The Air Force said Wednesday that it now plans to issue a “draft request for proposal amendment” to the original combat search and rescue helicopter replacement program offerors in May. USAF then plans to meet with each offeror—Boeing, the original winner, Lockheed Martin, and Sikorsky—to “address comments and answer questions prior to the release of the official RFP amendment.” Earlier, USAF had agreed to issue an RFP amendment to address the problem the Government Accountability Office cited with the original award, in which GAO said USAF failed to adhere to its own guidelines for considering operations and support costs. USAF officials apparently hope to deflect new criticism, considering there is significant Congressional interest in the re-award of the CSAR-X.
The future U.S. bomber force could provide a way for the Pentagon to simultaneously deter conflict with peer adversaries in two geographically disparate theaters, said Mark Gunzinger, the director of future concepts and capability assessments at AFA's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during a March 21 event. But doing so…