Daily Rapid Fire: 2011-09-19 | Reliability Planning; FPIF Contracting

* Did the White House lobby military officials to downplay concerns that the broadband satellite firm Lightsquared, owned by a major campaign donor, would disrupt GPS signals within its coverage? See Daily Beast article, House Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing video embedded at the bottom of this entry. * Michael Gilmore, Director of DoD’s Operation Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) published his latest presentation [PDF] on the key issues with program delays and reliability growth. His conclusions: testing by itself doesn’t cause program delays, has low relative costs (in most cases 1.5% or less of total costs), and though planning to increase reliability has improved in recent years, this has not translated yet into increased reliability. * Latest DFARS change: case 2011-D010 asks contracting officers to give particular consideration to the use of fixed-price incentive (firm target) contracts (FPIF), especially for acquisitions moving from development to production. Particular attention should be paid to share lines and ceiling prices for fixed-price incentive (firm target) contracts, with a 120 percent ceiling and a 50/50 share ratio as the point of departure for establishing the incentive arrangement. This implements and clarifies language from a November 3rd, 2010 AT&L memo on affordability [PDF]. The Federal Register […]