: With the changes that the Air Force has instituted in the past few years, its means of assessing contract bids and then choosing winning proposals is sound, Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford, military assistant to USAF’s acquisition executive said Tuesday. “We don’t have a fundamentally flawed source-selection process,” he said during an Air Force Association-sponsored Air Force Breakfast Series presentation in Arlington, Va. His comments came on the eve of the release of the much-anticipated KC-X tanker solicitation (see Launch Point above). In fact, in 2009, there was only one industry protest sustained over an Air Force contract decision, and only two in 2008, he said. The Air Force’s guiding principles in this regard are whether the source-selection process was conducted correctly and if the decision is defensible, he said. (For more Shackelford, see Basically a Predator on Steroids below.)
U.S. Southern Command recently announced its first lethal strike on a suspected narco-trafficking vessel in two months, and the first under a newly formed permanent counter-cartel task force. The U.S. is also reportedly planning to transfer MQ-9 drones to Colombia to bolster its counter-cartel efforts.