Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), second-time Presidential candidate and frequent Air Force critic, has asked for documentation on the Air Force award of the combat search and rescue helicopter replacement program to Boeing last year, reports the Congressional newspaper The Hill. In a letter sent to Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne last week, McCain questions whether requirements changed during the award process resulting in “a system that provides a very different capability” than battlefield commanders requested. USAF’s choice of the Boeing HH-47 surprised many. Now, after the Government Accountability Office sustained protests from Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky, the Air Force will reopen the process to allow each competitor to revise its proposals based on the protest issue and could award CSAR-X to any one of the original three.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
