By Emelie Rutherford
The Pentagon will say this week if it will enter into a multi-year contract with Boeing [BA] for F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, a spokesman said yesterday afternoon.
The Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation has been reviewing a multi-year contract offer the Chicago-based company submitted in February.
Boeing said it has offered a F/A-18E/F multi-year contract that would generate a 10 percent savings to the government compared to traditional annual contracts, which is the minimum savings sought by the Pentagon for a multi-year deal.
However, Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 11 he wanted to see savings in the “teens.”
“We’ve indicated that the threshold of interest is 10 percent, that’s just the threshold of interest and so we would look for savings in the teens in order for that to be an interesting proposition to the (Defense) Department and for the taxpayer,” Carter said at the time.
The Pentagon is working under a May 1 deadline for certifying, or not certifying, the multi-year deal to Congress.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell acknowledged the deadline of May 1, which is tomorrow, to reporters yesterday.
The review, he said, was “still being worked,” adding he could share its results “certainly by Saturday,” which is tomorrow.