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Stability Operations in Afghanistan Face Uphill Battle

Yasmin Tadjdeh — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:54:24 GMT

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By Yasmin Tadjdeh

While major military operations may be coming to an end in Afghanistan, the forces remaining there will face an uphill battle piecing the country back together, analysts said June 17.

U.S. military units tasked with rebuilding infrastructure and countering insurgencies face myriad hurdles, from tighter budgets, to a lack of national policy to growing tensions within the populace.

"Stability is in the eyes of the locals. The only stability definition that matters is what locals perceive. In rural and tribal lands … the definition of stability very often changes dramatically from village to village, from tribe to tribe," said Howard Clark, a senior intelligence officer at the Department of Homeland Security and advisor to Special Operations Command.

Even in non-combat situations, troops stationed on foreign soil can be destabilizing, Clark said during a discussion at the American Security Project, a Washington, D.C.-based national security think tank.

"Our very presence in Muslim lands causes instability, bringing insurgent attacks on local populace and materializing violent extremism," Clark said. "Even when we're defending the lives of civilians or providing humanitarian aid, this narrative recruits, this narrative grows … [and] motivates most violent extremists."

Another major issue is the money that the United States brings in to fund stability operations, Clark said. Taliban militants often shake down local businesses for money earned from development contracts, he said.

While insurgents also raise cash by selling narcotics — making Afghanistan one of the largest producers of illicit drugs in the world — the money raised by skimming off of stability operations funds is greater, he said.

"The money the Taliban actually squeezes from our contracts eclipses even their funds made from opium and heroin," said Clark.

Furthermore, Afghanistan's government is rife with corruption. Citizens are disillusioned that money is funneled into failed or corrupt programs. Their disappointment can lead them to seek refuge with insurgents, he said.

The best way to achieve stability in Afghanistan is by empowering the local people to solve local problems themselves, he said.

"This means immediate local ownership. This is not a process toward transition this is transition. It's understanding that even when war has broken traditional roles of governance … any resemblance of a local system that is left is a better vehicle than direct U.S. might and a heavy U.S. presence," said Clark.

Problems within stability operations are not limited to Afghanistan. Globally, budget cuts are hurting forces, said retired Army Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney III, former deputy director for strategic operational planning at the National Counter-Terrorism Center.

"Analysis paralysis and inaction due to lack of funding causes us to not be in places in the world where we need to be able to shape and influence," said Kearney.

World wide, stability operations also face a lack of strategy and leadership, he said.

"The strategy is not deep enough. The campaign plans are either absent or worthless [and] we don't delve into the details about the valleys and tribes and city states and what will work, and how it will work and how we get there," said Kearney. "There is an absence of leadership and clarity of intent, purpose for strategy and end states globally."

Photo Credit: Defense Dept.

Published: 6/18/2013 11:50 AM

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National Guard Seeks to Expand Active Role In Military (UPDATED)

Dan Parsons — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:56:20 GMT

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By Steff Thomas

U.S. Army Sgt. Cullen Wurzer, with the Iowa Army National Guard's Troop B, 1st Squadron,
113th Cavalry Regiment, scans a nearby mountain range during a search of a
village in Patwan Province, Afghanistan.

The National Guard, best known for its commitment to stateside operations, could continue to expand the active role it has played for the past decade as officials argue that guard troops are a cost-effective alternative to full-time soldiers.

While the National Guard does not wish to abandon its domestic disaster relief efforts, cleaning up after hurricanes is not all it does anymore, said Lt. Gen. Joseph Lengyel, vice chief of the National Guard Bureau.

“It is not what they want to be and it is not what they are resourced to be in the future going forward,” Lengyel said June 17 during a military strategy forum held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The United States has the best-equipped and best-trained guard troops, said Lt. Gen. William Ingram Jr., director of the Army National Guard. Guardsmen and women are trained in the same schools as their active duty counterparts, he said.

Disputes over military funding arise daily in the Pentagon as arguments are being made for replacing a portion of the active force with guard and reserve troops. Not only would this better balance the mixture between the two components, but it would also be a more cost effective option, Guard officials said at the forum.

One can maintain three to four reserve component units for the same amount as one active component unit when not on active duty. The Guard must find the right mix that meets our strategy and the nation can afford said National Guard Chief Gen. Frank Grass. He feared that without the balance of reserve and active components, the U. S. military would have to resort back to draft soldiers in response to future conflicts.

“We have the greatest military in the world and it is because it is an all volunteer force,” he said. “If we can’t find that balance and we start giving up reserve components and we get into a major operation, where are those folks going to come from?”

The National Guard began over 300 years ago as state militias and has transformed during the wars of the past decade from being mainly strategic reserve forces to operational forces that can be used overseas.

The National Guard was first mobilized after 9/11. Following the attacks, 150 installations, depots, and storage sites for ammunition had to be secured, requiring a swift increase in manpower, Grass said.

“Before 9/11 we were a very open military,” he said. “Any of you could drive right through the gates of Ft. Myers, or you could drive right up to the general’s house if you wanted to.”

The National Guard is based in close to 3,000 communities across the nation. Through these troops, the American public can stay connected with the military, said John Hamre, president and CEO of CSIS.

In January 2003, close to 21,000 Army National Guard troops were given less than a week to pack for deployment to Iraq, where they were sent to support their active-duty counterparts, said Ingram.

There are 358,000 Army National Guard and Air Guard troops, many of which have been deployed at least twice since 2003, Grass said. The Army National Guard has mobilized its guardsmen a total of 510,000 times, including multiple deployments. In comparison, the Air Guard has mobilized its airmen a total of 290,000 times.

Lengyel said that the National Guard’s capability to assist in stateside operations is enhanced by their experience serving on active duty overseas. Hundreds of thousands of guard troops are currently serving with their active duty counterparts, 20 percent of whom are deployed overseas. Nearly 3,500 guard soldiers are serving in communities today responding to the effects of tornadoes, flooding, on the southwest border — including fighting the wildfires in Colorado.

Guard officials believe their part-time soldiers can be of use in cyber security operations, as well. According to Ingram, there are specialized units in the Army National Guard that specialize in cyber security — a major emerging mission set for the entire Defense Department. In addition, several National Guard units are trained in information technology.

Lt. Gen. Stanley E. Clarke agreed with Ingram. He said that cyber security operations had a natural place in the guard.

While many Guard troops have broken out of the “weekend warrior” stereotype, guard officials wish to find an opportunity for their troops to play active roles in the future operations.

“Because of the investments that we’ve made in the National Guard, I am an optimist in that we have a tremendous tool to use in our reserve component going forward,” said Lengyel. “Never have we been more ready and never have we been more capable.”

Correction: Original story misstated comparison in costs between active duty and reserve components. Also, misstated number of reservists fighting fires in Colorado.

Photo Credit: National Guard

Published: 6/17/2013 5:00 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;32;33;

Analyst: 2014 Defense Review Offers Opportunity for Real Reform

Dan Parsons — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:58:21 GMT

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By Dan Parsons

Instead of shoehorning its current force structure within a confined budget, the U.S. military should decide what it wants to be able to accomplish in the future and then design an affordable force to achieve those goals, a new study on the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review contends.

