DoD Pricing Director Will Soon Issue Guidance on “Reasonable” Pricing

• The Pentagon demands ‘fair prices’ [National Defense] from commercial vendors. Define “fair.” Director of Defense Pricing Shay D. Assad wants to pay market prices regardless of the cost of dealing with DoD’s burdensome contracting:

“If you have a market based price that can be substantiated through sales in the commercial marketplace, we pay what the market pays.”

• Meanwhile Pratt & Whitney halted F-35 engine deliveries, blaming its titanium supplier A&P Alloys for “conflicting documentation” on the origin of the material used in said engines. A&P finds the accusation “blatantly unfair.” If the Pentagon wants to be dealt with like a commercial client, maybe the should ask Congress to revisit legislation like the Specialty Metal clause [CRS PDF]?
• The Navy League of the United States issued a report [PDF] on America’s maritime industry that reads like a paean. What the document doesn’t address are issues of cost, shipyard productivity, or competitiveness – all of which imperil America’s future military strength as a sea power. “Thousands of towboats and barges” may well be “operating on the Mississippi and Ohio River systems”, but the truth is that US shipbuilding has been obliterated by Asian competitors for at least the past two decades. Such issues deserve better than high school essays.