A purported plan by the Navy and Marine Corps to delay acquisition of their versions of the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as a means to free money in the 2008 budget for other needs sounds like business as usual at the Pentagon. If true, it would undoubtedly raise production havoc and drive up costs. The Air Force’s game plan—a multiyear buy for the F-22 as a hedge against F-35 program delays—begins to look mighty shrewd.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…