A team headed by Boeing and another headed by Raytheon will develop competing concepts for the Small Diameter Bomb, Increment II program. Boeing, whose team includes former competitor Lockheed Martin, will get $145.7 million and Raytheon $143.9 million for the work. USAF expects to select a preferred design in 2009, and to have the winner equip first units in 2014. The SDB II is to be a 250-pound-class weapon that can hunt down moving targets in all weather from standoff range. The SDB II program was to have gotten started several years ago, but became mired in the Darleen Druyun acquisition scandal. That heartburn led the Air Force to issue three draft requests for proposal and conduct “extensive and open discussion with the potential offerors.” That way, said an Air Force spokesman, the service “could ensure there were no ambiguities … and that the competitors would understand the exact requirements.”
Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.