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USA Today / Associate Press
Reno-based Tactical Air Support Inc. saves the government money, said CEO RC Thompson. It is the only commercial company in the world with the turboprop aircraft Super Tucano, which is used by nine air forces around the world, according to an Associated Press report.
Nevadans are frustrated with the failure of Washington, D.C., politicians to reach a deal Friday to avoid $85 billion in automatic budget cuts.
The across-the-board cuts to both government defense and domestic spending will make it harder for Nevada medical researchers, small business owners and airport employees to do their jobs.
“The science is difficult anyway,” said James Kenyon, senior associate dean for research at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. “We’re used to difficult. What (the sequester) makes it for us is very frustrating because we would like to be doing this research that has been identified as highly meritorious by our peers.”
Nevada receives about $20 million a year from the federal National Institutes of Health for research. About $18 million of it goes to the medical school based in Reno. Current research projects include mechanisms in male infertility, development of a cure for muscular dystrophy, investigation of heart disease and several neuroscience studies.
The medical school staff is expecting the federal grant amounts to be cut by about 10 percent, which would mean a loss of $2 million in biomedical research funds in the state, Kenyon said.
The cuts would affect purchases of supplies and equipment and, eventually, employment of researchers, graduate assistants and doctoral fellows.
“At the very least, this is going to slow down projects and some projects simply won’t be done,” he said.
The effects already have been felt as the NIH has been slow to award grants, and Kenyon said he expects that current projects will get lower funding this year.
Details are unknown about which programs will be targeted and how the budget cuts will be implemented, he said. The NIH funding can’t be found anywhere else.
Small businesses with government contracts also are bracing for slowdowns.
Reno-based Tactical Air Support Inc. saves the government money, said CEO RC Thompson.
The company, which was founded in 2006 by a group of Top Gun instructors who served at the Naval Air Station in Fallon, provides consulting and air services to the military.
“Our whole model was to help the military to save money and maintain readiness,” Thompson said.
The former instructors and pilots help develop tactical plans and provide insight to engineers who are building future aircraft and weapon systems.
The company also provides basic fighter pilot training at a lower expense because the aircraft they use costs less to operate than the advanced fighter jets.
It is the only commercial company in the world with the turboprop aircraft Super Tucano, which is used by nine air forces around the world, according to an Associated Press report.
This week, Sparks-based Sierra Nevada and Embraer, based in Brazil, were awarded a controversial $427 million U.S. Air Force contract to build at least 20 of the light air-support planes for use in Afghanistan.
Tactical Air positioned itself to be a U.S. expert in the Super Tucano, Thompson said.
“Realistically, budget cuts are good for us because we save the government money,” he said. “So, that’s a good thing. The bad thing is the cuts right now aren’t making any sense. So, even though we have a program that saves the government money, we’re very concerned because we are in danger of having our contracts cut.”
Thompson also faces slower contract payments from the federal government.
“When you are a small business, cash flow is king,” Thompson said.
While Tactical Air won’t go out of business if the sequester lingers, he said, it might have to change directions to international clients and potentially cut jobs.
It employees about 30 full-time people across the country. But the sequester means that they might lose 20 people because the bulk of their contracts come from the U.S. government.
“These cuts will hurt our economy, they will cost us jobs,” President Barack Obama told reporters after meeting 52 minutes on Friday with congressional leaders on the impact of the massive cuts, which are set to begin at midnight.
Obama attributed the “dumb, arbitrary cuts” to Republican refusal to agree to a new debt reduction plan that includes higher taxes on wealthy Americans through the closing of loopholes and deductions.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said after the meeting that Obama got a tax increase in the January agreement to end the last budget impasse, the so-called fiscal cliff.
“The discussion about revenue in my view is over,” Boehner said. “It’s about cutting the spending in Washington.”
The Federal Aviation Administration already announced its plans to address the budget cuts.
It was reported last week that the Reno-Tahoe International Airport could lose the midnight shift for air traffic controllers beginning April 1 because of furloughs, the FAA said.
While the control tower would not be manned overnight, pilots can still land and take off from the airport safely if they observe FAA-recommended procedures, according to the FAA website.
Thousands of airports across the country have no towers, and basic right-of-way and established traffic-flow rules exist to prevent collisions.
Pilots are responsible for their own safety by communicating with each other about runway and air space locations, FAA officials said.
USA Today and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
So what is the latest with this company ? Can anyone provide some honest insight? Seems like the same ole thing. Anything coming up? All nice ideas but but will it EVER fly ? I HAVE SEEN UFO's
Countermove: Sierra Nevada announced that it filed a motion with the US Court of Federal Claims asking for judicial review of the results of the Air Force's commander-directed investigation into the Light Air Support program.
