Contractors proposing concepts for the Air Force’s Long-Range Strike Bomber can offer better than the Air Force’s minimum requirements and get paid for them if the price is right, service acquisition head William LaPlante told Air Force Magazine. Although USAF has shown laudable “discipline” on not changing the LRS-B requirements, which he said have remained fixed since 2010 and can only be altered by the Chief of Staff, the service is trying to structure the request for proposals such that contractors can offer “more than the lowest-acceptable technology” solution. However, there are relatively strict limits on weight and volume in the airplane, and any capability over and above the threshold “has to earn its way on” to the aircraft. The strategy is in keeping with the Pentagon’s “Better Buying Power” guidelines, which allow rewarding contractors who offer substantially more capability for only marginally higher cost.
Pentagon officials overseeing homeland counter-drone strategy told lawmakers that even with preliminary moves to bolster U.S. base defenses, the military still lacks the capability to comprehensively identify, track, and engage hostile drones like those that breached the airspace of Langley Air Force Base in Virginia for 17 days in December…