: With the changes that the Air Force has instituted in the past few years, its means of assessing contract bids and then choosing winning proposals is sound, Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford, military assistant to USAF’s acquisition executive said Tuesday. “We don’t have a fundamentally flawed source-selection process,” he said during an Air Force Association-sponsored Air Force Breakfast Series presentation in Arlington, Va. His comments came on the eve of the release of the much-anticipated KC-X tanker solicitation (see Launch Point above). In fact, in 2009, there was only one industry protest sustained over an Air Force contract decision, and only two in 2008, he said. The Air Force’s guiding principles in this regard are whether the source-selection process was conducted correctly and if the decision is defensible, he said. (For more Shackelford, see Basically a Predator on Steroids below.)
The Air Force is a user of cyber infrastructure but isn't good at creating it, so it should rely on industry systems to stay ahead in the "arms race" of hacking attacks, service chief scientist and former DARPA director Victoria Coleman said during an AFA Mitchell Institute streaming event May…