The tanker competition has grown so baroque that it’s easy to sometimes wonder what’s real and what’s delusion. The latest twist is that EADS and some of Europe’s governments are reportedly lobbying for a deadline extension on when tanker bids can be submitted. Boeing’s brethren on Capitol Hill, sensing a possible threat to $35 billion for the company that means so much to their states, swung into action with little delay. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas said any, “Delay is unacceptable.”

The Obama Pentagon proclaims it’s commitment to reformed acquisition and greater competition. Robbin Laird, international defense consultant who advised the Air Force on the last tanker competition, argues in this commentary that Northrop’s decision to pull out of the KC-X competition will pose a basic test of the administration’s commitment and it’s ability to oversee a major program.

The Pentagon will tell Congress that the Joint Strike Fighter is roughly 50 percent more expensive than it was in 2002 and will breach the Nunn-McCurdy cost limits “in a few days,” Pentagon acquisition czar Ash Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Carter told the committee the cost increases were “unacceptable.” The Pentagon has “to wrestle this back into some realistic box.” Unit costs will climb from $50.2 million to as much as $95 million a copy, Christine Fox, director for Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, said in her testimony.

The Pentagon’s head of operational testing and evaluation is “concerned” that a recent decision to remove fuses and fire extinguishers from the Joint Strike Fighter program means more planes may be lost to enemy fire and may increase the risk from fires resulting from fuel leaks and related risks. Michael Gilmore said in written testimony prepared for the Senate Armed Services Committee that the program recent removal of “shutoff fuses for engine fueldraulics lines, coupled with the prior removal of dry bay fire extinguishers, has increased the likelihood of aircraft combat losses from ballistic threat induced fires.

The 2010 QDR directed the Air Force and Navy to jointly develop the concept to “guide the development of future capabilities needed for effective power projection operations.” Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has been thinking through just such a concept for the last two decades and has a new paper out titled “Why AirSea Battle?” that lays out the case for why its needed.

UPDATED: Sarkozy To Press Obama On Tanker
Today’s headline in The Hill tells the story: “McCain Endorses Pentagon Process On Tanker Bid As Legitimate.” My colleague Roxana Tiron asked McCain for his views and the story says he told her that he “was not worried about Boeing, the only competitor left for the contract.” Meanwhile, EU officials warned against American protectionism in the wake of Northrop’s decision to pull out of the $35 billion deal.

Veteran Senate defense budget expert and analyst at the Center for Defense Information, Winslow Wheeler, penned the following commentary about the Senate Armed Service Committee’s Thursday hearing on the F-35. He wants to know why the Joint Estimating Team has not been invited to testify and how Pentagon acquisition czar Ash Carter can believe the JSF faces no fundamental problems, among other things.

UPDATED: DepSecDef Lynn Says U.S. ‘Disappointed’ By NG Decision
More than eight years since Boeing first tried to supply new airborne tankers to the Defense Department, the company appears to have finally won the tanker competition. Northrop Grumman announced today that it will not bid on the KC-X tanker and it will not file a protest that might delay the program any further The announcement came from the top. “We reached this conclusion based on the structure of the source selection methodology defined in the RFP, which clearly favors Boeing’s smaller refueling tanker and does not provide adequate value recognition of the added capability of a larger tanker, precluding us from any competitive opportunity,” said CEO Wes Bush.

Sen. John McCain is worried about the F-35 and thinks the Defense Department has done a pretty lousy job of telling Congress about the program’s woes. “As a strong supporter of the F-35, as a person who supported cancellation of the F-22, I’m very disturbed” about how the Pentagon kept the Congress informed. He said at today’s Air Force posture hearing that the SASC has not “been adequately informed of the extent of what the difficulties are.”

