The Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday took up Michael Wynne’s nomination to be Secretary of the Air Force. Though Sen. Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat, thought Wynne’s involvement in the tanker controversy would be a non-issue (DR, 10/06/05), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) couldn’t pass it up. McCain, who led the attack on the Air Force over the propriety of a tanker-lease deal, also demanded assurances that Wynne had a plan to overcome cost overruns in several major USAF programs. Wynne assured him that he planned to balance technology, requirements, and schedules. He emphasized the need to give program managers more authority to say “no” to add-ons to control costs.
The Pentagon's research labs are ramping up their search for munitions that can be mass-produced—an effort likely to be buoyed by billions of dollars in the department's new fiscal 2027 budget request and tens of billions in the upcoming years. While the topline information shared about the President’s defense budget…