UPDATED: Boeing Slams DoD Extension; EADS Says 60 Days Not Enough

The Pentagon announced today that it will extend the deadline for KC-X Tanker program bids for another 60 days to allow EADS time to submit a bid, if it receives formal notification from EADS of their intention to make an offer. EADS had asked for 90 days, but DOD determined 60 days was a reasonable amount of time. The military is willing to compress its evaluation period to allow EADS more time to submit its bid and still award a contract by early fall.

The head of Pratt & Whitney’s military engine division says the best way for Congress and the Defense Department to save significant program dollars and to make the company perform the way they want it to is to consider a multi-year logistics deal. In a wide-ranging discussion of the company’s intense battle with General Electric and Rolls Royce over the need for a second Joint Strike Fighter engine, Warren Boley told DoD Buzz the best way to build incentives into the program would be a performance-based logistics contract.

A shrinking fleet and budget pressures will produce a 230-ship navy by 2025, according to the Center for Naval Analyses. The Navy, which faces an operational “tipping point,” must change its mix of ships and strategy and decide what it will do differently or risk a global decline in US power projection, the report concludes.

The failure of the Army’s Non Line-of-Sight-Launch System (NLOS-LS) Precision Attack Missile (PAM) to hit its targets in a recent series of live fire tests could prove problematic to the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). LCS is to be fitted out with interchangeable modular mission packages, such as various weapons, aerial drones and helicopters, so the same ship can be custom tailored to different missions.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said today that the Franco-European defense giant EADS “will bid” on the tanker contract after receiving assurances from President Obama that the competition will be “free and fair.” And in what looks like a clear signal to EADS that the Pentagon will seriously consider opening the bid to EADS, the Air Force Chief of Staff told my colleague Andrea Shalal-Esa of Reuters that, “they have to say they’re serious and then the department will decide how much time to allow.”

The Marine’s are eagerly awaiting delivery of seven new prototypes of their Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle armored amphibian. CMC Gen. James Conway reaffirmed the operational need for the costly vehicles and said they recently passed a key series of explosives tests demonstrating near MRAP levels of survivability. The Marines are eager to see if EFV builder General Dynamics has worked out the reliability issues that plagued the earlier prototypes.

The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer said industry and taxpayers should expect more independent cost scrubs like the one recently done on the Joint Strike Fighter. Ash Carter made it clear there is more blood to be squeezed from the acquisition stone at a lunch put on by the National Aeronautics Association. “There are too many programs that resemble the Joint Strike Fighter in the sense that they are not performing the way we expect them to,” he said. Carter declined to name any programs, but he said he’s got lots to choose from.

The Pentagon has officially notified Congress of the Joint Strike Fighter’s breach of legal cost growth limits, requiring a top-to-bottom review of the program. The Senate and House were told of the Nunn-McCurdy breach on Friday. Details were extremely scant. As the letter from Air Force Secretary Mike Donley said, they will provide details in the latest Selected Acquisition Report (SAR), due out “on or about April 2.” DoD thus complied with Ash Carter’s pledge that Congress would receive notification on or before or around April 1. Of course, this probably means they avoid the wonderful prospect of the JSF price increase getting lots of publicity on April Fool’s Day.

Donald Rumsfeld grappled with it in Iraq. Now Robert Gates and his team are wrestling with the difficult question of just how we know whether we’re winning or losing a counter-insurgency war, this one in Afghanistan. Marine Lt. Gen. John Paxton, director of operations for the Joint Staff, spoke at a Brookings Institution sponsored conference about this challenging task. Paxton listed a number of possible metrics including: declining levels of corruption, the number of tips provided by the Afghan people on IED locations, the number of markets and bazaars opening up or the number of police chiefs turning in others on the force.