Boeing unveiled the plane it will offer for the KC-X airborne tanker competition today, including a little movie and a press release. There was no mention of a 777 tanker, just the long-expected 767. One of the more intriguing adds to the new bid was the news that the new tanker will boast “a digital flight deck featuring electronic displays” taken from the 787, Boeing’s most advanced civilian plane. It will “show all flight attitude, navigation, engine indication and crew-alerting information on screens 75 percent larger than on a commercial Airbus A330.” One can almost hear the Boeing folks crying: Take that EADS!

No one at the Pentagon has been willing to say the Joint Strike Fighter buy might get smaller until now. But Robert Hale, the comptroller and thus the main money man, made it explicit today. “If there is cost growth, I think we will just have to reduce the buy,” he said at the annual Precision Strike Association conference.

It could be a long range strike platform. It could use SAR and electro-optical sensors to spy on an enemy. About the only thing it won’t do is serve as an attack fighter. It is Boeing’s Phantom Ray, an unmanned aerial system being developed by the company’s Phantom Works. The company will roll out the new plane in May. It should taxi in July. Then it will move to NASA’s Dryden site for flight and other tests, which should begin in December.

Air Force Secretary Mike Donley confirmed the Joint Strike Fighter program will breach the Nunn-McCurdy cost growth limits but Congress should expect few changes after the mandated review occurs. Donley told defense reporters that the Pentagon has already made many of the changes that are needed.“We’ve been taking all the mitigating and corrective actions we would take as if there were a Nunn-McCurdy breach,” he said. How big the breach will be and when it will be reported to Congress, he isn’t sure.

UPDATED: Congressional AIde Says F-35 Still A “Pig;” Lockheed Defends Program

In his most significant action since the Senate confirmed him, Ash Carter has issued an acquisition decision memorandum moving full rate production to November 2015, to withhold $614 million from Lockheed Martin and only pay it “to reward measurable progress…” Carter’s revised plan drew a stinging critique and call for a production freeze from Winslow Wheeler, a former congressional budget expert now with the Center for Defense Information.

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee called Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ principal arguments against the F136 “short-sighted” and largely dismissed them. “The Department’s analysis does not consider the risk that a single engine would present not only to our fighter force, but to our national security, given that the F-35 will account for 95 percent of our nation’s fighter fleet. With this program, as with all others, we cannot use near-sighted vision when long-term security is at stake.”

UPDATED: Pratt Says Tight Budget Pushing Lawmakers to Question F136

The late Rep. Jack Murtha believed strongly in the need for a second Joint Strike Fighter engine and it showed. Appropriators have pushed through $3 billion in funding for the F136 over the years and Murtha was in the front row as chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. At the first meeting of the HAC-D under the leadership of Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) several members expressed doubt about the need for a second engine.

UPDATED: Boeing ‘Disappointed’ WTO Subsidies Not Addressed In RFP; NG Does Not Pull Out … at Least Not Yet.

First reactions are in from lawmakers who were briefed on the Air Force’s new Tanker RFP this morning. Norm Dicks (D) from Washington state, chairman presumptive to replace the late Rep. John Murtha on the House defense appropriations subcommittee, said the RFP is “a fundamental plus for the smaller aircraft.” When asked his opinion on Northrop/EADS threats to drop out of the bid because they believe the RFP is weighted heavily in favor of rival Boeing, “I will say hallelujah.”

We got our hands on today’s Tanker RFP brief from Deputy SecDef William Lynn, chief weapons buyer Ashton Carter and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley.

In an early show of strength, Hill supporters of the F136 have made very clear to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Obama administration that they will continue to support the second engine program for the Joint Strike Fighter.

While the letter, signed by the committee’s chairman and ranking member with their counterparts on the HASC air and land forces subcommittee, starts off with nice words about their “great respect” for Gates’ “judgement and the sincerity of your position,” it quickly goes on to slam the Pratt & Whitney engine.

UPDATED: Army COS Gen. Casey Voices Unease About Scrapping Don’t Ask During Wartime

The Air Force’s chief of staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz, told the House Armed Services Committee today that he worries changing the current policy on gays in the military could “perturb the force” at a time when it already faces strains from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.