Rapid Fire 2012-02-24: Federal Acquisition Rules – Or Lack Of – Circa 1941

• Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Bob Pap made his annual State of the Coast Guard address [PDF]. On acquisition:

“[T]here was a time when the Coast Guard operated 8 polar ice breakers. How did that happen? In 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed a hand written note to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau – Morgenthau passed the note on to the Commandant, Admiral Russell Waesche, – it simply read, Henry I want the world’s best icebreakers, [signed] FDR’

I guess Federal acquisition Rules must have been easier then!”

• 7 US Marines died on Wednesday night in a crash between an AH-1W Cobra and a UH-1Y Huey during training west of the Yuma Training Range in California.