The STOVL version of the Joint Strike Fighter is not too hot and is not too loud, Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway told DoD Buzz during an editorial board session. The most troubling operational challenge that appeared to face the F-35B, next to weight, was reports that it would not be suitable for a carrier or other ship because its exhaust would melt the flight deck. Not so, Conway told reporters from Military​.com. The plane, at 1,500 degrees, is just 18 degrees hotter than a Harrier.

How do you squeeze two Marine Expeditionary Brigades onto 33 amphibious ships when they really need 38? You make them shed the weight they gained over the past seven years fighting on IED strewn battlefields, said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway yesterday in an editorial board with Military​.com. Lifting two full MEBs with their mounds of equipment, up-armored vehicles and aircraft requires 38 amphibious ships; the current shipbuilding plan gives the Marines 33. Conway wants a return to the days when the Marines weren’t viewed as a second land army and he is determined to shoehorn two MEBs onto those 33 amphibs.

That deep silence you hear may well be the sound of European governments and the U.S. hunkering down in hopes that the political furor over the KC-X tanker bid will calm a bit so they can do some serious negotiating. A European source told me today that it looks as if EADS, as well as the French and British governments, hopes the atmosphere can be calmed in part so both sides can learn what is really at stake and who is willing to do what. Call it the search for clarity.

Boeing’s biggest supporters roared out of the gate Tuesday after the World Trade Organization issued a final ruling that Airbus enjoyed unfair subsidies from European governments. “Enough is enough. For too long, workers in Washington state have had to fight an uphill battle. Instead of competing just with Airbus, they’ve been forced to compete with the deep pockets of European governments that supply Airbus with illegal launch aid,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said in a statement.

The top leaders of the House Armed Services Committee have criticized Defense Secretary Robert Gates for the Pentagon’s fabulously shrinking estimate of the carrier fighter gap, saying that it is based on “optimistic assumptions.” Boil it all down and the House lawmakers just don’t believe the Pentagon’s estimates. “When combined, these assumptions and unfunded management levers mean that the true shortfall facing the Department of the Navy is likely to be significant greater than 100 aircraft,” they write.

Dear readers, Our corporate parent Military​.com and the DoD Buzz team are celebrating Military’s 10th anniversary for the next two days. Grant us some understanding if we miss something through Wednesday. And celebrate our success! In the meantime, here’s an interesting story Greg put together on IW aircraft. Colin The quest for a low-cost, low-tech, irregular warfare aircraft to provide ground pounders with long loitering, on-call recon and strike got a big boost recently when Joint Forces Command’s Gen. James Mattis threw his support behind the Navy and Air Force “Imminent Fury” effort. Mattis said he is taking a personal interest in a classified Navy project that is looking at small turboprop aircraft for ground support.

At the end of what has been a truly positive week for Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter, witnessing a number of key milestones in the aircraft’s test phase, DOD had to damper the celebration somewhat by releasing updated cost estimates that show the per aircraft price tag has jumped nearly 90 percent since 2001, from $69 million to $135 million.

In a move that could make for one of the most exciting defense procurements in modern history, EADS formally confirmed this morning that it is considering an independent bid on the KC-X program. The press statement said that the Pentagon “indicated” yesterday that “it would welcome a proposal from EADS North America as prime contractor for the KC-X tanker competition.” In a bit of masterly understatement, the company notes that, “This is a significant development.”

Well, no one can say the Lockheed JSF team hasn’t had a good week. First came the hover and short takeoff and short landing. Today, they capped it with the plane’s first true vertical landing. The Marines were officially happy. “Having the F-35B perform its first vertical landing underscores the reality of the Marine Corps achieving its goal of an all STOVL force,” said Lt. Gen. George Trautman, deputy commandant for aviation.

Joint Forces Command will soon begin shipping its Valiant Angel technology package to Afghanistan to help troops collect and sort through the massive terabytes of digital imagery collected daily by aerial drones. Bundling off the shelf technology used by the commercial video industry, the hardware and software package promises to allow troops at remote combat outposts with slow dial up to access crucial imagery.