The Senate confirmed William LaPlante to be the next assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition last week, according to a Feb. 18 Air Force release. LaPlante, who currently serves as the principal deputy to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, will fill the spot left vacant since Sue Payton left the position in April 2009. “I’ve spent over 28 years around systems technologies, acquisition programs; touching all aspects of those programs for all services,” he said during a Jan. 16 confirmation hearing. “This experience, along with my time on the Defense Science Board, offers first-hand impressions of defense acquisition.”
Lockheed Martin projects more than a billion dollars of losses on a classified program, but company officials said April 23 they are confident it will turn profitable by 2028 and become a "franchise" system in the U.S. military.