- US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta addressing the Senate Budget Committee (SBC): 1) no defense cuts, 2) no entitlement cuts, 3) no revenue increase: you can only get two out of these three options… preferably starting with #1 (video). He’s not seeing eye to eye with SBC Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND).
- Bernard Finel chimes in on the poor quality of the debate on the F-35: “We’re at the point where our continued obsession with platforms that can dominate in the higher end contingencies is getting in the way of our ability to construct a force that actually meets likely requirements.”
- Speaking of which, Director of Defense Pricing Shay Assad told Bloomberg that the Pentagon will withhold about $1M/mo worth of F-35 payments until Lockheed Martin’s aeronautics division addresses deficiencies with its cost tracking system, in application of Earned Value Management Systems (EVMS) DFARS changes [PDF] made in May last year. The usually reliable Tony Capaccio claims this is a first (Reuters does too) though in actuality Huntington Ingalls was hit by EVMS-justified payment withholding from Naval Sea Systems Command in November last year.
- Meanwhile Japan reiterates its preemptive message: don’t rise F-35 prices on us or else. The topic of international support for the F-35 was brought up during yesterday’s HASC hearing. Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz acknowledged that some of these countries have to deal with their “economic circumstances”, which we believe translates in Italian as maggiore crisi.
