An Air Force spokesman told the Daily Report yesterday that the service does plan next month to issue its final request for proposals on the aerial refueling aircraft replacement program, dubbed KC-X. Spokesman Don Manuszewski confirmed the December RFP and that the service plans to select a winner from two competitors—Boeing and the Northrop Grumman-EADS team—in September 2007. A report late Monday from Reuters news service cited “three sources” that said the Air Force might delay program award by two years until 2009. That would be mighty unwelcome news, since the service’s 40-plus year old KC-135 tankers are not getting any younger, and Air Force leaders just last month made the KC-X the service’s No. 1 procurement priority.
The stand-up of the Space Force, and now its early overhaul and the creation of a new Space Systems Command, are all about resilience: Ensuring that space capabilities, which the whole country relies on, could survive a concerted attack by a near-peer adversary. As part of that drive, a new…