The Congressional newspaper, The Hill, reports that key lawmakers in the House believe the Senate is on the right track with its push to get the Administration to put funding for the war on terror into the DOD budget. They want to stop the seemingly endless run of “emergency supplementals.” There is clear precedent for stopping the use of supplementals for a protracted war, as seen in a recent Congressional Research Service recap of funding over the years for the wars in Korea and Vietnam. There was a large supplemental in the first year for Korea, then the preponderance of funding shifted to regular appropriations. For Vietnam over the course of 11 years, there were five supplementals of greatly decreasing amounts from 1966 on.
The Air Force on March 12 awarded contract modifications worth a combined $2.4 billion to Boeing to procure an undisclosed number of E-7 Wedgetail as part of the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase and continue work on the airborne battle management aircraft’s radar.