Defense Procurement News

On 17 September 2008 the Institute of Mechanical Engineers will host the seminar “Platform Technology for Military Vehicles. It will be held at the British Aerospace Workers Association (BAWA), Bristol. Featured speakers will be Mr. Nick Fox, Program Manager Utility Vehicles SUV IPT; Mr. David Ensor, Senior Development Engineer for MIRA Ltd; Mr. Bob Allsopp, Managing Director of Ricardo; Mr. Andy Wallace of the Defence, Technology and Innovation Center; Mr. Paul Rogers of BAE Systems; Mr. Tony White of Ultra Electronics; Mr. Ron Cook of L-3 Communications; Mr. Roger Medwell of NP Aerospace and Mr. Mark French from QinetiQ. For more information please contact Martin Pratt at +44 (0)20 7973 1261 or at m_pratt@imeche.org. The website for the seminar can be found here.

Pasco, Wash - Viper Aircraft is pleased to announce that Bayview Edison Industries; a production, tooling and mold design firm located in Mount Vernon, Washington has been awarded the production contract to create plug tooling for the newest aircraft on the Viperjet flight line - the Viper FanJet.

“We are really looking forward to working with Bayview during the manufacture of plugs for the new Viper FanJet.  They have a wide range of experience and great state-of-the-art facility,”  says Scott Hanchette, president, Viper Aircraft.  He adds, “In designing the next generation aircraft for Viper, one of our main focus efforts was to achieve optimum efficiency in all phases of our manufacturing, allowing each customer-built aircraft to be assembled faster and with relative ease.  This foundation starts with high quality tooling.”

The Viper FanJet is 21% larger than its predecessor, the Viperjet MK II Executive.  The Viper FanJet will accommodate an efficient engine and boasts over 25 cubic feet of baggage area.

To learn more about Viper FanJet aircraft, contact Dan Hanchette at 509.543.3570 or dan@viper-aircraft.com

As part of their work on the defense budget the HASC is going to ask the GAO to investigate whether there are too many protests. See the story here. As we have previously discussed ad nauseum there is little disincentive for a losing contractor to protest. At the best they win, and the worst they lose but it takes little time and money to cut the necessary legal documents and fax them in. With the number of large contracts declining, and their worth growing, there will continue to be protests as the various contracts awarded. It has not just been for large development and procurement contracts, there have been protests of service ones as well. The GAO dismisses most of the protests as it takes a really big screw up by the acquisition and contract people to uphold them, but the delay the programs and cost the winner and the government time and money. Since the right to protest is pretty much part of Federal contract law it will be hard to change the number without changing that, unless the Congress wants to start punishing for frivolous protests. That is not common in American legal tradition, but we will see.

According to Quantcast.com we are now in the Top Million Sites on the internet. Thanks for visiting.

As a recent GAO report highlighted the Department of Defense invests a great deal in Science, Engineering, Technical and Analysis (SETA) contracts. These contracts, and contractors, are most known as working with the military acquisition offices to provide necessary support. There are also SETA contracts with IT, testing, engineering, safety and pretty much any area that the DoD and Services are involved in. It is a large business employing thousands.

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Your humble correspondent had an article published at Seekingalpha.com on Boeing. The link is here.

The US Army Aviation Association of America (AAAA) held its convention at the National Harbor Gaylord Resort, Maryland. Our correspondent took some photos of current aircraft. See here for the photos.

Seekingalpha.com has a good article looking at the current status of the US defense industry. See the article here. This is primarily looking at it from an investing point-of-view. The gist of the article is that even if there is a drawdown after the end of the Bush administration there is still a need for various products and that the defense budget should not shrink that much.

Rakotis.llc posted an opening on our Job Board for a research position looking at weapon system historical pricing. This will support an entity in their negotiations for weapons procurement. For more information see the announcement here.

The KC-X Defense Acquisition Board met this afternoon, but there was no announcement on the contract award. The next possible time will be tomorrow after 5:00 PM EST. AFP has a good summary article here. Sometimes after a successful DAB they can announce the award right away, but there are several steps that need to be taken to do so. First the Acquisition Decision Memorandum (ADM) that comes out of the DAB must be signed by the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Logistics & Technology); and then the correct PAO steps must be taken.

According to this article in The Salt Lake Tribune, the DoD lifted the recent ban on ATK caused by a lawsuit about the quality of the flares they had delivered to the Air Force. See the article here. The lawsuit is still pending in Federal Court. An earlier post about this can be found here.

In this press release, on Albawaba.com of all places, Agility Defense and Government Services announces that they will take over the running of the Kuwait Dining Facilities (DFAC) utilized by the US military. Kuwait is the transfer station for a lot of soldiers and gear heading North to Iraq. The DFAC capability is key to this operation.

The US Department of Defense awarded Lockheed-Martin a contract to produce Improvised Explosive Device (IED) countermeasure systems. Allen-Vangaurd, a Canadian company, supplies key components to Lockheed Martin for this. Shares soared on the news.   Read the rest of this entry »

This article in DefenseNews.com details proposals by the Bush Administration to try and reform the export controls in place on US companies. While it is understood that there must be efforts to control what technology is exported out of the US, the current system is onerous and delays acquisition programs. Unfortunately, in the current world stuff has to be bought or made overseas. The big change that is discussed is clarifying when the Department of Commerce or the Department of State control an item. Any improvement in this area will only benefit the US contractors and the DoD.

Since the current war is a “Long War”, it would make sense for the Pentagon to move its wartime expenses into its regular budget appropriation. Currently, the annual appropriation funds the core of the military such as training, bases in America, regular procurement and support. The cost of the war is paid through supplemental appropriations. These are mainly the war’s Operations and Maintenance (O&M) costs and combat loss replacement of hardware. Occasionally the Pentagon will add some R&D and regular procurement into the supplemental requests, but these do not always make it through the process. According to this article at Defensenews.com, there is a proposal to include the costs of the war in the regular budget process. This would start with the FY10 Budget, which would be submitted to Congress in February, 2009. No idea if the next President would support this.

In the past the Executive Branch would implement to their best of their ability the specific funding actions in the various appropriation bills passed by Congress. One of my jobs when I worked for the Air Force acquisition office was to track all of the specific program additions, commonly called earmarks. Due to the way the laws were written these were primarily specified in the Report, usually the House bill, not in the actual text of the law. If you look at the appropriation bill status on Thomas.loc.gov you will see this. The reports are called HR.

President Bush, to protest the addition of large number of unrequested earmarks in the omnibus appropriations bill just passed by Congress says that the Executive Branch will not implement those only contained in the Report, as they are not legally binding. If he does this it will be huge. He has found a way to prevent the money being spent.

I know that we would search for a way to legally execute the money, and sometimes could not. Anyway a good discussion is here at Captains Quarters

Cross posted at Inane Taskers

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