Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday reiterated the Pentagon leadership’s message that it would prefer to have both Boeing and Northrop Grumman remain in the KC-X tanker contest, but would press on if only one company decides to submit a bid. “Obviously, we would like to have a competition,” he told the House Armed Services Committee when testifying on the Administration’s proposed defense budget for Fiscal 2011. But should that not be the case, Gates said DOD would “move forward,” since Air Force tanker recapitalization has already “been delayed too long.” The final KC-X request for proposals is expected to hit the streets later this month or in early March. Northrop’s team has been unhappy with the draft RFP’s language and has called for changes that, in its words, give it a fair shot at winning. Otherwise, it has threatened to withdraw itself from consideration.
The Defense Innovation Unit is gearing up for the first flight of its commercially developed hypersonic testbed as soon as the end of February—part of a larger project to quickly increase the cadence of the Pentagon’s hypersonic flight testing and field advanced, high-speed systems and components at scale.
