The Air Force plans to include billions of dollars in the upcoming five-year defense plan for a new long range strike platform, which DOD wants to see fielded by 2018, an unnamed defense official told Reuters news service. John Young, defense research and engineering director, voiced his concern earlier this month that the Air Force might miss the program objective memorandum deadline, thereby making it impossible to meet DOD’s aggressive timetable. The nameless official told Reuters that the Air Force would earmark “substantial resources” in the 2008 POM to make the 2018 deadline.
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.