"We believe it is important to the goals of transparency, a fair and open competition, and the integrity of the process that the court now review the results," said Taco Gilbert, Sierra Nevada's vice president of intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance business development.
The company filed the motion on April 16. In December, the Air Force chose Sierra Nevada to provide 20 LAS airplanes to the Afghan air force. The Air Force subsequently withdrew the contract after realizing that its source-selection documentation was lacking in the face of the still-pending federal lawsuit filed by Hawker Beechcraft after the disqualification of the company's AT-6 aircraft at a late stage in the LAS competition.
The Air Force announced on April 13 that part 1 of the CDI was completed. "Now that material information exists on this pivotal issue, so it is in the best interest of all parties that it be reviewed as a part of Hawker Beechcraft's continuing lawsuit," stated Gilbert.
Take Two:
The Air Force on Monday intends to issue the amended draft solicitation for the Light Air Support program, announced service officials last week. The original offerors, Hawker Beechcraft and Sierra Nevada, will be eligible to participate in the restarted program to supply 20 multirole light-attack aircraft to the Afghan air force starting in mid 2014—a delay of some 15 months compared to the program's original schedule, they said in a release. Service officials plan to meet separately on Monday with representatives from both companies to discuss the terms of the revised draft proposal, states the release.
Both companies will have the opportunity to submit comments; the Air Force expects to release the final version of the amended request for proposal by April 30. Service officials aim to award the LAS contract early next year, enabling "the first aircraft delivery to Afghanistan in third quarter 2014," states the release.
The Air Force chose Sierra Nevada at the end of last year as the LAS supplier. The service subsequently withdrew the company's contract after discovering that the documentation justifying its decision to procure 20 modified A-29 Super Tucanos was inadequate. That decision gives Hawker Beechcraft's A-6 another shot.
Revised LAS Solicitation Coming:
The Air Force is likely several weeks away from issuing an amended request for proposal for the Light Air Support aircraft program, said Secretary Michael Donley Thursday. "There will be a slightly revised RFP going forward," he told defense reporters in Washington, D.C. Donley said the revised RFP would include "minor adjustments." Among them, he said, will be efforts to mitigate the unavoidable schedule delay caused by the program's recent turbulence. The Air Force in late February withdrew its contract to Sierra Nevada to supply 20 LAS aircraft. It did so after realizing that the documentation justifying its contract award "was not adequate" to face the scrutiny that would come in the federal court case initiated by ousted bidder Hawker-Beechcraft, said Donley. Sierra Nevada was on tap to provide 20 modified Embraer A-29s for the Afghan air force, but now Hawker-Beechcraft and the former will duke it out once again for that right under the amended RFP's terms. Donley also said an investigation initiated by Air Force Material Command boss Gen. Donald Hoffman into the matter of the deficient documentation "is almost complete." He noted: "Any potential accountability issues that need to be addressed, will be."
GO $TADF GO TACAIR
USAF Backtracks on Light Air Support Contract
In a surprise move, the U.S. Air Force revealed today that it will take “corrective action” on the light air support (LAS) aircraft contract. The Air Force had earlier announced the contract would be awarded to Sierra Nevada, a U.S. company that partnered with Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer to offer the E-314 Super Tucano. Hawker Beechcraft, which had promoted its own AT-6 in the bidding, formally protested the Air Force decision. The Air Force subsequently issued a temporary stop-work order pending a decision by a Federal Claims Court as to whether the bidding process had been legally flawed. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), whose district includes Wichita-based Hawker Beechcraft, applauded this most recent Air Force decision, saying, “Today, we celebrate this victory and the restoration of a long-awaited fair and open competition.” Expressing disappointment in the decision, Taco Gilbert, retired Air Force general and vice president of ISR business development at Sierra Nevada, said in a statement, “Today’s announcement only further delays the effort to get critical capabilities into the hands of our men and women in uniform and our coalition partners in-theatre. It also stymies efforts to create jobs and economic development at a time when our economy needs the boost.” Bill Boisture, chairman of Hawker Beechcraft, said, “We commend the Air Force for this decision and we believe strongly it is the right thing for the Air Force, the taxpayers and the people of Hawker Beechcraft. We look forward to competing for this contract as this important initiative moves forward.”