“We have a very capable force today. But the QDR is supposed to look out into the future, 20 years in the future and detect trends in the threats, trends in technology and where we should put our resources to be prepared for those future threats.,” Mark Gunzinger, author of “Shaping America’s Military: Toward a New Force Planning Construct, said June 13 during a presentation of the report.

“We need to decide what capabilities we need for the future, before we decide what cuts we’re going to make today,” added Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank that published the report.

Gunzinger’s concern is that the QDR that is scheduled to be published in 2014 will simply cut the current military down to a size that is affordable based on the current constrained fiscal environment. Mandated by law, next year’s QDR is the first in 11 years that will be drafted without a seemingly endless pot of money to fund its objectives. In fact, this and the next QDR fall squarely into a timeframe when Pentagon officials can count on shrinking budgets.

“The QDR could become another budget-dominated drill, which could lead the U.S. military to cut force structure, personnel and programs resulting in a force structure that is a smaller version of what we have today — a force structure that is, frankly, best prepared for fading threats,” Gunzinger said. “You should invest in the future first, before you balance the budget.”

Gunzinger contended that the Defense Department’s 1993 Bottom-Up Review may have been the "last time the Pentagon created a new vision for how the U.S. military should prepare to meet the nation’s security challenges.”

Conducted at the end of the Cold War, that review replaced preparing for all-out war against the Soviet Union with the ability to defeat two major cross-border ground invasions similar to the first Gulf War.

The next 20 years likely will not pose Soviet Union-like threats, nor will they mirror the past 12 years of combat in dual prolonged wars against entrenched insurgencies, he said. Therefore, the two-war planning construct is outdated and insufficient to plan for the next 20 years, as the QDR is required to do.

“Not every service has to have the canonical two-war capability,” he said. “DoD needs to maintain that full spectrum of capabilities, not each and every service. That assumption alone could drive some changes in investments and free up resources for higher priority capabilities.”

“Every service should [not] focus its capabilities on the exact same contingencies,” he added. “There are some scenarios that the Air Force is better suited for and some that our ground forces and expeditionary forces are better suited for.”

The next force-planning framework should be complemented by a new set of strategic concepts for each of the military services that “describe how, when, and where each anticipates they will need to defend the nation against future threats,” Gunzinger wrote.

For example, a new strategic concept for the U.S. Army might shift its planning toward developing a mix of land-based offensive and defensive capabilities that could help create a more stable military posture in the Western Pacific and the Middle East.

The Navy should focus on explaining how it plans to maintain it’s offensive capabilities in a world where most potential adversaries can be counted on to have ballistic missiles that can keep carriers far at sea, Gunzinger said. That includes getting serious about adopting an unmanned carrier-based aerial vehicle and learning how to deter network disruptions from a technically advanced enemy, he said.

Together with the Navy, the Air Force could be the nation’s “swing force” to rapidly deploy between theaters to deter two simultaneous conflicts. The Air Force also should focus on long-range strike capabilities to reduce its reliance on costly and vulnerable overseas bases and airstrips, he said.

The Army, Gunzinger said, has an opportunity to explain how a future force will be more capable of imposing losses on enemies in an air-sea battle scenario that doesn’t initially include a large-scale ground assault, perhaps by investing in conventional intermediate range ballistic missiles, he said.

The QDR will give Marine Corps officials an opportunity to enshrine the role they have been clamoring for — to move away from acting as an auxiliary land army and return to being the country’s rapid crisis-response force,” Gunzinger said.

“The services do need new strategic concepts,” he said. “This QDR is an opportunity for the services to get together and jointly create new visions … that will map out how, when and where they will help defend the nation.”

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Published: 6/17/2013 3:08 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;32;33;

Air Force Chief: Time to Stop Talking and Start Making Strategy, Budget Choices

Sandra Erwin — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:51:41 GMT

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By Sandra I. Erwin

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh

The topic has been discussed ad nauseam: How should the nation’s armed forces be sized and shaped for a post-war future of shrinking budgets?

Washington is happy to keep the debate going, but the military would like policy makers to make up their minds and stop playing political football with the Pentagon’s budget.

“Most of us in the business are tired of talking about this,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh. “Let's just figure out where we are going, and get moving,” he said June 17 at a breakfast meeting organized by the Air Force Association.

As the Obama administration and Congress remain at loggerheads over next year’s spending levels for the entire federal government, the Pentagon is headed into its third year of fiscal uncertainty. And it is scrambling to comply with mandatory spending cuts that Congress approved in August 2011 but the Defense Department ignored until December 2012.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered a “strategic choices and management review” that will influence the Pentagon’s 2014 budget request, but is not likely to result in any sweeping recommendations on how to retool the military in the long term.

For now, the Air Force and the other services are stuck in strategic paralysis. “Hopefully [we’ll know] what the joint force should look like in the future,” Welsh said.

The longer decisions are postponed, the more difficult it will be for the military to figure out how to resize and invest for the future, Welsh said. “It'll take a while to turn the ship.”

The budget stalemate of the past three years has been especially damaging to military combat readiness, he said. Congress has blocked Air Force proposals to shut down unneeded bases and retire aging airplanes. To comply with the automatic sequester cuts in 2013, the Air Force has grounded combat squadrons and furloughed civilian employees. The consequences of not being able to train are going to become more pronounced in the next year or two, as more pilots see their skills erode, said Welsh. “If you're going to do a no-fly zone anywhere, you probably want your air force ready to go,” he said, alluding to the possibility that U.S. forces might be ordered to set up a no-fly zone over Syria to help rebels who are trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

“The big impact [on force readiness] will be next year and the year after if we don't fix this soon,” Welsh said. These training cuts also are putting the Air Force in a deeper financial hope, he said, as the cost to retrain a squadron is two-and-a-half times higher than to keep it trained.

Air Force leaders have kicked off their own management review, called “Air Force 2023” that is looking at how the service would adapt to 10 years of sequester cuts. That means making budgetary tradeoffs, Welsh said. “If you turn up the modernization dial, you get smaller,” he said. “If you shift [more missions] to the reserves, you can keep capacity.” These are complex decisions, he said, because even though reservists and Air National Guard forces cost less than active-duty troops, they impose other expenses such as bases and infrastructure. “Anyone who claims to know the answer to these cost [issues] doesn't know what they're talking about,” said Welsh.

“We have a lot of money,” he said. But not every program will survive. “We are looking at everything,” said Welsh.

Outside experts predict that perpetual indecision about funding levels and future missions will stir up more turf battles among the services. In the current environment, the military services are in competition with each other, rather than working as a team to accomplish national security goals, said an industry insider in an off-the-record discussion. That is partly because “We, as a nation, are unable to bring into focus just what are the threats in response to which we are to build a force structure,” he said. “The Air Force continues to spend an irrational amount of its 'portion' of the defense pie on 5th and 6th generation high technology, manned airborne weapons the utility of which in this century is highly doubtful. Meanwhile, it has an urgent need to replenish its inventory after two decades and after two wars,” he said. “It cannot accomplish any of those objectives if, literally, it does not 'know what it is doing.’ … The default posture for the Air Force is to continue to do almost precisely what it has been doing for the last 20 years.”

