The Air Force is conducting an internal review of its acquisition processes and has brought on the Center for Naval Analysis to examine them with a fresh set of outside eyes to help support a smooth transition to President-elect Barack Obama’s Administration, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said Nov. 12. Speaking to an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Donley said the Air Force does have “some challenges” on the acquisition front. “Is there room for improvement? Yes,” he acknowledged. “Are we working on it? Yes,” he said. The two reviews are meant to provide “actionable recommendations” by the end of the calendar year “on how we can improve the situation,” Donley said. The goal, he added, is “to set the table” for the new Administration, providing it with “a menu of options with pros and cons understood” on how to move forward with issues such as KC-X tanker recapitalization. As we know, getting a new tanker on the ramp has been no easy task (see below).
The U.S. military needs to wake up to the fact that global dominance is no longer a viable strategy for national defense, because pursuing that unrealizable goal is making the country less safe, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said April 22. Emerging defense technologies like swarms of…