Reuters just moved this report:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley intend to resign, a congressional source told Reuters on Thursday.
The resignations come after a series of concerns about recent Air Force matters, including a controversial award of a contract for the Air Force’s elite Thunderbirds flying group and the service’s mistaken shipment of fuses for nuclear missiles to Taiwan in 2006, the source said.
“There has been a lack of accountability that raised concerns,” said the source, who had been informed about the matter.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; editing by John Wallace)
NA KOA Aviation Partners, whose obscure protest in the KC-X tanker competition we reported about Tuesday, tells us that Gen. Moseley’s possible role in the tanker procurement is an element in its protest to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). NA KOA says that it believes Moseley may have had some role in how Boeing came to believe the USAF preferred the KC-767, and this was part of NA-KOA’s protest to the GAO as well as its protest to the USAF KC-X contracting office. NA KOA asked Gates’ office to look into this prospect and when a Freedom of Information Act request was denied, went to the GAO.
In a story moved by Wired, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is quoted as saying the Air Force chiefs’ preoccupation with a surging Chinese military and a resurgence of Russia was mis-guided considering the active wars at hand. We previously reported, citing an Aviation Week news article, that the KC-30s better capabilities across the Pacific in anticipation of a Chinese conflict was one element of the USAF decision selecting the KC-30 over the KC-767.
NA KOA believes this development will have a direct bearing on the Boeing protest and its own.