October 2, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
By: Aaron Mehta and Joe Gould
WASHINGTON – Following a wave of criticism from the defense industry and members of Congress, the Pentagon on Monday backed off proposed changes to how companies receive cash flow on their contracts.
In a statement released at the unusual time of 7:19 PM, Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said the decision to withdraw the proposed acquisition changes stemmed from a lack of “coordination” inside the department.
“Recently, proposed amendments to the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) were prematurely released, absent full coordination,” Shanahan's statement read. “As a result, the Department will rescind the proposed amendments. In coordination with industry, the Department will create a revised rule to implement section 831 of the FY2017 NDAA.”
"The department will continue to partner closely with Congress and industry to examine all reform opportunities, ensuring we provide the best value to taxpayers and critical capabilities to military personnel who defend this great Nation,” Shanahan said.
Unsaid in the statement: that since word of the proposed changes got out, the defense industry has been loud and unanimous in its opposition, and has enlisted its supporters on the Hill to help fight against the plan, put forth by Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord.
As part of a broader set of changes to the acquisition rules, Lord hoped to change how companies receive their cash flow based on performance measurements, to act as an incentive for good behavior.
In a Sept. 5 interview with Defense News, she laid out the rationale, saying “I believe the lifeblood of most industry is cash flow, so what we will do is regulate the percentage of payments or the amount of profit that can be achieved through what type of performance they demonstrate by the numbers.”
However, three major trade groups — The National Defense Industrial Association, Professional Services Council and the Aerospace Industries Association — objected to the proposal, which would slash the payments on work to be performed from 80 percent to 50 percent, with incremental increases for maintaining quality or on-time delivery — and decreases for companies that have committed fraud.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, sent a Sept. 21 letter to Shanahan calling the proposal “fundamentally flawed" and asking that it be rescinded and revisited.
“We should not make it harder to do business with the Department of Defense than it is to do business with other parts of government — and that's exactly what this regulation does,” Thornberry told reporters last Tuesday. “We try to streamline acquisition, we try to make it easier to do business with these small companies; and then something like this comes out.”
The Pentagon had hoped to implement the rule changes by the end of the year and had planned to hold a public meeting on Oct. 10, before the public comment period ended on Oct. 23. Whether that event will still happen is unclear.
April 24, 2022 | International, Aerospace
Trois des quatre principales composantes de l'armée américaine ont exprimé le besoin d'acquérir en 2023 davantage d'avions de combat F-35 que ne le prévoit le Pentagone dans son projet de budget, a rapporté ces dernières semaines la presse spécialisée.
August 1, 2023 | International, Aerospace, Security
June 13, 2019 | International, Other Defence
By Christian Lowe As the U.S. military shifts its focus back to fighting more traditional, near-peer adversaries like Russian or Chinese troops, the services are building out plans to revamp their gear to deal with better-equipped forces backed by money and technology from world powers. That extends all the way down to the clothing and equipment each of these adversaries could be wearing into battle, including sophisticated body armor. That's why SOCOM is reportedly looking at replacing its decades-old armor piercing small arms round. “Snipers in USSOCOM units have a capability gap in their ability to penetrate enemy body armor, small boat engines and concrete barriers,” Crane researchers said in a slide presentation at this year's National Defense Industries Association Armaments Symposium. The current round uses a discarding sabot the shields a sharpened tungsten penetrator that'll beat most armor and hard targets. But that round is expensive at more than $10 per cartridge, can damage modern small arms accessories like suppressors and muzzle brakes and doesn't hold zero when switching from a traditional jacketed round to the AP round. That makes it difficult for snipers to go from one round to another and hit their target in the heat of battle. So researchers at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana, are looking at a new way to make the rounds cheaper, easier on snipers' guns and more ballistically consistent with common, jacketed bullets. Dubbed “aeroshell” projectiles, the Crane engineers want to build and test bullets with a tungsten penetrator jacketed in a polymer shell. Federal Ammunition, a civilian ammo company, makes rounds with similar characteristics dubbed “Syntech." These rounds are typically used by competitive shooters who shoot many rounds in practice and at matches and want to preserve barrel life and diminish spawl from hitting steel targets. Crane researchers want to take the same thought process and apply it to a new AP round. The actual penetrator could have a slightly different shape than the current rounds, with more of a traditional bullet profile than today's needle-like AP round penetrator. Researchers plan to create about 150 rounds of this new aeroshell AP round in .338 Norma Mag, 300 Norma Mag and 6.5 Creedmoor. They plan to test the rounds against representative body armor at 100, 400, 800 and 1,000 meters. https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/gearscout/kit/2019/06/11/socom-wants-a-new-armor-piercing-sniper-bullet-heres-one-option-engineers-are-developing/