In his speech to the Air Force Association, Welsh did suggest that he is ready to fight those turf battles if need be. “We hear comments all the time from people [who point out that] 70 percent of the world is covered by water,” said Welsh, citing a statistic oft mentioned by Navy and Marine Corps leaders. “That’s interesting … but 100 percent [of the planet] is covered by air and space, and now cyber,” he said. “That's important to us. … Only the Air Force can provide air superiority, space superiority, only the Air Force can hold any target on Earth at risk,” said Welsh. “The other services bring other things, but they don't bring this.”

Mark Gunzinger, a retired Air Force colonel and now senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the Pentagon no longer has the luxury of indulging in institutional inertia as generals and admirals seek to preserve their programs.

The Defense Department’s strategic reviews that Congress mandates every four years mostly have preserved the status quo. There is a “reluctance to address controversial roles and missions issues, Gunzinger said last week during a presentation on Capitol Hill.

This year, the Pentagon will conduct yet another Quadrennial Defense Review that is expected to produce guidance for how the military should size and shape its future forces. “Much of this debate has been focused on the ‘how many wars’ question,” he said, such as whether the United States ought to be prepared to fight two major regional contingencies.

Gunzinger said a fresh thinking is needed this time. “Almost 60 years ago, Samuel P. Huntington warned that services lacking compelling strategic concepts risk losing their purpose and may end up wallowing about amid a variety of conflicting and confusing goals,” he said. A novel approach to the QDR, he said, “would provide the services with opportunities to assess where they have excessive overlap in forces and capabilities [and make decisions that] will shape the U.S. military for the future, rather than for the past.”

The Air Force, for example, “could create a new strategic concept that explains how it intends to … strike the full range of fixed, mobile, hardened, or deeply buried targets in the increasingly contested airspace of the Western Pacific,” Gunzinger wrote in a CSBA study. “Together, the Navy and Air Force might flesh out how they could act as a global swing force capable of rapidly deploying across overseas theaters of operation.”

Photo Credit: National Guard

Published: 6/17/2013 2:12 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;4;18;20;32;34;35;64;

Congressman: DHS Unresponsiveness Undermines Public Trust in Government

Dan Parsons — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:58:37 GMT

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By Sarah Sicard

Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., feels the Department of Homeland Security is deepening public distrust of the federal government because of its “lackadaisical approach” to providing accurate information in a timely manner.

“This Administration specifically has an increasing sense of a bunker mentality in responding to the public, engaging with stakeholders, and collaborating with industry and advocacy groups,” Duncan said at a June 14 hearing of the House subcommittee on oversight and management efficiency, which he chairs.
Members of the subcommittee drew attention to inadequacies with DHS’s attention to public inquiries, and the means by which they might then rectify those issues.

Duncan cited innumerable offenses of the department in their responses towards the public. This, he said, drew attention to much larger issue than departmental communication. His concern was that the American people do not trust the federal government.

“Delaying to get the truth out feeds the fire of distrust,” he said. “The American people need the facts so that they can deal with them.”

“When DHS officials or their colleagues at the components do respond to legitimate questions concerning departmental policy or actions, responses are often defensive and condescending,” Duncan said of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. “I found this out first hand when I raised serious visa security issues with Secretary Napolitano in April only to be told that my question was not worthy of an answer because and I quote ‘It is so full with misstatements and misapprehensions that it’s just not worthy of an answer.’”

Rep. Ron Barber D-Ariz. echoed these sentiments, saying that DHS has a major responsibility to remain transparent at all times.

Bill Braniff, executive director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), through a study of U.S. attitudes toward terrorism, found that “Americans think about the prospect of terrorism more frequently than they think about hospitalization or being the victims of violent crime, suggesting that Americans are not complacent regarding the threat of terrorism.”

Duncan said the START survey results supported his own assessment of DHS. A citizenry that is so consistently concerned with the potential of terrorist attack requires a homeland security bureaucracy that is attentive to their needs and requests for information, he said.

“An uncommunicative Department of Homeland Security that is seen as consistently stonewalling increases people’s skepticism of DHS, strains the institution’s credibility, and makes people question the motivations of the Department’s leadership,” he said. “How does this serve DHS’s critical mission to defend the homeland?”

Robert Jensen, principal deputy assistant secretary of the DHS Office of Public Affairs, and Tamara Kessler, acting officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) then defended the actions of DHS staff.

Jensen firmly supported the efforts made by the department’s spokespeople. He asserted that they provide “timely, accurate information to a wide range of stakeholders, including the American public, media, federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government partners, the private sector, and the Department’s more than 240,000 employees.”

He highlighted public campaigns such as “If You See Something, Say Something” and “Stop. Think. Connect.” as effective means of interacting with the American people while simultaneously providing security.

Kessler detailed the CRCL’s efforts to reach out to multiple ethnicities and interfaith communities, to help ensure that “all communities in this country are active participants in the homeland security effort.” Braniff confirmed this sort of outreach program as an effective means of creating trust by empowering constituents to work with local governments to take their security into their own hands.

Duncan suggested the information presented by Braniff and Pinkham should be taken into account by DHS, and that simple changes in communication could drastically change the public’s perception of it.

While Jensen and Kessler focused heavily on the positive influence of the initiatives taken on by their respective offices, they conceded that there were areas that could be improved.

“Could we do better? Yes,” said Jensen, who ultimately failed to provide specifics.

Photo Credit: U.S. House of Representatives

Published: 6/17/2013 1:00 PM

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Army Cancels Carbine Competition When No Rifles Pass Muster (UPDATED)

Dan Parsons — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 20:42:33 GMT

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By Dan Parsons

The Army has discontinued its three-year search for an M4 carbine replacement, officials announced June 13.

Of eight candidates, “none of the carbines evaluated during the testing phase of the competition met the minimum scoring requirement needed to continue to the next phase of the evaluation,” Debi Dawson, a spokeswoman for Program Executive Office Soldier, said in a prepared statement.

Instead of launching a new search for what would have been called the “individual carbine,” the Army plans to continue fielding the M4A1 carbine, “which consistently performs well and has received high marks from soldiers,” Dawson said. PEO Soldier has scheduled a press conference June 14 to discuss the decision.

The M4A1 has a heavier barrel and a full-auto setting rather than the three-round burst setting on the M4. The Army’s 2014 budget request includes plans to purchase 12,000 M4A1 carbines for just over $21 million.

The Army already had completed phase two of the competition, which began in 2011. That phase involved thousands of rounds being pumped through each rifle design to test durability, reliability and accuracy. Plans were to select up to three carbines for the third and final phase that would have involved hundreds of thousands of rounds fired and field-testing by soldiers.

The rifles that were competing to replace the M4 were the Adcor Defense BEAR Elite, the Colt ACC-M (sometimes called the ACM), the FN FNAC, the Heckler & Koch HK416 and the Remington ACR. The ARX160 rifle made by Beretta USA Corp. was also a candidate, along with submissions from Troy Defense and Lewis Machine and Tool.

Phase two resulted in none of the competitors showing a “significant improvement in weapon reliability” over the M4, as measured by rounds fired without jamming, according to the statement.

After phase three, an analysis of alternatives was planned to determine if any of the new carbines provide enhanced capabilities that would justify the $1.8 billion planned investment to replace the M4.

Dawson said the decision to conclude the competition is “consistent” with recent testimony by the Department of Defense Inspector General before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that included concerns over the need for replacing the Army’s current arms.

“We expect to report concerns that DoD may not have an established need for this weapon nor developed performance requirements for the $1.8 billion acquisition,” Lynne M. Halbrooks, the Defense Department IG’s principal deputy inspector general, testified.

Correction: This article originally stated that six companies submitted carbine designs for phase two of the competition. There were eight rifles that made it to phase two.

Photo Credit: Army

Published: 6/13/2013 4:43 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;1;3;

Boeing-Sikorsky Team Emerges as Frontrunner After EADS Quits Army Helo Competition

Valerie Insinna — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 19:12:17 GMT

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By Valerie Insinna

Sikorsky-Boeing's joint multi-role future vertical lift concept

Selected helicopter manufacturers are moving on to the next stage of the Army’s joint multi-role technical demonstrator program. But EADS North America has dropped out in order to concentrate on the uncertain armed aerial scout competition.

The joint multi-role demonstrator program is a precursor to what the Army is calling future vertical lift, a series of next-generation vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that will replace the service’s aging helicopters.

Bell Helicopter, a Boeing-Sikorsky team and a small Fort Worth, Texas-based company called AVX Aircraft have all been chosen to negotiate cost-sharing agreements with the Army to fund demonstrator aircraft.

The Army is expected to award contracts for the technical demonstrator program in September, and companies would conduct flights in 2017.

With EADS out of the running, the Boeing-Sikorsky team has the upper hand, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis for the Teal Group.

"Unless anyone else can bring a really innovative technology to bear, the advantage is going to Boeing-Sikorsky just for industrial base reasons and because they hold so much of the current mission," he said. Historically, “the Army has never had any interest at all in tiltrotor technology” like Bell’s V-22 Osprey.

EADS North America alerted the Army of the decision to drop out in a May 29 letter from Chief Executive Officer Sean O’Keefe to Assistant Secretary of the Army Heidi Shyu.

“We are faced with fiscal constraints during this period of instability caused by sequestration and budget instability,” O’Keefe said in the letter. “We have painstakingly reviewed our resource needs for both the Army’s prospective Armed Aerial Scout proposal and our proposal submitted for the Future Vertical Lift/Joint Multi Role. We’ve determined that the Army’s most urgent need and our most significant investment to date is for a competitive AAS platform.

“Given this reality, our plan is to focus our resources along with our world class teammates on the AAS competition. As such, we will withdraw from further consideration for the JMR/FVL concept development effort,” he added.

The Army has been contemplating for years whether to replace the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior with a new armed aerial scout helicopter. EADS is proposing the AAS-72X, basically an armed version of the UH-72 Lakota used by the National Guard. The company developed the aircraft with its own funds.

The Army hosted voluntary flight demonstrations in October 2012. EADS, Boeing, AgustaWestland and Bell all flew aircraft, but Army officials recently said none had capabilities that justified the cost of a new program.

EADS is aware of those statements, said a company spokesman. He said budgetary pressures — not the capabilities of the proposed aircraft — have put strain on the armed aerial scout program. He cited Army officials who told the company its offering had scored high performance and affordability ratings.

“The definition of affordable has changed,” he said.

EADS considered the level of funding the Army was committing to the joint multi-role demonstrator and concluded that it would be unwise to take on the investment without certainty that it would lead to a contract, the official said.

EADS, however, does not rule out future participation in a vertical lift aircraft program, the source added.

The company was expected to propose a design based on Eurocopter’s X3 demonstrator. The X3, a compound helicopter with a five-bladed top rotor and two short wings fitted with propellers, broke the unofficial speed records for vertical takeoff and landing aircraft on June 7, shortly after EADS pulled out of the joint multi-role competition. It flew 255 knots in level flight and 263 while descending, according to a news release.

Up until that point, Sikorsky’s X2 held those speed records, with a 250-knot level flight. The Sikorsky-Boeing team is using the X2 as the basis for its proposal.

Bell Helicopter will offer the V-280 Valor, a tiltrotor aircraft that will be able to fly at 280 knots. Its first flight is scheduled for 2017.

AVX’s demonstrator will have coaxial rotors and twin ducted fans. It will have doors on each side of the fuselage and a large cargo ramp, according to the company.

Photo Credit: Boeing/Sikorsky, Bell Helicopter

Published: 6/14/2013 3:52 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;4;5;

Military Weighed Down by Heavy Equipment, Excess Infrastructure

Sandra Erwin — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 19:35:02 GMT

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By Sandra I. Erwin

U.S. Marines in Helmand province, Afghanistan

Today’s military is too dependent on heavy equipment, consumes too much fuel and is weighed down by an industrial-age infrastructure that costs too much to maintain.

That reality needs to change, military officials said. Combat forces in the future will need to deploy quickly, in small units, with relatively light equipment and require little logistics support. War planners believe the Pentagon has to invest in new technology and develop fresh ideas to prepare U.S. forces to fight enemies who will be adept at disrupting supply lines and choking off access to ports and airfields.

“We need innovative, low cost, small footprint approaches” to prepare the military for future wars, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Brooks Bash, director of logistics on the Joint Staff.

The Pentagon’s much-lauded logistics machine has excelled in every war thus far, but it is showing signs of age. Bash said he worries that U.S. logistics operations are not positioned for the realities of combat in the 21st century.

In many ways, the military organizations that provide logistics support — transportation, fuel and supplies — are still organized to fight World War III, officials said last week at the National Defense Industrial Association’s logistics symposium in Arlington, Va.

Changing that will require sweeping reforms in the way the military does business, they said, and also congressional approval to shed billions of dollars worth of unneeded facilities and inventories.

The Defense Logistics Agency, for instance, has $14 billion worth of inventory, but only half of that is usable, said Navy Vice Adm. Mark D. Harnitchek, director of DLA. “We have way too much inventory,” he said. Excess supplies are costly to store and keep DLA from shedding unneeded infrastructure. “We have to get rid of the hoarding mentality,” said Harnitchek. Billions of dollars are tied up in aging stocks and facilities that could be spent on modern equipment. “We have vintage World War II infrastructure to store fuel,” he said. DLA currently must keep large quantities of military-unique fuel, called JP-8, which requires specialized storage units. If the Air Force and Navy were able to use commercial jet fuel in their airplanes, it would save lots of money and simplify the services’ logistics support operations, Harnitchek said. He noted that both the Air Force and the Navy would like to move in that direction.

The military also needs to find ways to consume less fuel, Bash said. Planning for any war will become exceedingly difficult, as enemies have figured out that fuel dependence makes U.S. forces vulnerable. “Operational energy is a huge challenge,” Bash said. Each U.S. soldier in Afghanistan on average requires 23 gallons of fuel per day.

Vice Adm. Phil Cullom, deputy chief of naval operations for fleet readiness and logistics, said reducing fuel demands is a major focus of his efforts. The U.S. logistics system is not geared for wars where enemies will seek to deny access, he said. “We need the right logistics support for ‘anti-access, area denial’” scenarios, Cullom said. “We need resilient networks.”

Another headache for logisticians is the enormous weight and bulk of the equipment that U.S. forces take to war. The Pentagon needs to rethink how it will equip ground forces in the future, Bash said. The most visible illustration of this problem is the heavily armored mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) truck that is now ubiquitous in war zones. “The vehicles saved many lives,” he said. “But MRAP is slow, heavy and logistics maintenance nightmare.” Enemies are just going to keep making bigger bombs to outmatch U.S. vehicles, he said. “Can we keep building a bigger MRAP?”

Bash mentioned the Lithuanian Special Forces’ use of motorcycles in Afghanistan as an example of how to think differently about the problem. Troops can move faster on motorcycles, and they are light enough that they do not set off pressure-activated buried bombs, he said. “And you can buy 1,000 Kawasaki KLS motorcycles for the price of one MRAP.” This is not just about new technology, he said, but also using existing equipment in a new way.

The Marine Corps also struggles with the logistics burdens of heavy equipment, said Maj. Gen. Michael Dana, assistant deputy command for installations and logistics. “We have gotten too heavy,” he said. U.S. forces must become more “expeditionary” and more agile, he said. That cannot be achieved with current equipment, Dana asserted. Not only is gear too heavy but also energy intensive. A tank company today requires three trucks’ worth of gear and lots of power generators, he said.

Also weighing heavy on the military services are unwanted facilities. The cost of maintaining too many bases and depots is one reason why the Air Force has been unable to modernize its equipment, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Judith Fedder, deputy chief of staff for logistics, installations and mission support.

Congress over the past two years has blocked every attempt by the Defense Department to close unneeded bases. “Without being able to shut down installations, the best we can do work on the margins,” Fedder said. The military services have maintenance depots that do not operate at full capacity. Consolidating these facilities is worth considering, she said. “I think this is probably an untapped area.” As with base closures, he said, “There are lots of restrictions on what we can do to draw down capability.”

The Air Force is under pressure to modernize its equipment, and with the Pentagon’s budget on a downward slope, the only way to do that is by shedding overhead, Fedder said. “Just opening a gate is expensive.” Efficiencies such as “green” buildings that demand less energy are useful, but the monetary savings are negligible, she said. “It’s the cost of opening the gate, of sustaining an installation is absolutely not sustainable into the future,” she said. “We have to continue to reduce force structure just to keep the gates open.”

The Army is in a similar predicament. It has five major maintenance depots and three arsenals, and that is more than is needed, said Lt. Gen. Raymond Mason, Army deputy chief of staff for logistics. “We are probably over capacity inside our organic industrial base,” he said. Base closure authority would help make these operations more efficient, he added. As workload declines, the cost of fixing equipment at depots will rise, while the Army’s budget keeps coming down. None of these trends bode well for the future, Mason said.

Photo Credit: Defense Dept.

Published: 6/14/2013 3:56 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;32;35;39;65;

New Realities Force Boeing to Revamp its Satellite Business

Stew Magnuson — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 20:15:44 GMT

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By Stew Magnuson

Boeing's 702MP satellite

Commercial satellite manufacturing amounted to about 7 percent of Boeing’s space and intelligence business in 2007. It has grown to 32 percent now, a senior company executive said June 13.

The cancellation of the Transformational-Satellite (T-Sat) program in 2009 was a factor that forced Boeing to seek business in the commercial sector, said James S. Simpson, vice president of business development at Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems.

That was the seeming end of large, overly complex, multi-billion dollar military and spy satellite programs, he said. It wasn’t obvious at the time, but it was the beginning of the U.S military’s “disaggregated space” movement, which would call for the capabilities that megalithic spacecraft provided to be spread out among smaller spacecraft, commercial satellites and payloads that could piggyback on other satellites, he said.

“At the time, we were devastated,” Simpson said of the T-Sat cancellation. Then Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Ash Carter said that the program’s technologies would be spread out among other spacecraft. That was the first sign that a new day was dawning, and that it wouldn’t include large, complex satellites, Simpson said before members of the Washington Space Business Roundtable.

The problem was that this was mostly what Boeing did. “It was a hit on the head. This was the way things were going to have to happen. You were going to have disaggregated space,” Simpson said.

“The bottom line was, we were no long competitive in the commercial side of the business,” he said. Meanwhile, the company wasn’t winning government contracts, even for satellites where it was the incumbent manufacturer.

Then came an era of budget cuts, and now sequestration. The Air Force put forth the disaggregation movement where satellites capabilities would be spread out. Boeing knew it would have to be involved in this new space architecture, Simpson said.

Boeing had a sophisticated satellite, the 702HP, for government and military customers to integrate their payloads onto, but it was too expensive for commercial satellite customers. The 702MP was the company’s answer for something that could accommodate customers in the burgeoning comsat market. Soon, its non-military business began to pick up.

Simpson said customers have pointed out that the company’s satellites are still not cost competitive. “That is something we still continue to work on,” he said.

Meanwhile, Boeing has driven some of the costs out of government satellites by leveraging what it learned building the commercial satellites.

Air Force Space and Missile Command once had about 75 personnel in the El Segundo, Calif., factory for the Wideband Global Satcom program. “You can imagine how much work 75 people can put into a factory just by asking questions,” Simpson said. That number is now down to five.

Boeing was also doing significantly more tests on the government satellites than the commercial ones because of the belief that they had to be more reliable. For example, a government satellite required 70 days in its thermal vacuum chamber that simulated the harshness of space. A commercial satellite only needed 30 days.

Boeing said there was little difference between the availability of a military satellite at 95.1 percent and a commercial one at 94.7 percent. That was statistically irrelevant, the government customers agreed, and extensive tests were curtailed, Simpson said.

“The bottom line was, why were we doing all this additional testing when it was not providing any additional value?” he asked. The changes took $80 million in costs out of the program, he added.

Today, Boeing has about an $8 billion backlog in orders, 2 percent annual growth in its space and intelligence division, with about three in every 10 spacecraft it builds intended for the commercial market, Simpson said. The division is shooting for at least 40 percent of its business from the non-government market, he said.

As for sequestration and budget cuts, they really haven’t hit home in the space industry, he said.

“I think we are probably at least a year or so downstream before they really start to fully implement [sequestration] and realize that we have a real issue,” Simpson said. “The real issue is that we have programs of record now, and studies, and that is about it.”

There are no new military communication satellites in the pipeline. Yet, the demand for them continues to grow.

There is little of the disaggregation of space systems that Carter talked about so far, he said. “We are not seeing the effects of how we do this in a logical manner going forward.”

Photo Credit: Boeing

Published: 6/13/2013 5:39 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;95;

Navy Secretary Defends Littoral Combat Ship

Valerie Insinna — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:06:52 GMT

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By Valerie Insinna

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus delivers remarks on the flight
deck of the littoral combat ship USS Freedom

The littoral combat ship continues to fend off criticism about its cost and survivability, but the Navy’s top civilian leader said the arguments against it are not new.

The first ship of any class has always been the subject of intense scrutiny, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said. No vessel operates perfectly its first time out to sea, and the Navy is fixing problems on the LCS as they arise.

"Every time the Navy has built a new ship, two things have happened,” he told reporters June 13. “We've had issues with the first or second ship in the class, and a lot of people inside the Navy and outside the Navy hate it because it's not what we're used to.”

The first littoral combat ships, Lockheed Martin’s USS Freedom and Austal USA’s USS Independence, were designed as developmental ships whereby the Navy could evaluate how they performed and what changes needed to be made, he said.

The Freedom currently is on its first deployment to Southeast Asia. It left Singapore on June 11 to begin exercises in the region after participating in the International Maritime Defence Exhibition.

Navy officials saw the deployment as a chance to vindicate the LCS, but the Freedom has run into several difficulties so far, including a power outage in March on its way to Singapore and an engine problem in May that forced it to return to port.

Mabus’ comments will likely do little to quell concerns from Congress. The House Armed Services Committee recently passed an amendment to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act that would require the Government Accountability Office to study the Singapore deployment and any resulting changes that the Navy recommends to the ship or its modules.

“The committee has significant concerns regarding the levels of concurrency associated with the mission modules and the expected delivery of the littoral combat ship seaframes,” the amendment said.

Congressional problems with the cost of the program often are due to “old numbers or old metrics that we’ve fixed,” Mabus said. Congress in 2002 was told the cost per vessel would run $220 million, but that was based on the idea that the ships would use a commercial hull. Upgrading to a military hull raised the price, he said.

The Navy so far has awarded contracts to buy 10 ships of each variant, and the price of each ship will decrease over time, Mabus said. The first ships cost $439 million, while the last will cost $350 million.

Mission modules — which will include systems for mine countermeasure, surface warfare and anti-submarine warfare that can be swapped out as needed — are being produced for less than what was expected in 2002, he added.

"The weapons modules [in 2002] were seen as being almost as expensive [as the ship], being in the $200 million range,” he said. “That has turned out not to be the case." The countermine module is about $100 million, the other two are in the $20 million to $30 million range, he said.

Mabus maintained the vessel’s modularity will help it adapt to a range of missions — even if the service doesn’t know exactly what those are. Modules for the Marine Corps and naval special forces are being considered, he said.

"The notion that it doesn't have a mission, that it's a ship in search of a mission — I think that's one of its greatest strengths,” Mabus said. “We don't know what we're going to face.”

One of the things the Navy is looking at during the Freedom’s deployment is what equipment is needed so that technicians can quickly change mission modules, he said. A classified Navy report released earlier this year suggested that it would take sailors longer than anticipated to switch out modules, but Mabus asserted that it is still quicker to make such changes on an LCS than it is on other ships.

“If you put a weapons system on a DDG [guided missile destroyer], and you find out this just isn't what we need, you [have] to send the ship to the shipyard, you’ve got to rip stuff out,” he said. It “takes a year. It's very expensive.”

Photo Credit: Navy

Published: 6/13/2013 3:53 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;84;85;

Debate Continues Over Fate of U.S. Military Gear in Afghanistan

Sandra Erwin — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:20:28 GMT

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By Sandra I. Erwin

Defense Department officials estimate there are at least 100,000 shipping containers in Afghanistan that are packed with U.S. military weapons, equipment and supplies.

Approximately 25 percent of those boxes contain expensive hardware that the U.S. military wants to bring back after the troop drawdown is completed in 2014. The contents of the remainder 75,000 containers mostly are commercial items that the Pentagon doesn’t want to send back because the shipping costs outweigh the value of the equipment.

The cargo is still being sorted through, said Alan Estevez, assistant secretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness. Military officials in Afghanistan have been directed to identify what equipment is essential inventory for units back home, and what is expendable.

“We do not need everything we bought for the war,” Estevez said June 13 at the National Defense Industrial Association’s logistics symposium in Arlington, Va.
“I’m not going to bring back paper plates, and I’m not going to bring back bandages,” he said.

Army officials, meanwhile, worry that the Pentagon will want to give away or leave behind equipment the service needs to replenish stocks back home. “There is still a debate in the Pentagon” about how to handle U.S. equipment in Afghanistan, said Lt. Gen. Raymond Mason, Army deputy chief of staff for logistics.

In the logistics business, he said, “We are very good at getting in, but no so good at getting out.”

The Army has about $25 billion worth of equipment in Afghanistan, and $19 billion of that should be sent back to fill shortages in stateside units, Mason said at the NDIA conference. Some gear already has made its way to the United States, he noted. A year ago, the Army’s inventory in Afghanistan was worth $28 billion.

The Army wants most of this equipment returned, Mason said. “It’s our latest and greatest stuff that we have over there,” including armored Humvee trucks, communications systems, computers and weapons.

Defense officials are doing a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it is worth spending up to $14 billion to send back the Army’s gear. That includes $3 billion to $5 billion in shipping expenses and $9 billion that it would cost to repair damaged equipment.

“It makes sense to bring it back,” Mason said. “I don't think we are going to have the money to buy new,” or the time to wait for new equipment to get through the Pentagon’s protracted procurement process. “For an investment of $12 to $14 billion, we get $25 billion worth of stuff,” Mason said.

Over the past 10 years, he noted, the Army spent $80 billion repairing war-torn equipment.

Estevez said exiting Afghanistan will be a tough challenge even for seasoned logisticians. Leaving Iraq was easier, he said, because the U.S. military had transportation infrastructure in Kuwait that does not exist in Afghanistan. The bulk of U.S. military gear will be ready to be returned by 2014 or 2015, following the scheduled troop drawdown, he said.

He insisted that military leaders will have to prove that equipment is essential before they receive approval and funding to ship it back. “If we don’t need it for the future force, we are not going to pay the cost of bringing it back for resetting and parking it for some future unidentified need,” he said. “Those costs are prohibitive.”

Anything that is not returned will be either given away to Afghan forces, to other allied countries, or will be destroyed. Congressional auditors in 2012 identified more than 750,000 major pieces of combat equipment in Afghanistan, such as weapons and vehicles, that could be returned to the U.S. military, transferred to another U.S. government agency or another country, or destroyed. This equipment was estimated to be worth more than $36 billion, and it could cost $5.7 billion to return or transfer equipment from Afghanistan, said Cary Russell, GAO’s acting director of defense capabilities and management. He cautioned that the military services have not consistently produced data to support their decisions concerning the return of war-zone items from Afghanistan, said Russell. “There is a risk that the costs of returning excess items may outweigh the benefits.”

Photo Credit: Defense Dept.

Published: 6/13/2013 3:30 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;32;39;65;

Terrorists Could Use Fire as New Tactic Against United States

Stew Magnuson — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:33:11 GMT

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By Steff Thomas

Counterterrorism experts worry about a weapon that is both easily attainable and destructive. It is not a gun, explosive or nuclear weapon. It’s fire.

Joseph Pfeifer, chief of counterterrorism and emergency preparedness at the New York Fire Department, said first responders and law enforcement need to be more prepared for terrorist attacks that use fire as a weapon. Such tactics were used in the 2008 assaults in Mumbai, India.

“The recognition of terrorists’ interest in the use of fire as a weapon and the resulting complexities are important considerations for all first responders and security forces,” Pfeiffer said June 12 in his statement before the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence.

“Fire as a weapon, by itself or along with other tactics, presents significant challenges that first responders and security forces must contend with in planning, preparation and drills,” he said at the hearing, which focused on the potential of an attack on the United States by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistani terrorist organization.

There is a lack of training and knowledge about potential “Mumbai-style” terrorist attacks on the homeland. Pfeiffer urged Congress to provide resources for research and training that could aide in the prediction of these attacks sooner rather than later.

Lashkar-e-Taiba led the series of attacks against Mumbai.

“While successful attacks are instructive, it is equally important to study unrealized terrorist plots that reveal a great deal about intentions, motivations, target selection and desired tactics of our adversaries,” Pfeifer said.

Some terrorist organizations have been publishing information that instructs members how to use fire as a means of attack. One publication, Inspire, provided its readers with a tutorial on various methods, including the use of simple “ember bombs” to ignite forest fires, according to Pfeifer.

While the LeT continues to train and cultivate new terrorists, these groups and individuals no longer need extensive training, Pfeifer said. The pressure cooker bombs planted during the Boston Marathon was one example of a relatively simple to construct weapon, he said.

Meanwhile, Lashkar-e-Taiba doesn’t pose an imminent threat to the United States, said Christine Fair, senior fellow with the Combating Terrorism Center at the West Point military academy.

While Pfeifer agreed with Fair, he still believed that the United States could be a potential target for the LeT and other groups. While the organization may not be directly connected to al-Qaida, many militants work together to plan attacks, he said.

There is no evidence that the LeT has the intention to attack the U.S. home front, said Stephen Tankel, an assistant professor at American University and expert on terrorism.

Tankel shared a conversation he had with an alleged member of the LeT, who stated that there were two reasons why the organization had not targeted the United States: the fear of retribution and the price that the organization might have to pay in the aftermath.

The member told Tankel that if those two things were absent, the LeT would have no issues with attacking the United States.

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Published: 6/12/2013 4:41 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;50;

Carter Backs Proposals to Cut Defense Bloat

Sandra Erwin — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 18:14:01 GMT

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By Sandra I. Erwin

Almost every Washington think tank and several blue-ribbon panels over the past two years have called on the Pentagon to cut staff bloat and consider sweeping reforms in areas such as weapons procurement, military compensation, excess facilities, healthcare and retirement benefits.

Whereas such proposals have fallen on deaf years on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon’s top leadership is ready to take on these politically tough decisions, said Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter.

“We have to make significant changes in compensation and efficiency,” he said June 12 at the annual conference of the Center for a New American Security. “I want to align myself with the latest CNAS report and other think tank studies that stress this,” Carter said.

The CNAS study, titled, “The Seven Deadly Sins of Defense Spending,” suggested that a combination of personnel, administrative and business reforms could slash Pentagon overhead costs by nearly $500 billion over the next decade.

But without congressional backing, none of these reforms will ever get off the ground. Recent attempts by Pentagon leaders to close military bases that are no longer needed and to propose revisions to healthcare and retirement benefits all have been rebuffed.

Carter acknowledged that the current political environment makes reform efforts impracticable. The only forces that are driving change in the Pentagon these days are budget cuts, he said. Carter is leading a “strategic choices and management review” that is expected to deliver to Congress a spending plan for 2014 that reflects the automatic sequester cuts that went into effect March 1. The sequester takes $50 billion off the top line of the defense budget every year through 2021. Carter’s team will offer lawmakers three choices as they consider the president’s request for fiscal year 2014: One is the actual president’s request, which ignores the sequester cuts. A second plan would cut $50 billion, and a third would propose a budget that falls somewhere in between.

“This is about preparing, and teeing up the choices,” Carter said.

The Pentagon already is scrambling to cut $37 billion from fiscal year 2013 spending, which must be accomplished by Sept. 30.

As he has in almost every public appearance this year, Carter blasted Congress for creating chaotic conditions for military budget planning, and for standing in the way as the Pentagon tries to shed inefficient programs and unnecessary overhead.

“In today's Washington, you don't get predictability or stability,” he said.

The strategic choices review panel believes that significant reforms are needed to cut bloat, he said. Military and civilian compensation, although political hot potatos, must come under closer scrutiny as those accounts continue to grow unchecked, experts have said. “The key question is what does it take to attract and retain the kind of people who make the military strong?” Carter asked. “We need to make balanced adjustments.”

Carter also called out Congress for allowing political agendas to take precedence over national defense. “We are not feeling the recognition of the need to keep a strong defense,” he said.

Former undersecretary of defense for policy Michèle Flournoy, also speaking at the CNAS conference, said the Pentagon must accept the reality that it no longer commands the respect on Capitol Hill that it once had. “The politics of these issues have changed,” she said. “There used to be a reliable, bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Democrats that would ultimately protect defense. That no longer exists, largely because of a split within the Republican Party” as a growing faction of the party is determined to cut government spending by any means. “How do you recreate a political coalition that can support smart defense [and] that can support the hard choices we'll have to make?” she asked. The Defense Department alone cannot take on cost-cutting reforms on its own, said Flournoy. “This is going to have to be a team effort.”

The Defense Department needs “special authorities to offer retirement incentives, disestablish positions” and make tradeoffs so it can protect investments in research, technology and maintain force readiness, she said. “Defense needs the authority to go after inefficiencies.”

Photo Credit: Defense Dept.

Published: 6/12/2013 2:47 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;32;37;34;35;33;71;72;

Marines See Asian Allies as Their Best Weapon Against China

Sandra Erwin — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:42:29 GMT

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By Sandra I. Erwin

Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Richard L. Simcock at a senior leaders' seminar in Thailand

In response to the People’s Republic of China’s ascendancy as a military power, the Pentagon drafted an “air-sea battle” concept that calls for the U.S. armed forces to ensure their aircraft, ships and guided weapons can outmatch the PLA’s arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles.

Analysts predict that as Navy and Marine Corps forces expand their presence in the Asia-Pacific region, they will face so-called “anti-access” threats from emerging powers such as a China.

But Marine leaders in the region do not fear such scenarios, and believe that by establishing close ties with Asian allies, the United States will have access when it needs it, said Brig. Gen. Richard L. Simcock, deputy commander of Marine Forces Pacific. The command is the Corps’ largest, with approximately 83,000 Marines and sailors.

Dealing with anti-access threats is less about designing new weapons and more about “engagement” with friendly countries in Asia, Simcock said June 11 during a telephone conference with reporters. Steady coalition-building efforts such as multinational military exercises and U.S. teams training foreign allies almost guarantee that America’s military will remain the dominant power in Asia-Pacific, he said.

Working with allies and helping to train their armed forces — or what the Pentagon calls “phase zero” operations — would help avert armed conflict as the United States would have a huge coalition on its side to deter a potential enemy, Simcock said.

Navy and Marine Corps officials in Asia are convinced that “engagement” is the ticket to peace in the region, he said. “Countries are very receptive to the type of engagement that the Navy and Marine Corps bring to the maritime theater,” he said.

No country wants to see the United States increase its military presence in the area permanently, but Asian allies welcome opportunities to train with U.S. forces and buy U.S. technology so their weapons are compatible. “That type of engagement and access is what we build upon” to push back against enemies that would seek to deny entry to U.S. forces, he said. “The relationships we build today, before any crisis hits, will pay off when a crisis occurs,” regardless of whether it is a man-made or a natural disaster.

After spending a year traveling around Asia, Simcock said he concluded that U.S. military dominance in the region is not likely to be challenged any time soon. Washington policymakers and think tanks, meanwhile, obsess over a potential war with China.

In reality, the United States is in a much stronger position than most people realize, Simcock said. There is a case to be made that U.S. weaponry should be improved and ships should be hardened for any eventual contingency, Simcock said. But the focus should be on preventing crises, not just on how to respond to one, he added. “You want to hedge all bets. But the conversation needs to start with the actions we are taking today with countries,” he said. “These relationships [are] going to assure the access we will need when a crisis strikes.”

Cyber espionage and concerns about the hacking of U.S. networks reportedly originating in China are legitimate issues, but none that causes Simcock to lose sleep. “The only thing that keeps me up at night is coffee, and I don't mean to be flippant,” he said. “I am very positive about the Pacific. We have become the partner of choice in the region.”

Simcock said Marine forces currently are involved in 170 international training exercises per year in the U.S. Pacific Command area of operations. As part of the Pentagon’s “pivot to Asia” plan, the Marine Corps will seek to relocate more than 9,000 Marines from Okinawa, Japan, to other parts of the Pacific: 4,800 to Guam, 2,700 to Hawaii and 2,500 to Australia.

With the Defense Department facing across-the-board budget cuts, analysts have questioned whether the Marine Corps can afford to carry out the realignment in Asia. “Conducting large-scale posture transformations during an era of increasing budgetary pressures and competition for scarce resources has proven to be a challenge for the Defense Department,” said a June 2013 report by the Government Accountability Office. The Pentagon originally estimated that the cost to relocate Marines in Asia would be $4.2 billion, but the Marine Corps later upped the price tag to $13 billion. GAO said even the larger sum might not account for all costs.

Simcock downplayed the impact that budget cuts would have on the Marine Corps’ strategy in Asia. The military is in a financial crunch, he recognized, but it can still pivot to Asia successfully. “We may not have everything we want,” he said. “But right now I have everything I need.”

To make up for shortages of amphibious warships, for instance, Marines are using cargo ships that usually serve as floating warehouses. “We are putting Marines on them and deploying them in exercises.” Marines increasingly will rely on smaller ferries, known as “joint high speed vessels,” that are cheaper to operate than big-deck amphibious ships. Every Marine commander would like more amphibious vessels, he said, but missions can still be done with what is available.

Marines in the Pacific are exuberant about the recent deployment of a V-22 Osprey squadron in Japan, and the prospect of a second one in the near future, said Simcock. Within a few years, the F-35B joint strike fighter will be coming to Japan, too, he noted.

Photo Credit: Marine Corps

Published: 6/11/2013 4:02 PM

Taxonomy: ;112;45;63;

Defense Industry In Search of The New Normal

Sandra Erwin — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:31:53 GMT

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By Sandra I. Erwin

Weapons manufacturers face tectonic shifts in the business landscape. Defense contractors must not only cope with military spending cuts by the world’s major powers but also with changing security priorities, warns a new report by the consulting firm Deloitte.

In “Global Defense Outlook 2013,” a team of Deloitte analysts projects that the defense market in the coming years will be upended as nations choose to protect domestic programs at the expense of military spending, and sales of big-ticket conventional weapons begins to dry up.

The U.S. defense sector, as the world’s largest, has the most to lose as these shifts materialize. Companies that intend to stay in this market must define the “new normal” and invest accordingly, said Charles F. Wald, retired Air Force general and head of Deloitte's defense practice.

The United States today accounts for 41 percent of total global military spending of $1.6 trillion. In 2011, the nation spent more than the combined defense spending of the next 14 countries.

But U.S. defense budgets have been on a down slope since 2010, and the Pentagon now faces a 10 percent annual reduction over the next 10 years as a result of congressionally mandated cuts to all federal spending.

U.S. defense budgets are projected to decline 20 percent between the post-9/11 peak reached in 2010 and 2017.

The defense business will be shrinking, but it is not all bad news for contractors, Wald said in an interview. The oft-heard lament that the defense market is “not there anymore” is only true if one defines the market as warplanes, armored vehicles, ships and other traditional military hardware, Wald said. The United States and other wealthy nations are still buying some of those expensive items, although the market is already saturated and there is little prospect of growth, he said. Even the booming drone market is “pretty filled up,” he noted.

The bright spot in the defense sector will be in “affordable high-tech” hardware and software, Wald said. “There is a market in a more connected global economy.” Products that will see growing demand include communications, information systems, cyberwar tools and tactical gear for special operations forces. “That’s where the new market is going to be,” both in the United States and overseas, Wald said.

From the changing conditions will emerge new winners, and losers. More countries increasingly will invest in special operations forces and information technology, which is what they believe they will need to combat terrorism and extremist groups, Wald said. Major weapon systems such as fighter aircraft will still be sold, but in small numbers and to a diminishing number of countries, he said. “That’s the new world we live in.”

This will be the reality “unless you believe that China is going to attack the United States or Russia will attack Europe,” said Wald. “We don’t live in that world anymore. … The world is still dangerous, but you are not going to attack insurgents in Mali [Africa] with a Joint Strike Fighter.”

The rise of special operations forces at the expense of conventional ground armies is inevitable, Wald said. A bellwether is the proposed reorganization of U.S. Special Operations Command into a “global SOF network. “That is a big deal,” said Wald. That will make SOCOM less dependent on the conventional military and could set a path for other countries to follow. “They are developing their own capacity as the world puts more emphasis on SOF,” said Wald. “Conventional forces will have to decrease. It’s a zero-sum game.”

From 2006 to 2012, the number of countries with a publicly disclosed special operations force increased by 40 percent, Deloitte noted in the study. “Special operations capabilities are increasingly aligned with counterterrorism and counterinsurgency missions — a trend established after the 9/11 attacks.” Two-thirds of the countries that are adding SOF are lower-income countries, where many terrorist-related attacks occur.

Cold War–era force structure, “with its dependence on general-purpose forces and strategic nuclear weapons, is giving way to new structures built around special operations capability and emerging concepts of operations relating to information networks,” the study said.

How the U.S. defense industry will adjust to the changing environment remains to be seen, Wald said. Manufacturers of big-ticket weapons such as tanks and aircraft carriers still live in denial, said Wald. Too many communities and congressional districts still depend on those systems for their livelihood, he said. “People don’t want their world to go away.” It becomes an emotional debate. “People believe in what they are doing. You are going to have a theological argument as the world shifts, and that’s why it’s so hard.” Members of Congress are going to fight for those jobs, and “they could not care less about the big picture,” said Wald. “To make this shift is not easy. But it’s a fact of life. … There has to be some risk taken.”

The Pentagon’s ongoing “strategic choices and management review” is only a time-buying exercise and, most likely, will not recommend any substantive change, Wald predicted.

Several Washington think tanks in recent months have rolled out dozens of reports with recommendations on how to contain defense spending. But Wald said those studies tend to focus on funding cuts and not on fundamental questions about what the United States should prepare to fight against. “People don’t want to go down that line of questions because it threatens their livelihood,” he said. There is a fiscal reality on one side and a new world on the other. “People haven’t put that together yet.”

Published: 6/11/2013 8:31 AM

Taxonomy: ;112;12;14;32;34;63;71;