Highlights
News: The
Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense held a hearing on the
F-35 program this week during which Chairman Dick Durbin questioned
whether the program was “too big to fail,” and the Brookings
Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon recommended cutting the total F-35 buy in
half.
News: The
Pentagon has released a new report on the United States’ nuclear
posture, which could clear the way for additional nuclear weapons
reductions even though the guidance reaffirms the necessity of the
nuclear ‘triad.’
PDA Perspective: President
Obama’s welcome announcement of intent to negotiate a further reduction
in strategic nuclear weapons with Russia has the potential to save a
fair amount of money over the next decade and beyond.
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State of Play
Executive
Speaking in Berlin this week, President
Obama announced his intention to pursue additional bilateral nuclear
weapons reductions with Russia that could see the United States’ nuclear
stockpile culled by one-third. The Pentagon shortly followed up with a
new report
on the United States’ nuclear deterrent strategy, in which senior
military officials recognize “the significantly diminished possibility
of a disarming surprise nuclear attack.”
While the report notes that the United
States will only use nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances,” it also
unequivocally calls for the maintenance of the United States’ nuclear
‘triad,’ which employs three unique delivery systems as a nuclear
deterrent. “The United States will maintain a nuclear Triad, consisting
of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched
ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and nuclear-capable heavy bombers. Retaining
all three Triad legs will best maintain strategic stability at
reasonable cost, while hedging against potential technical problems or
vulnerabilities,” the report declares.
By all accounts, the Strategic Choices and Management Review has been completed at the Pentagon, and is now being mulled over by senior military officials. The review is intended
to evaluate whether the Pentagon’s current defense posture can be
executed with approximately $500 billion in defense spending reductions
occurring as a result of sequestration. While not disclosing the
results of the review, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff General
Martin Dempsey has alluded that full sequestration cuts of $500 billion
would entail “unacceptable risk,” while cuts on the magnitude of $150
billion over the next decade would not require a reformulation of the
United States’ defense posture.
In an interview with Inside Defense
following a House Budget Committee appearance, General Dempsey
explained that, for the first time ever, the forthcoming 2014
Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) may examine multiple fiscal scenarios.
"Otherwise, it will be built on… an unreasonable foundation.” Dempsey
noted. The general further added that the department will be “looking
at a number of different fiscal futures” during the QDR process.
Interestingly, the last QDR, conducted in 2010, was statutorily
prevented from considering resource constraints. Given Dempsey’s recent
comments, it appears highly likely that the forthcoming 2014 QDR will
indeed take resource constraints into consideration.
Legislative
Last week, the House completed consideration of its version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act soon after the Senate Armed Services Committee completed its markup.
Though, theoretically, the Senate bill is ready for Floor action now;
last year, the bill did not hit the Senate Floor until November. HASC
chair Buck McKeon (R-CA) is pressing his senate colleagues
to consider the bill sooner rather than latter because of provisions
aimed at addressing pervasive carnal assault in the military. SASC
chair Carl Levin (D-MI) says he doubts that the bill will receive Floor consideration before the July 4 recess.
The House will likely take up its version
of the annual military spending bill sometime after the July 4 recess, a
measure which would provide $512.5 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget (excluding military construction and family housing). This topline amount is roughly $3.4 billion below the President’s budget request.
According to Russell Rumbaugh of the Stimson Center, the House
appropriations bill is approximately $50 billion over the FY14 spending
caps currently in law. The Senate Appropriations Committee has yet to
unveil its version of the military spending bill, but Rumbaugh tells Reset Defense
he believes the Senate will mark to pre-sequester numbers, somewhere
north of $500 billion. When the House bill hits the Floor, several
members are expected to offer amendments that would reduce the topline
amount appropriated by a significant amount.
Weapons
The Army has concluded the competition for a new service carbine to replace the M4 without selecting a follow-on – thus effectively terminating the $1.8 billion Individual Carbine program. According to Breaking Defense,
this is the second M4 replacement competition within the past decade
that has concluded without a winner, even though Senator Tom Coburn
(R-OK) has been fighting tooth and nail
since 2007 for the Army to consider alternatives to the current
carbine. Anticipating the Army’s recent decision, the Senate version of
the NDAA proposes cutting funding for the M4 replacement program.
However, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), a senior member of the House Armed
Services Committee, offered an amendment to the House version of the
NDAA that would prevent the Army from “cancelling” the Individual
Carbine program. Fortunately for the service, it has “concluded” the competition without selecting a winner, rather than “cancelling” the program outright.
