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Procurement Riddle: 10 Things to Reverse the Trend This slide was prepared as a support slide for “Hondo” Geurts’s presentation on SOF acquisition (.pdf) at last week’s SOFIC. We don’t believe he actually used it, but it essentially illustrates the multifaceted procurement riddle: The essential riddle is this: even as the rest of the world iterates faster, military procurement takes longer and longer to field technology, and costs more and more — with the usual Congressional or Pentagon response to soaring unit costs being to cut procurement quantities or stretch out procurement costs, which really blows out unit costs. (See:...

The Army has decided to cut the XM806 Lightweight .50 Caliber Machine Gun program. The XM806 was a scaled down version of the 25mm XM307 Advanced Crew Served Weapon, which was also cut before it went into production. The XM806 was originally going to be deployed this year, but delays pushed the expected deployment date back to late 2013 or early 2014. Military Times reports that the money allocated to the XM806 will be used to upgrade the Army's .50 M2 Browning machine guns to the M2A1 version. Earlier this year the Army announced plans to upgrade every M2 to...

The Hawaii Air National Guard said Tuesday one of its pilots briefly experienced an oxygen deficit while flying an F-22 stealth fighter last week. The pilot was heading back to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam from a routine training sortie when sensors indicated he wasn’t getting as much oxygen as he should, said Lt. Col. Charles Anthony, a spokesman for the Hawaii Guard. The pilot also felt dizzy. He activated the emergency oxygen system until his symptoms abated and the plane’s oxygen generating system returned to normal. The pilot landed safely after Friday’s incident, the first time a Hawaii F-22 pilot...

The cost of maintaining and repairing the fleet of U.S. F-35s has been set at $1 trillion. But facing increasing fiscal pressure, Congress is asking manufacturer Lockheed Martin to find a cheaper way. WSJ's Nathan Hodge reports from Washington. A new Pentagon forecast showing the total cost of owning and operating a fleet of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters topping $1 trillion over more than 50 years has caused a case of sticker shock in Washington. And that price tag doesn't even include the $385 billion the Defense Department will spend to purchase 2,500 of the stealthy planes through 2035. During...