The protest-plagued KC-135 programmed depot maintenance award to Boeing is still under scrutiny, but on May 2, the Government Accountability Office issued a decision that dismissed a portion of the latest protest by losing competitor Pemco Aeroplex (now Alabama Aircraft Industries). Earlier the GAO had ruled in favor of the original Pemco protest, which led the Air Force to re-evaluate the risk it assigned to the Boeing proposal. Not satisfied with the re-evaluation, Pemco filed a new protest March 11 and added a supplement on March 21, charging that USAF had misstated its actual requirements and should reopen the entire competition. GAO noted that “no decision has been reached” by the Air Force on the type of changes—numbers of aircraft to receive PDM and the timing of PDM cycles—upon which Pemco based its March 21 supplement. That being the case, GAO said, “Pemco’s protest is premature.” However, the Congressional watchdog agency noted that “the merits of the March 11 protest are currently being considered.”
The Air Force kicked off one of its biggest exercises this week with the latest edition of Bamboo Eagle, featuring combined virtual and live training scenarios focused on test the command-and-control “nervous system” leaders need to operate on a complex joint battlefield spread over vast distances.
