President Bush on April 25 nominated Sue Payton, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Advanced Systems and Concepts, to become the Air Force’s top acquisition official. The post has been vacant since the resignation of Marvin Sambur in January 2005. Payton has previous Pentagon experience, serving as acting director of defense research and engineering, and worked for defense contractors Martin Marietta and Lockheed Martin. She has a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Illinois University and a master’s from the University of Southern California.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall doesn’t see great value in trying to break the Sentinel ICBM program off as a separate budget item the way the Navy has with its ballistic-missile submarine program, saying such a move wouldn’t create any new money for the Air Force to spend on other…