National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Chair, I rise to commend the Armed Services Committee on their good work in a number of areas in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, but I have a concern with the report language from section 815 that I would like to bring to the chairman of the committee's attention.

I certainly approve of utilizing competition to both improve contract performance and cost effectiveness of weapons systems. However, I want to bring to attention the fact that the C 17 and its F117 engines have been a model of modern sustainment. Today, time-on-wing for F117 engines has doubled since the start of this sustainment program while making multiple design and hardware upgrades.

Today, the F117 engines are sustained through an award-winning performance based on logistics contracts that minimize life-cycle costs with fixed fees based on flight cycles. This contract type requires comprehensive understanding and investment by the service provider, along with the engineering design expertise to develop and implement improvements in response to the actual mission.

I support the use of every practical means of providing for the efficient defense of this country in the protection of our warfighters. That includes the appropriate use of competition and any other contracting method that incentivizes positive outcomes for cost effectiveness and performance. In fact, the Air Force has taken steps to ensure these outcomes are achieved on the C 17 sustainment contract. As we push the Air Force and other services to extend the practices further, we must always keep reliability and readiness of the weapons system in mind.

I look forward to working with the chairman to address these issues in conference, and I yield to the gentleman from California.

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