Another Sierra Nevada Announcement yesterday
Sierra Nevada announced on Wednesday that it is exploring ways to mitigate delays in meeting the Air Force's April 2013 schedule for delivering the first A-29 Super Tucano aircraft. "Given the stakes and given recent reports of a potentially accelerated end to US combat operations [in Afghanistan], we are looking at all possible options for speeding up our production and delivery timeline," said Taco Gilbert, company vice president for ISR business development. Sierra Nevada, teamed with Brazil's Embraer, won the Air Force's Light Air Support contract in late December to supply 20 new-build A-29s and associated equipment and services for use by the Afghan air force. However, Hawker Beechcraft filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Air Force's decision to eliminate its AT-6 aircraft from further consideration. USAF subsequently issued a temporary stop-work order on Jan. 4. According to Sierra Nevada, the Air Force foresees a delay in the delivery schedule due to the litigation. The company wants to prevent that. "However, until the stop work order is lifted, we cannot make any movement in this regard," said Gilbert. GO $TADF GO $TACAIR
Straight from Wikipedia: The Super Tucano 314 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano
The story of the only Super Tucano in the USA. Someone needs to finish the story here.
One Super Tucano has also been purchased by a subsidiary of Blackwater Worldwide, an American private military contracting firm. The aircraft did not have the machine guns normally attached to the wings.
In 2008, the U.S. Navy began testing the Super Tucano at the behest of the U.S. Special Operations Command for its potential use to support special warfare operations, giving it the official U.S. designation A-29B. The Super Tucano is being offered in a U.S. Air Force competition for 100 counterinsurgency aircraft in 2009.
On 12 April 2010, Brazil signed a defensive pact that opened negotiations for the acquisition of 200 Super Tucanos from Embraer to U.S. forces. After excluding the AT-6 from the LAS Program on 16 November 2011, the U.S. Air Force has apparently chosen the Embraer Super Tucano to meet the Light Air Support (LAS) requirement.
According to GAO: “the Air Force concluded that HBDC had not adequately corrected deficiencies in its proposal. In this regard, the agency concluded that multiple deficiencies and significant weaknesses found in HBDC’s proposal make it technically unacceptable and results in unacceptable mission capability risk”. Hawker Beechcraft's protest against its exclusion was dismissed.
But the contract award was disputed and a stop-work was issued the following January. All motions will be due to U.S. Court of Federal Claim by 6 March 2012.
For this procurement the avionics are to be supplied by Elbit Systems of America. Sierra Nevada, the US-based prime contractor will be building the Super Tucano in Jacksonville, FL.
Stand by for NEWS
Go $TADF Go TacAir
Lt. Gen Deptula (Sierra Nevada Advisory Board Member) sounds off about our: 'A Geriatric Air Force'; Fleets fade away with budget
February 6, 2012
America's aging tactical Air Force - the jets that protect ground troops and strike hard-to-reach targets - is shrinking just as the Pentagon is cutting even more planes to achieve nearly a half-trillion dollars in spending cuts.
The trend has set off alarms among retired fighter pilots, some of whom wrote to Congress last month warning that U.S. "TacAir" is in trouble.
They fear the political pressure to drive down the deficit will mean there will never be enough money to replace 1970s jets with advanced aircraft to operate against rising militaries such as China's, which last year unveiled its own stealth fighter, the J-20.
"With the exception of our airlift fleet, we have a geriatric Air Force," said retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, a former F-15 Eagle pilot and Operation Desert Storm war planner.
"We're flying fighters that are 30 years old. What people seem to miss is, a fighter is not like an airliner, where you take off from Point A and go to Point B. Our pilots put six to nine [gravitational forces] on these things every day."
Gen. Deptula, who now heads the Mav6 LLC aerospace company, pointed to a 2007 event that has come to symbolize the collection of elderly fighter jets: An Air National Guard F-15C, the premier air superiority jet, broke apart in the sky during combat training. The pilot ejected safely.
The Air Force grounded the entire F-15 fleet and later attributed the breakup to a manufacturing flaw in some aircraft dating back to the 1970s.
The total number of Air Force fighters, which include the F-16 Falcons, F-15 Eagles, A-10 Thunderbolts and F-22 Raptors, has fallen by nearly 25 percent, from 2,477 in 2001 to 2,004 today, according to service figures provided to The Washington Times. In 2001, the Air Force flew an even larger fighter force in 2001, counting 52 F-117 stealth fighters that were retired in 2006.
Today, it has 372 fewer F-16s and 263 fewer F-15s than in 2001, but 179 more F-22s, which have yet to see combat.
Budget cuts will drive the total lower.
Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley recently announced another retirement of tactical aircraft - 102 A-10s and 21 F-16s - to help meet demands of $487 billion in spending cuts over 10 years, as announced last month by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta.
