Despite continued complaints from one of the two likely competitors for the KC-X tanker program, Gen. Norton Schwartz, USAF Chief of Staff, maintains that the forthcoming request for proposals is on the mark. He told a Washington, D.C., conference Wednesday, “I believe we got the requirements right.” He expects the RFP to hit the street within a month of release of the 2011 defense budget, now slated for the first week in February. The Northrop Grumman-EADS team has said it will pull out of the competition if the final RFP did not reflect major adjustments over the draft version. Most recently, new EADS North American boss, Sean O’Keefe asserted the “replacement program” RFP would not give his team a “fair” chance.
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.