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Inside
the Air Force
In
anticipation of year-long delay . . .
AIR
FORCE OFFICIALS PULL $123 MILLION OUT OF CSAR-X PROGRAM
COFFERS
Date: July 6, 2007
Air
Force budget officials are preparing to siphon off $123 million
from the service’s embattled combat search and rescue
helicopter program to finance other service initiatives. The move
was prompted by an anticipated year-long delay in production of
the next-generation rotorcraft, according to service documents.
The plan to redistribute CSAR-X funding to other parts of the
service’s budget is part of a Defense Department omnibus
reprogramming action request submitted to Capitol Hill last week.
The reprogramming actions seek to readjust service spending
levels set within the fiscal year 2007 defense appropriations
act.
Regarding the effort to reallocate CSAR-X dollars,
service officials stated that the program “has experienced
schedule delays beyond its control,” due to the raft of
industry protests filed against the service since it awarded
Boeing a multi million-dollar development contract last November.
At that time the Boeing-manufactured HH-47 beat out
industry offerings by Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin, who pitched
the HH-92 and US101 respectively, as the CSAR-X solution. Since
then, both industry competitors have filed protests with the
Government Accountability Office, claiming the Air Force unfairly
evaluated each company’s proposal. GAO auditors upheld the
first round of protests filed by Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin
shortly after the Boeing award. The decision prompted Air Force
officials to issue a new proposals request on CSAR-X with
revamped evaluation criteria for life-cycle costs, reflecting the
GAO’s decision. Along with issuing the new RFP, service
officials also requested their own GAO review on secondary
competition grievances brought up but never addressed in the
first round of protests. In that review, the government watchdog
agency dismissed those grievances and gave the Air Force the
green light to proceed with the new RFP.
Since the
release of the new RFP last month, Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin
officials have again decided to file another round of protests
with the GAO, this time claiming the changes made in the new RFP
did not fulfill the intent of the GAO’s decision made last
November. This most recent protest will mark the third time GAO
auditors will have reviewed the program’s acquisition
process. Boeing has been under a stop-work order by the Air Force
since the first industry protest was filed last November. “The
likely result is a 9 [to] 12-month slip in [initial operating
capability] from the fourth quarter of 2012 to the fourth quarter
of 2013, and a one-year delay in the development of the Block 0
CSAR-X SDD effort,” service officials said in their
reprogramming request. To that end, defense committees in both
chambers levied cuts to the program in their versions of the
defense authorization plans for fiscal year 2008. Recently,
members of the Senate Armed Services Committee opted to cut $153
billion from CSAR-X coffers. “Although the committee
strongly supports the CSAR-X program, there is no need to
authorize more money for the program,” members stated in
the report accompanying the bill. House members approved their
version of the defense authorization bill on May 17. Their Senate
counterparts are expected to begin debate on their authorization
bill next week.
Along with pulling funds from the CSAR-X
development, service officials are also looking to shift
additional dollars into the service’s current CSAR fleet. A
portion of those reallocated CSAR dollars will fund “critical
safety of flight modifications” on a number of HH-60 Pave
Hawks which make up the service’s current combat search and
rescue fleet. Service officials are planning to redirect $10
million into engine upgrades for the aging Pave Hawk fleet,
according to the reprogramming request. “The HH-60s have
been continuously deployed for 17 years performing missions
worldwide in extremely demanding environments,” the
document states. “Insufficient power has contributed to at
least seven Class A mishaps with two fatalities.”
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