In a hastily convened conference call with journalists, the Navy pushed back today against recent congressional criticisms of its Littoral Combat Ship. Yesterday, the LCS program took a 1-2 blow from BreakingDefense, which got a draft of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report questioning the Navy’s cost estimates to operate it. There was also one… Keep reading →
CAPITOL HILL: The Navy is 90 percent sure its current estimated cost to operate and maintain the controversial Littoral Combat Ship is off target, according to a draft Government Accountability Office report obtained by BreakingDefense. According to the anonymous authors – whose diagnosis, we should emphasize, is not yet the official and fully vetted conclusion… Keep reading →
The Army’s newest attack helicopter is on track, the colonel in charge said in response to congressional concerns: Delays in manufacturing transmissions for the Boeing-built AH-64E Guardian have neither driven up the price nor slowed its fielding to combat units.
[But there are still unflyable AH-64Es on the Army's hands: click here to read the latest on this story] Keep reading →
CAPITOL HILL: Congress has asked the Army to explain why it has officially taken delivery of at least seven AH-64E Apache Guardian helicopters that don’t have transmissions installed yet, Breaking Defense has learned. An unidentified subcontractor to Boeing which makes the helicopter, fell behind on building the transmissions and is now trying to catch up, but until it does, the high-tech gunships are unflyable.
[Click here for the Army's response and click here for relevations from Congress] Keep reading →
On Thursday, we published a story about potential problems with the long-delayed move of Marine forces from Okinawa to Guam and elsewhere in the Pacific outlined in a draft GAO report obtained exclusively by Breaking Defense. As you’ll see below, the Pentagon had not seen it. After the article came out, a Defense Department spokesperson, Maj. Cathy Wilkinson, contacted us and then provided the following written rebuttal to the article. Our comments are in italics:
It’s important to note this is a draft report, not a final version of the report. We have not seen the draft report so we can’t comment on it; however, as discussed on the phone, we are concerned with a few points in the article. Keep reading →
WASHINGTON: Sloppy number-crunching at the Department of Defense means that the official price tag to move 9,000 Marines off Okinawa to Guam, Hawaii, and Australia – already estimated at a whopping $10.6 billion – is probably short of the real cost, according to a draft Government Accountability Office (GAO) report obtained by Breaking Defense.
[Update: Click here for the Pentagon's rebuttal of GAO] Keep reading →
[UPDATED 12:45 pm] Truck maker Navistar is withdrawing the protest it filed Friday with the Government Accountability Office over the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program, company spokeswoman Elissa Koc told Breaking Defense this morning.
Had Navistar persisted, its protest probably would have delayed JLTV development for months while the GAO investigated whether the military ran the competition fairly. Keep reading →
UPDATED: Navistar has withdrawn its protest — click here for the latest.
Buy 54,599 armored trucks at $250,000 each and that works out to roughly $13.6 billion. Keep reading →
WASHINGTON: Even as two Navy admirals praised the Littoral Combat Ship to reporters in a hastily convened conference call, the House Armed Services Committee ordered the Government Accountability Office to investigate the program.
[CORRECTED (9 p.m. Wednesday) To Reflect That Navy Had Planned Interview For More Than A Week] Keep reading →
Washington: Less than a week after the Army awarded multimillion development deals for its Ground Combat Vehicle, an industry protest has brought the program to a grinding halt.
The protest was filed with the Government Accountability Office today by the SAIC-Boeing team, which lost out on the large Army contract. Keep reading →
Colin Clark
Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr.