Washington bullets: “Congress Daily” reports that Boeing Co. and two subcontractors are threatening to stop development work and lay off as many as 1,300 employees working on the manned vehicle portion of the Army’s $164 billion Future Combat Systems program because it has run out of money, according to the Army said.
Of course, work can continue and employees stay employed if two congressional committees that oversee the defense budget approve a transfer of $295 million, the Army said Monday, as reported by Bloomberg News.
“That money has now been exhausted and must be restored,” Army Lt. Col. William Wiggins said in an e-mail. Wiggins said he did not know when a stop-work order or layoffs might begin.
London-based BAE System’s North American unit and Falls Church-based General Dynamics are the primary companies developing eight models of manned tactical and support vehicles for the Army’s Future Combat Systems program.
A General Dynamics spokesman referred all comment to the Army, and a BAE Systems spokesman had no immediate comment.
But a Boeing spokeswoman said that “reports of imminent layoffs on the FCS program due to funding issues are incorrect.
“It is our understanding that a funding reprogramming request was submitted to the congressional defense committees and is proceeding through approvals,” she wrote. “The reprogramming approval needs to occur in a timely fashion, however, to allow the FCS program to continue to execute on plan.”
So the request is wending its way through the approval process, just not as fast as the Army — and probably Boeing — wants it to.
The Future Combat Systems program is described as “a new family of faster manned and unmanned battle vehicles linked by high-speed, digital communications, unmanned drones and new combat radios organized into brigade-combat teams taht are lighter than today’s Army.”
Interesting, but TradingMarkets.com reports today that Boeing is losing money wing over rudder:
Boeing Co. announced financial results for its second quarter, reporting a loss as the company took $1.1 billion of previously announced charges to settle government investigations into its defence unit and to cover the costs of delayed surveillance aircraft.
Ouch! I don’t suppose $294 million will go far to offset that kind of loss, but hey, it’s a start, right?