Last week, the Pentagon released a 438-page report
detailing how sequestration will impact funding for specific weapons
programs in Fiscal Year 2013. The analysis notes that $9.8 billion will
be cut from the Pentagon’s procurement account while an additional $6
billion will be cut from research and development. Inside Defense reports
that the Pentagon was able to tap a “huge reserve” of unobligated
balances in order to mitigate the impact of sequestration on its weapons
modernization accounts in Fiscal Year 2013. For the Pentagon’s
troubled F-35 program, this will likely mean five fewer jets this year.
Speaking of the F-35, it received a full-throated defense before the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee
this week, chaired by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). Appearing before the
subcommittee was a full roster of senior defense officials, including
the heads of the Navy, Air Force, F-35 program, the Pentagon’s top
tester and acquisition official, and the lead acquisition expert at
GAO. While the Pentagon brass repeated how critical the aircraft is to
the United States’ future military capabilities, the Pentagon’s top
weapons tester, Michael Gilmore, noted how much concurrency development
has driven up the program’s costs: “Production in this program started
before there was any flight testing at all, which was unprecedented in
the history of aircraft development programs. And, so, that’s about as
concurrent as you can get. That’s pretty much 100% concurrency.
Obviously that’s a bad thing.”
During the subcommittee hearing, Chairman Durbin questioned whether the F-35 program was “too big to fail,” while the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon
recommended cutting the total F-35 buy in half and only purchasing
approximately 1,250 aircraft. Though, O’Hanlon recognizes that savings
from his proposal would be modest because of the cost of purchasing
alternative aircraft and the fact that the per-unit cost of the F-35
would increase as the total procurement buy fell. O’Hanlon estimates
that cutting the total buy in half would save roughly 20-25 percent of
the total program cost. The Pentagon expects to significantly ramp up procurement of the F-35 in Fiscal Year 2015.
Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio reported
this week that the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the purchasing arm
of the Pentagon, is seeking $13.7 million in refunds from Boeing after
the contractor overcharged the DLA for spare parts. Specifically, an
audit found that Boeing was charging the U.S. government $2,286 a piece
for aluminum “bearing sleeves” when the per-unit cost should have been
around $10. Capaccio further reports that back in May of 2011, a
separate Inspector General audit found that Boeing had overcharged the
Pentagon $13 million for Army depot contracts.
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Project on Defense Alternatives Perspective
President
Obama has announced he will seek to negotiate with Russia a further
reduction in strategic nuclear weapons. This welcome step has the
potential to save a fair amount of money over the next decade and
beyond. In Berlin this week, the President declared
that “we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and
maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our
deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third.”
This decision has been anticipated
since early in the year. Obama’s stated intention “to seek negotiated
cuts with Russia” has sufficient ambiguity to allow for a new treaty
requiring Senate ratification or, as David Sanger of the New York Times has written,
“an informal agreement with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for
mutual cuts within the framework of the new Start — but without the need
for ratification.”
Saving
money is very likely one of the reasons Obama is now moving ahead with
more reductions in strategic weaponry, reasoning that is no doubt widely
supported among those in the military who would much prefer to spend
those dollars elsewhere. In order to realize this potential he will
need to avoid an extended Congressional fight that a treaty ratification
process will entail. Instead, the cuts will have to begin soon and
involve a series of verified incremental reciprocal reductions between
the United States and Russia.
And there is a fair amount of money to be saved. A recent report
from the Arms Control Association found nearly $40 billion in savings
from slowing modernization and reducing the numbers of ballistic missile
submarines, strategic bombers, and ICBMs. As the Project on Defense
Alternatives noted
in February: “How much will be saved … will depend on the structure of
the residual nuclear forces. There are some components of strategic
forces that cost much more than others, and the overall complexity of
the strategic force incurs added costs.”
While Obama spoke in Berlin, Secretary Hagel was reassuring an
audience at the University of Nebraska that the Pentagon was not
planning to restructure its strategic forces while reducing numbers of
weapons. Hagel pledged to “retain a triad of bombers, ICBMs, and
ballistic missile submarines.” This commitment to a strategic structure
developed during the Cold War will reduce the savings that the Obama
administration will be able to realize from nuclear weapons reductions.
PDA has called
for “…a future level of 900 warheads on 340 launchers. This would be a
first step toward a ‘minimal deterrence’ posture. Following on the recommendations
of the Sustainable Defense Task Force, this reduction would involve
moving from a triad posture to a dyad by retiring the bomber leg. Also
reduced would be the number of Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines
from 14 today to 7 in the future.”
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News and Commentary
TIME: About That Boom! in the Pentagon’s Civilian Workforce - Mackenzie Eaglen
“Since President Obama took office, he
has cut the defense budget by 10%. The President has significantly
reduced the planned sizes of the Army and Marine Corps. He has overseen
the cancellation of dozens of major equipment programs, and ended
production at several long-standing marquee manufacturing lines across
the country. But the President has grown the size of the federal
civilian workforce during his tenure. And the 760,000-large Pentagon
civilian workforce is no exception. Since coming into office, the
President has set into motion a plan to cut the active-duty military by
roughly 12%. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense civilian workforce has
grown by about 13 percent.” (6/20/13)
Foreign Policy: Could Killer Robots Bring World Peace? – John Arquila
“Clearly, 21st century military affairs
are already being driven by the quest to blend human soldiers with
intelligent machines in the most artful fashion. For example, in urban
battles, where casualties have always been high, it will be better to
send a robot into the rubble first to scout out a building before the
human troops advance. In future naval engagements, where the risk of
killing civilians will be close to nil out at sea, robot attack craft
might be the smartest weapon to use, particularly in an emerging era of
supersonic anti-ship missiles that will imperil aircraft carriers and
other large vessels. In the air, robots will pilot advanced jets built
to perform at extreme G-forces that the human body could never tolerate.
As Peter Singer has observed in his book Wired for War, robots
are now implementing the swarming concept that my partner David
Ronfeldt and I developed over a decade ago -- the notion of attacking
from several directions at the same time -- at least in the United
States military.” (6/19/13)
Defense News: Big Changes Ahead in the Pentagon's Policy Shops? – Paul McLeary
“After more than a decade of almost
constant expansion, the Pentagon’s policy-making apparatus may be about
to experience the bite of the budget-cut fever that is gripping
Washington… The change that carries the heaviest consequences revolves
around eliminating the Assistant Secretary of Defense (ASD) for Homeland
Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs, which was created in 2003 to
coordinate domestic agencies that work on homeland preparedness, as well
as to provide oversight of the US military’s Northern and Southern
Commands.” (6/19/13)
The New Republic: Boondoggle Goes Boom: A demented tale of how the Army actually does business - Robert Draper
“America’s struggle to understand,
anticipate, and outsmart its enemies has been rigorously discussed since
9/11. Where the story becomes turgid—where we stop paying attention—is
on the crucial question of how that intelligence, once gathered, is
organized and made available in a way that will allow it to actually be
put to use. Where the days following the September 11 attacks found us
painfully groping for on-the-ground assets in Afghanistan, today our
intel units have gobs of information they have no idea what to do with,
such as thousands of detainee cell-phone numbers that have yet to be
analyzed. The immortal Donald Rumsfeld litany of ‘known unknowns’ leaves
off the most infuriating conundrum of all—namely, that there are also
unknown knowns: disjointed facts that languish in a warehouse or in the
ether, unreachable to the cops or colonels who urgently need them but
aren’t aware that such facts are already there for the asking.” (6/19/13)
Foreign Policy: Time to Pull Our Troops from Europe – Sean Kay
“NATO has become politically
unmanageable, militarily dysfunctional, and now risks strategic
irrelevance. Operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya demonstrated
serious difficulties in decision-making by consensus and dangerous
operational inefficiencies. When America sought to ‘lead from behind’ in
Libya, it was, months into the war, still providing the primary
enabling forces. In the recent French intervention in Mali, the United
States was called on to supply similar, and expensive, capacities to
sustain military operations. America's European allies have no incentive
to change this burden-sharing problem knowing the United States will
fill operational gaps, freeing them to make massive cuts in the name of
austerity.” (6/18/13)
Foreign Policy: A Wink and Nod Toward Sequestration - Gordon Adams
“While the nation swirls in the
Sufi-dance around surveillance, the congressional defense committees
have had their heads down, marking up the DOD money bills for the coming
fiscal year. When it comes to the overall totals in the defense money
bills, the House committees are following the theme of
sequestration-avoidance, which has characterized the congressional
approach to defense all this year. This means providing funds more or
less around the levels requested by the administration. But the
committees, especially the appropriators (who provide the real money),
are also winking and nodding toward the reality that the sequester will
probably continue this year and may well come around again next January
if there is no broader agreement on the federal budget this year. Using
every flexible tool they can find, the committees are looking for ways
to make DOD whole, as far as possible.” (6/18/13)
Los Angeles Times: F-22 program produces few planes, soaring costs - Ralph Vartabedian, W.J. Hennigan
“At the heart of the ongoing weapons
acquisition problem, retired military leaders and defense experts say,
is a failure by the Pentagon and Congress to acknowledge at the outset
the true cost and technical difficulties of building complex systems
like the F-22. The military launches ambitious programs based on
low-ball estimates by contractors, critics say. Eager to speed money to
their home states, members of Congress allocate funding for these
leading-edge defense programs, even before the technologies are
developed and tested.” (6/16/13)
Bloomberg: Littoral Ship’s Troubled Asia Tour Cited by Lawmakers – Tony Capaccio
“The House panel that funds defense
spending said it’s ‘disturbed by the number of problems’ marring the
deployment to Asia of the Navy’s first Littoral Combat Ship. The
troubles “appear to be beyond the crew’s capability to handle,
especially given that the LCS should have been in an extremely high
state of readiness,” the House Appropriations defense subcommittee said
in a report approved this week by the full committee as part of its
defense bill for fiscal 2014. The problems on the USS Freedom, built by
Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), include seawater contamination and rust
particles in lubrication components used by the main propulsion system.
The ship was forced to return to port in Singapore for repairs after
eight hours of sailing on May 21, before a visit to the ship by Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel on June 2." (6/14/13)
Los Angeles Times: Struggling to take off: The troubled F-35 jet may not be combat-ready till 2015 - W.J. Hennigan, Ralph Vartabedian
“Far beyond the electronic security gates
and razor-wire topped fences, Col. Rod Cregier surveys a team of
technicians busily readying a lithe F-35 fighter jet for its next test
flight. As the F-35 program director at the base, Cregier and his team
play a crucial role in a nationwide military effort to get the high-tech
jet ready for battle. After a decade of administrative problems, cost
overruns and technical glitches, the F-35 is still not ready for action.
The program has consistently come under political attack even though
the military considers it crucial to the nation's defense needs. Cregier
believes the program is finally on course and said he is convinced that
the jet can successfully replace the military's aging fighter fleets —
some 34 years old — though he does not downplay the significant
challenges his team faces.” (6/12/13)
Wired: The Secret War – James Bamford
“Despite the sequestration, layoffs, and
furloughs in the federal government, it’s a boom time for [General
Keith] Alexander. In April, as part of its 2014 budget request, the
Pentagon asked Congress for $4.7 billion for increased ‘cyberspace
operations,’ nearly $1 billion more than the 2013 allocation. At the
same time, budgets for the CIA and other intelligence agencies were cut
by almost the same amount, $4.4 billion. A portion of the money going to
Alexander will be used to create 13 cyberattack teams. What’s good for
Alexander is good for the fortunes of the cyber-industrial complex, a
burgeoning sector made up of many of the same defense contractors who
grew rich supplying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With those
conflicts now mostly in the rearview mirror, they are looking to
Alexander as a kind of savior. After all, the US spends about $30
billion annually on cybersecurity goods and services.” (6/12/13)
U.S. News and World Report: Let's Wise Up About Defense Spending – Ryan Alexander
“Politicians and ordinary Americans
across the political spectrum agree on the need for the federal
government to provide for our common national security. But that
consensus has allowed for defense and security spending to grow at an
unsustainable rate. And since the defense budget accounts for more than
half of the discretionary budget, it is simply no longer credible to
call for reducing spending without including defense cuts. The good news
is that the combination of budgetary pressures created by the sequester
and the ramp down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has opened up
space for a new conversation on defense spending priorities. In a recent
speech, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel acknowledged the need for
resources to inform strategy – a principle which seems obvious but that
has been overlooked for too long.” (6/5/13)
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Reports
Department of Defense: Report on Nuclear Employment Strategy of the United States (6/19/13)
Congressional Research Service: U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues (6/14/13)
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments: Shaping America’s Future Military: Toward a New Force Planning Construct (6/13/13)
Congressional Research Service: The United States and Europe: Responding to Change in the Middle East and North Africa (6/12/13)
Congressional Research Service: Terrorism and Transnational Crime: Foreign Policy Issues for Congress (6/11/13)
