weapons systems | The Contracting Education Academy

November 1, 2016 By AMK

Kendall: The Pentagon’s spending less on weapons, so let me keep my job

A 30-year-low in cost growth is part of the defense acquisition undersecretary’s closing argument for why Congress shouldn’t eliminate his position.

atl-job-oct-2016 Some political appointees spend the final months of a presidential administration counting the minutes until the inauguration. Frank Kendall is not one of them.

Rather than slip back into private life, it seems, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics (AT&L) would prefer to keep looking for ways to save money on weapons and military equipment.

“Not much longer,” a reporter said to Kendall during a briefing at the Pentagon on Friday.

“We’ll see,” Kendall said with a smirk.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/business/2016/10/kendall-pentagons-spending-less-weapons-so-let-me-keep-my-job/132563

August 6, 2015 By AMK

Marines: F-35 is ready for war

The Pentagon has declared the U.S. Marine Corps version of the F-35 joint strike fighter ready for war, seven years later than planned in 2001, when the U.S. launched its ambitious project to build a common warplane for the military and its closest allies.

The battle-ready milestone marks the most significant moment for the $400 billion program, the most expensive project in Pentagon history.

“The weapons system is now in the warfighters’ hands and can be called upon to do its mission,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the F-35 program manager said in a statement.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/08/marines-f-35-ready-war/118802/

January 23, 2015 By AMK

Air Force to reshape ‘cost curve’ via targeted acquisition reforms

The Air Force is kicking off a series of targeted acquisition initiatives that its leaders hope will bring in more competition, cut out internal bureaucracy and ultimately lead to faster, cheaper procurements.

Deborah Lee James, the secretary of the Air Force, announced the plans under an overall banner she dubbed “Bending the Cost Curve.” She described the initiative as a series of actions that are complementary to DoD’s Better Buying Power initiative — but more specific and tailored than the DoD-wide project.

James said the changes, which the service developed after a months-long series of roundtables with industry groups, will help the Air Force do a better job of communicating with its existing vendor base, welcoming new firms into the fold and removing bureaucratic processes that seem to serve little purpose other than to slow things down.

“We are simply too slow in all that we do,” she told the Atlantic Council Wednesday evening. “Here’s one horrifying factoid: We currently average 17 months to award a contract in situations where we already know there’s only one supplier who can do the work.”

To tackle costs on its major systems, the Air Force will institutionalize a new program that will attempt to make price more of an independent variable in the service’s decisions about precisely what it wants its weapons systems to do.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/395/3781054/Air-Force-to-reshape-cost-curve-via-targeted-acquisition-reforms

December 19, 2014 By AMK

Pentagon launches new future weapons research effort

The Pentagon is starting a massive research and development effort aimed at finding and developing next-generation technologies able to ensure the U.S. military retains its technological edge.

Described as an effort to create a new technological offset strategy like that which the U.S. pursued in the 1950s and 1980s, the Long Range Research and Development Plan, or LRRDP, involves a solicitation to industry, academia, and small business to begin enterprising ideas on areas of focus for new weapons and technology research and development.

“The nature of future military competition suggests we cannot take our future military dominance for granted. We need to continue disruptive innovation and be sure that we have that differential advantage in the future,” Stephen Welby, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Engineering, told reporters Dec. 3.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2014/12/08/pentagon-launches-new-future-weapons-research-effort/

April 1, 2013 By AMK

Pentagon has spent billions on doomed programs

The Pentagon has squandered billions of dollars over the past two decades on weapon systems it never produced and on rosy cost estimates that ballooned to sizes that ate up funds for other projects, according to government reports and defense analysts.

The miscalculations have come back to haunt the armed forces at a time when tighter budgets are forcing it to curtail basic war-fighting preparations such as training, ship and aircraft repairs, and overseas deployments.

Pro-defense conservatives, however, say that despite the procurement mistakes, the country needs a robust military to confront an array of threats — and that costs money.

Still, how the Pentagon misspent billions over two decades has relevancy for the future.

Money devoted to doomed programs such as the Army’s Future Combat System or poured into the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter could have come in handy today. Analysts say that if the Pentagon had better-managed the research, development and acquisition of satellites, vehicles and planes, the force in 2013 would be more modern and more resilient against automatic spending cuts, or “sequestration,” that began March 1.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/17/pentagon-has-spent-billions-on-doomed-programs/?page=all#pagebreak

A 30-year-low in cost growth is part of the defense acquisition undersecretary’s closing argument for why Congress shouldn’t eliminate his position.

The Pentagon has declared the U.S. Marine Corps version of the F-35 joint strike fighter ready for war, seven years later than planned in 2001, when the U.S. launched its ambitious project to build a common warplane for the military and its closest allies.

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