Contenders Line Up for JCA: There’s been a flurry of activity on the Joint Cargo Aircraft program, with three separate teams offering their respective platforms for the competition. Lockheed Martin formally said it would offer a short-fuselage variant of its combat-tested C-130J Hercules. The team of Raytheon and EADS CASA North America is sticking with two intratheater airlifters, the C-295 and CN-235—to be constructed in Mobile, Ala. And, the Boeing –L3 Communications-Alenia North America team does plan to offer the C-27J Spartan. Now, all the program needs is Army money for 2007.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
