Sponsored by Exensor
www.exensor.com
————————————————————————-
14 May 21. Acquisition Reform is Making Rapid Progress, Defense Official Says. To defend the nation, we must reform the Defense Department and more effectively work with allies and partners, a DOD official said.
Stacy A. Cummings, performing the duties of the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, spoke yesterday at the McAleese FY2022 Defense Programs conference.
To keep pace with advanced and persistent threats from China and Russia, the department must go further in acquisition and sustainment reform, she said.
Over time, the acquisition system evolved into what some people have called “a one size fits all model,” she said, explaining that it used a checklist approach for system parts, a lot of oversight and it didn’t really enable speed.
From the start of a program to initial operating capability, where systems were tested, took nearly eight years, she noted.
As a result, the department looked to transform the acquisition process and a lot was accomplished in the last year. “Our goal was to deliver a defense acquisition system that is flexible, that allows for tailoring, and empowers critical thinking and common sense decision making, with the outcome being an acceleration of delivery and timelines,” she said.
During 2020, a record 13 acquisition policies were published, she said. “This has been, at least in my experience, among the most transformational changes to acquisition policy in years, and we really anticipate this change in policy having really sustaining, enduring and positive effects to the department for years to come.”
Cummings said the redesign in policy can be broken down into six discrete pathways that are meant to be used individually or together, specifically tailored to the capabilities that the program team has been asked to deliver to the warfighter. They are:
- Urgent capability acquisition
- The middle tier of acquisition
- Major capability acquisition, which is the traditional milestone-based approach
- Software acquisition
- Defense business systems
- Acquisition of services.
Cummings said she didn’t want this to be a series of policy documents that people would pick up and read from cover to cover. “What I was really looking for is that it would be interactive, and you would use the policy to help inform decision making exactly when you need it.”
Rapid delivery of software upgrades used for weapons and communications systems and making them cyber secure is another priority of the department, she said.
Cummings also touched on the need to address any future shortages of medical supplies, microelectronics and critical minerals, by working closely with interagency partners like the Department of Commerce, the Department of Treasury and the Department of Health and Human Services.
In the future, DOD will be using artificial intelligence and machine learning to better manage its sprawling supply chain and reduce vulnerabilities, she added. (Source: US DoD)
13 May 21. New guidance on acquisition requirements coming this month, Hyten says. New guidance from the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, or JROC, will arrive by the end of the month, with an emphasis on how to speed up key areas for the Pentagon, according to Gen. John Hyten, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Speaking at the annual McAleese & Associates conference, Hyten explained that under the department’s still-in-the-works joint war-fighting concept, there are four subsidiary topics of focus: information advantage, joint command and control, fires, and contested logistics.
By the end of May, Hyten said, the JROC — which serves as an oversight body on the development of new capabilities and acquisition efforts — will publish strategic directives on speeding up the acquisition system for those four key areas.
“Speed is critical. And I’m trying to put speed back in the JROC,” Hyten said. “We’re working with the department to figure out how to put speed, and focus experimentation, so we can drive to the future. We’re working to figure out how to transition experiments quickly into operations. And the reason we’re doing this is because the threat demands it.”
Hyten did not go into detail about what the JROC guidance will look like, but did indicate it will have a focus on allowing lower-level officials flexibility in how they go about working acquisition issues.
“Many people in our enterprise still like being very deliberate and taking no risks, and making sure we understand everything before we move forward. We like to make sure that every test works, and we don’t test until we’re sure that it’s going to work,” he said. “We can’t do that kind of business anymore, we have to be able to go forward, which means we have to give that responsibility to much younger people in our formation.
“We have to give the authority and responsibility to the people that do work. We do that on the operation side of our business, but we don’t do that on the acquisition side of their business, and we have to do that again. They have to be given the responsibility, the authority and the funding flexibility to make decisions, put money where it needs to be, and go fast because otherwise we will not be able to keep up with our adversaries.”
Hyten previously discussed the need to develop new data standards through the JROC in order to make the joint war-fighting concept work.
“We believe we will enable the services to move fast because we’ll display the information requirements, we’ll define the data requirements, we’ll define how those pieces have to be done,” Hyten said Thursday. “And the advantage the services get from that is, if we define them correctly, the services never have to come back to us in every program they have with interoperability requirements.” (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Defense News)
13 May 21. Pentagon to Seek 85 F-35 Jets in Next Year’s Budget Request.
Biden administration’s move essentially in line with Trump’s.
The Biden administration will seek $11bn to buy 85 Lockheed Martin Corp. F-35 jets in the coming fiscal year, tracking a plan outlined last year by the Trump administration, according to a U.S. official.
With a $715bn budget request for fiscal year 2022, the Pentagon had considered increasing the quantity of next-generation fighters it planned to buy but decided to instead focus on using additional funding to upgrade the F-35 with new capabilities every six months, the official said.
