Thursday afternoon’s hearing of the House Armed Services airland subcommittee on the KC-X tanker program started with testimony by the Government Accountability Office and didn’t pick up with John Young, the Pentagon’s acquisition czar, until after 5:30 p.m. Air Force acquisition executive Sue Payton was pulled from the original witness list for the open session; she was still expected to appear behind closed doors with the panel upon conclusion of yesterday’s public session. We will be updating the column on Friday morning with hearing coverage.
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.