CSBA in the News

With the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration set to start taking effect March 1st, we’re going to see a lot of interesting last-minute plays to stop them. It’s almost certain none of them will work. But Rep. Randy Forbes’s bill introduced this morning, H.R. 773, at least offers the virtue of simplicity: At the stroke of a pen, it would erase half of the sequestration cuts — about $50 billion this year, $600 billion over a decade — those that apply to the Department of Defense.

Indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts with multiple winners, such as the Defense Logistics Agency’s Tailored Logistics Support Program and the Navy’s Sea Port-Enhanced, can ensure competition based on both quality and cost at the task order level.

If sequestration happens March 1, F-35 officials have made it clear they will be forced to slow production and delay flight tests. Both steps will make each plane that is ultimately bought more expensive.

Special ops are critical to this strategy both to kill terrorists today (direct action) and to train friendly forces to kill terrorists by themselves tomorrow (the indirect approach). The model for this synergistic “yin and yang” is recent operations in Afghanistan.

A potential funding shortage of $8.6 billion over the remainder of this fiscal year has prompted Navy leaders to call off the deployment of one aircraft carrier and delay the overhaul and refueling of another.

The Pentagon “might not have enough funds” to pay for its health-care system under automatic spending cuts set to take effect March 1, according to Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter/…/