Mr. Panetta said the Air Force would lose six, or 10 percent, of its 60 tactical air squadrons, coming on the heels of former defense chief Robert M. Gates' decision in 2009 to retire 255 older jet fighters.
Navy air doing better
The average age of an Air Force fighter is now 22 years, nearly double what it was in 1999, and an age at which fighter jets usually are retired. The service faces a shortfall of 100 to as many as 800 fighter jets by 2024. As a result, it is being forced to invest millions of dollars in older F-16s to extend their life spans.
"We've got to recapitalize our force if, in fact, we're going to be able to provide the nation what it needs, what it's come to expect, in terms of aerospace capability," said Gen. Deptula, who took part in several Pentagon studies on the military's future. "We've known about this for 20-plus years."
By the numbers, the Navy, which flies a fighter fleet about half the size of the Air Force's, seems to be doing better.
After 10 years of frequent carrier deployments during two long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Navy has almost the exact same number of fighters - 1,179 - as in 2001. It has retired older F-18 Hornets in favor of newer F-18E/F Super Hornets.
Yet it too faces a projected fighter gap of required missions compared with available aircraft. The Navy plans to do life-stretching work on 150 older F-18s, from 8,600 flight hours to 10,000 to ensure the gap does not exceed 50 planes.
John E. Pike, a longtime military analyst who directs the GlobalSecurity.org research website, said President Obama's military strategy, which ditches the demand that the armed forces be able to fight two big land wars at once, means the Air Force and Navy have a sufficient number of fighters.
"Now we have only one major theater war, at most," Mr. Pike said. "The tactical aviation components were sized before the precision revolution, in an age of sorties per target, and now we live in an age of targets per sortie. Probably, we have a bit more tactical aviation than is called for at the moment."
This is the point Mr. Panetta and the top brass are making to justify smaller armed forces overall.
Their strategic guidance paper calls for increased spending on unmanned aircraft, such as the missile-carrying MQ-1 Predator and the larger MQ-9 Reaper. The Pentagon has spent the past 10 years perfecting precision-guided bombs that allow one pilot to hit multiple targets.
An Air Force "white paper" last week put a brave face on future fighter cuts.
"The Air Force has made the hard choices to closely align with the new strategic guidance in our [fiscal 2013] budget submission by trading size for quality," the Air Force leadership said. "We will be a smaller but superb force that maintains the agility, flexibility, and readiness to engage a full range of contingencies and threats."
Joint strike fighter flak The Pentagon is juggling the retirements of some old planes and the refurbishments of others as its newest fighter keeps hitting turbulence.
The F-35 joint strike fighter is a multirole stealth aircraft that was supposed to be entering the fleet in large numbers two years ago. But it remains dogged by huge cost overruns and technical failures.
Mr. Panetta has announced another production slowdown, putting more pressure on the current fighter fleet to keep performing.
At $382 billion for 2,443 planes, the F-35 Lightning is the most expensive weapons system ever, and perhaps the most important, given it is the long-term replacement for three venerable aircraft: the F-18 Hornet, F-16 Falcon and AV-8B Harrier.
Each F-35 has doubled in cost to more than $130 million, and the aircraft will not reach full production until 2018 as the current fighter fleet keeps aging.
"In so many different respects, the F-35 program truly represents a tragedy," Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said in a December floor speech. "The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps desperately need new aircraft to take the place of the current strike and fighter jets that have been at war for most of the last 10 years. These well-worn legacy aircraft are coming to the end of their service lives."
Ten retired generals, joined by two former Air Force secretaries, sent a letter Jan. 25 to the Senate Armed Services Committee to promote new fighters and heavy bombers.
"It is critical to recognize that the capabilities afforded by the Air Force require investment," the group wrote. "Major recapitalization was deferred for the past 20 years, yielding a fleet that averages a quarter of a century in age."
They added: "While other branches within the Department of Defense experienced significant growth in the post-9/11 environment, the Air Force's share of the budget declined below 20 percent - a record low. Key modernization efforts were canceled, often derided as Cold War relics, and major portions of the fleet were filled with aircraft optimized for the permissive environments of Afghanistan and Iraq. In truth, this approach emphasized short-term operational demands over long-term global realities."
The signers included three retired four-star generals who commanded Air Combat Command in Langley, which oversees all the service's combat aircraft.
Gen. Deptula, one of the signers, said the only remedy is to make the F-35 work and buy it.
"You don't want to go out and buy new old stuff because F-16s and F-15s and F-18s are not survivable against modern threats," he said. "You need fifth-generation capabilities that are resident on F-35 and F-22. They are much more capable than their predecessors in a variety of different functions and roles."
Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles D. Link, a former fighter pilot who held senior staff positions in the Pentagon, disagrees with decisions to shrink the Air Force's fighter count.
"The larger problem is that the world that we have inherited is one in which bad people need to be dissuaded or disabled with the least cost in American blood and treasure," Gen. Link said. "And air and space power provide the best means to do that.
"I don't think we should be reducing the Air Force. People look to long-range weapons like bombers and missiles and fail to understand they are not a suitable substitute for tactical air power in that tactical air power is so distributable."
And with the cut back of more military aircraft, this gets even better for TADF/TACAIR Gotta love the military training business. Go $TADF
Trading Size for Quality: The Air Force aims to retire 102 A-10 ground-attack aircraft—about one third of its A-10 fleet—and more than 280 aircraft overall as part of the proposed force adjustments in its forthcoming Fiscal 2013-17 budget program, according to the service leadership's new white paper, issued Wednesday. "The Air Force has made the hard choices to closely align with the [Obama Administration's] new strategic guidance in our Fiscal 2013 budget submission by trading size for quality," wrote Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz in Air Force Priorities for a New Strategy with Constrained Budgets. Among the changes, some of which Pentagon officials touched upon last week, the Air Force will:
Eliminate 123 fighters (102 A-10s and 21 older F-16s), 133 mobility aircraft (27 C-5As, 21 C-27s, 65 C-130s, and 20 KC-135s), and 30 intelligence platforms (18 Global Hawk Block 30s, 11 RC-26s, and one E-8).
Trim the Total Force by 9,900 airmen, building upon the reductions of 48,000 personnel since 2004.
Terminate or restructure programs like the B-2 extremely high-frequency radio improvements and the family of advanced beyond line of sight terminals.
Replace "expensive programs" like the C-130 Avionics Modernization Program "with more affordable alternatives that still accomplish the mission."
Discontinue or defer programs including the common vertical lift support platform, light mobility aircraft, and light attack and armed reconnaissance airplane.
With all the DoD down-sizing going on this will only call for more Commercial Air Training by companies like TADF /TACAIR IMHO. And TADF/TAC does training....GO $TADF
Friday February 03, 2012
Donley Explains Proposed Personnel Cuts: The Air Force aims to reduce its total end strength by about 9,900 personnel over the next five fiscal years, said Secretary Michael Donley Thursday. This total includes 3,900 active duty positions, 5,100 Air National Guardsmen, and 900 Air Force Reservists, he told attendees of his Air Force Association-sponsored Air Force breakfast program presentation in Arlington, Va. Donley said service leaders strived to "carefully balance" the force to ensure it would be able to meet future requirements while sustaining the operational tempo. "While we'll be smaller together, the active and reserve components will be even more closely integrated going forward," he said.
On YOUTUBE:
Nice flick of the Super Tucano. Just all around capabilities of this very fine aircraft. I'm very impressed. I'm sure the Afghans are chomping to get em going. GO $TADF
I think a pretty good change. Why not. They are the only game in town with a super tucano. It only makes sense. Go $TADF
Nice T-38's RAGE.... looks like UPT over Sheppard !!! Go $TADF
Any kind of R/S will not DE-VALUE but rather put the stock into dollar territory "quicker-better-faster" so that it will catch the attention of more sophisticated investors / institutions. IMO
Goooooooo $TADF
I can feel it in my bones. Gooooooo TADF !!!
This just in:
Light Air Support Work Placed on Hold: The Air Force on Wednesday issued a temporary stop-work order to Sierra Nevada of Sparks, Nev., for the Light Air Support contract that it awarded the company late last month. USAF spokesman Lt. Col. Jack Miller said this decision was "due to litigation currently pending before the US Court of Federal Claims" concerning LAS. Late last month, Sierra Nevada won the Air Force's competition to supply the Afghan air force with 20 LAS aircraft for counterinsurgency roles. The company teamed with Brazil's Embraer to offer the latter's A-29 Super Tucano. Sierra Nevada received a $355 million contract for this work. Hawker Beechcraft of Wichita, Kan., filed suit against the Air Force in the federal court last month after the service eliminated the company's AT-6 aircraft from further consideration in the competition and the company claimed it received no proper explanation. Hawker filed the federal suit after the Government Accountability Office dismissed the company's protest. "The competition and source selection evaluation were fair, open, and transparent," stated Miller. He added, "The Air Force is confident in the merits of its contract award decision and anticipates that the litigation will be quickly resolved."
YES, a PR would be really nice right about now.
Very nice NEWS with the USAF Tucano award.....