With the Air Force retiring its C-130Es (see above) and the current C-130J multiyear winding down, USAF acquisition has been working to jump start a new multiyear procurement authority to get to 172 J model Hercules, Maj. Gen. David Gray, director of global reach programs for USAF acquisition, said Tuesday at the Pentagon. Under the original multiyear procurement (done with the Marine Corps), the Air Force is scheduled to receive its final nine C-130Js in Fiscal 2010. “We are already in discussions with Lockheed in trying to build a case to take to Congress to justify a multiyear,” Gray told reporters, adding that his office, the program office, and Lockheed began discussions “in earnest” last week. “We’ve got a lot of homework to do before we can do that,” he added, noting he wants to use all the variants of C-130Js (combat delivery and special mission airframes) in the potential buy to get the numbers up as close to the requirement as possible. Earlier this year, Lockheed officials told the Daily Report the company had provided an unsolicited firm fixed-price multiyear proposal to deliver 24 J models a year beginning in Fiscal 2011 and ending in 2015. Gray would not speculate on the size of the multiyear, saying the strategy had not been finalized yet.
The Government Accountability Office wants the Air Force to explain who will run bases when wings deploy under the service’s new force generation model along with several other unanswered questions, saying the concept is long on vision but short on details.