Pentagon Defers Senate KC-X Questions
The U.S. Air Force will respond to a lawmaker’s inquiry on whether the Integrated Fleet Aerial Refueling Assessment (Ifara) can be eliminated from the armed service’s KC-X aerial refueling tanker competition, as well as comment on how important Ifara is to the award, an Air Force representative told the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) this morning.
Moroever, the Air Force will respond to a question about what options were considered to “level the playing field” after a data-release mishap last year, defense officials said during a wide-ranging and mostly theatrical hearing on the mishap. The 2.5-hour hearing, which quickly became more contentious among senators than between the panel and the witnesses, follows the Nov. 1, 2010, mishap and comes just weeks before the long-expected award announcement (Aerospace DAILY, Jan. 17).
Responses to these questions may become the most relevant outcome from the hearing and the mishap as Ifara, a model used to gauge how each aircraft will handle various operational scenarios, is important to the competition. The assessment is one of three areas that will potentially impact the final price that the bidders can offer the Air Force.
As reported by Aviation Week since the now-defunct 2008 attempt to award the KC-X program to a team of Northrop Grumman and EADS, Ifara was added to the KC-X competition after pressure from the Northrop-EADS team. It is viewed by Boeing proponents as favoring the larger EADS aircraft proposal.
The witnesses were Maj. Gen. Wendy Masiello, program executive officer for combat and mission support in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, and Steven Shirley, executive director of the Defense Department’s Cyber Crime Center. Neither official is involved in the KC-X competition, nor were they able to provide much comment on Air Force and Pentagon thinking over the mishap.
In turn, most senators used the opportunity to try to advocate for Boeing or EADS positions in the competition, depending on the potential benefits to their states from either bidder winning the award. Along the way, some legislators sought actual details on the mishap as well.
For instance, Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), the second-ranking Republican on the Democratic-controlled SASC, inquired about the role and importance of Ifara. The witnesses took the question for the record, meaning the Air Force and Pentagon officials are expected to provide answers later. “I believe we should know,” Inhofe said.
In the mishap, Air Force officials mistakenly sent files containing interim Ifara data to the wrong industry teams.
However, in an effort to level the playing field, the Air Force then released to both contractors the coversheets outlining each bidder’s performance in the Ifara model — meaning both sides now officially have the same information on the other.
Positive, efficient performance in Ifara can work in a bidder’s favor, and a design Ifara deems ineffective can have the opposite result. The data were not a definitive score. But some industry officials contend that the mix-up gave the competitors at the very least an unplanned glimpse at their rival’s design.
Recent Entries
- Free WordPress Themes for Penguin algorithm 2012
- Mazda CX9 Solar using SkyActiv technology
- How to make Browse Facebook like Pinterest using Pinview
- 2012 The Sound of Music as Woburn High’s Drama Club prepares for its annual musical production
- PlayStation 3 320GB System review
- Review Sony Vaio VCC111 Chromebook gets FCC support
- HTC Golf support by Android 4.0 operating system Ice Cream Sandwich
- New Google Play Domain-googleplayapps.com, googleplaydownloads.com and googleplaymagazines.com
- Archos ChildPad using Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and procesor 1GHz with RAM 1 GB
- Nokia 808 PureView based Symbian Nokia Belle with Carl Zeiss camera 41 megapixel.