The recent report of command influence in award of an Air Force contract for promotion of its Thunderbird aerial demonstration team naturally has attracted Congressional interest, so it is unlikely that Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne will be able to quickly put this to rest. In fact, on April 17, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a member of the Senate Armed Services and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees, sent a letter to Wynne, writing, “I am concerned that there has beeninsufficient punishment and a lack of corrective actions taken.” McCaskill has targeted defense contracting improprieties before, attacking in many cases a lack of accountability among senior military leaders. In her letter, she directly challenges comments by Chief of Staff Michael Moseley, in which he apparently directed some blame toward lower level personnel who failed to cry fowl during the source selection process. As we reported previously, the Pentagon Inspector General made no recommendations about Moseley, but the IG report contains numerous references to his exchanges with principals in the matter. McCaskill writes that she is “deeply troubled by the tenor of General Moseley’s comments about this matter.” Moseley has told reporters that he believes he has done nothing improper, but if he were able to do things over, he would not have engaged in conversations with Strategic Message Solutions officials during the source selection.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.