“It’s not unusual for a new administration’s first budget to change relatively little from its predecessor,” J.J. Gertler, a military aviation analyst for the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, said in an email. “But using the prior number for FY 22 adds fuel to the idea that the big changes for the program will come in ’23,” he said.
At an estimated cost of $398bn, the F-35 is America’s biggest weapons program, a critical part of U.S. and allied efforts to upgrade their armed forces. Yet while the $715bn defense budget number is public, the Pentagon hasn’t yet detailed how that will be spent and there is no formal release date yet from the Office of Management and Budget.
The Defense Department “will respond to questions on the specifics of the budget request after it is submitted,” Laura Seal, a spokeswoman for the department’s F-35 joint program office, said in an email. The “JPO doesn’t have anything to provide in advance.” The number of F-35s sought by the administration, as well as spending on upgrades to the nation’s nuclear arsenal, the Navy shipbuilding budget and questions over whether the Army will absorb major cuts to its modernization plans will be the most scrutinized issues in President Joe Biden’s first defense budget. Of the 85 jets, 48 will be requested by the Air Force, sticking to last year’s plan, according to the budget data.
The so-called Block 4 upgrade program on the F-35 has largely escaped public scrutiny while the jet continues to grapple with other issues. Those include a major delay in completing combat testing, uncertainty over when a decision authorizing full-rate production will take place and growing concerns about the jet’s roughly $1.72trn “life-cycle” cost, which include acquisition and maintenance and operations over decades.
The Block 4 upgrade program’s $14bn estimated cost is more expensive than many Army, Navy and Air Force acquisition programs.
With the F-35 essentially a flying computer, keeping the jet’s upgrades on track and adequately funded are more important to the Biden Pentagon than increasing quantities of current model aircraft that will need to be eventually upgraded, Stacy Cummings, the acting undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee last month in written testimony.
Crucial F-35 Combat Test Risks a Delay to 2022, Five Years Late
Upgrading the F-35’s hardware and software systems “through the Block 4 modernization effort is critical for ensuring our warfighters remain equipped with the best tools available,” Cummings wrote. “The department has prioritized modernization to keep these capabilities on track, working to provide a stable, realistic funding baseline.”
“Accelerating or increasing procurement quantities” of earlier F-35 variants “is counterproductive and wastes scarce resources as such planes will need to be pulled from the flight line and retrofitted when Block 4 capabilities deliver,” she added.
Among the Block 4 areas that need additional funding — U.S. taxpayers and allied partners are absorbing a $444 million overrun caused by Lockheed Martin subcontractor issues on a key hardware upgrade called TR3 that’s the first step to increasing the power and memory of the jet.
Jessica Maxwell, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement that “the budget must balance many factors to ensure our military can meet national defense objectives now and in the future.”
The department “remains committed to using taxpayer dollars responsibly and acquiring F-35s as affordably as possible while also meeting current Warfighter needs,” Maxwell said. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Bloomberg)
13 May 21. Nuclear Deterrence Remains Department’s Highest Priority Mission. While the Defense Department is conducting a series of strategic reviews that will include U.S. nuclear policy and posture, the department still considers nuclear deterrence its highest priority mission, defense leaders said.
“Our nuclear forces remain essential to ensure that no adversary believes they can ever employ nuclear weapons for any reason, under any circumstances, against the United States or our allies and partners without risking devastating consequences,” Leonor Tomero, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
The department plans to begin specific reviews of nuclear posture and policy soon, Tomero said, and those reviews will extend through the summer and fall.
“Our reviews will assess the U.S. nuclear modernization programs to ensure that they deliver on time and are aligned with policy,” Romero said. “Importantly, the reviews will include a renewed focus on strategic stability, including risk reduction and arms control.”
Right now, the Defense Department is engaged in a recapitalization of the “nuclear triad,” which involves new submarines, such as the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines; new intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program; and new bomber aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider.
Modernization of that triad remains a top priority for defense leadership, Tomero said.
“There is very strong support for modernization of the triad, as Secretary Austin testified before Congress, as Deputy Secretary Hicks testified,” she said. “And so that will be a high priority for our review….to ensure that we continue to modernize the triad. Of course, we’ll look at how the programs are doing, what the program risks are to make sure that we have the capabilities we need when we need them.”
While the president’s fiscal year 2022 budget has yet to be given to Congress, Tomero did say she’s aware there is support for nuclear modernization and sustaining U.S. nuclear forces, but she didn’t go into more detail.
“Having a strong nuclear deterrence is one of our highest priorities,” she said. “And, so, we will continue to maintain a strong and reliable nuclear deterrence, which has been the cornerstone of our national security.” (Source: US DoD)
13 May 21. Nuclear Deterrence Remains Department’s Highest Priority Mission. While the Defense Department is conducting a series of strategic reviews that will include U.S. nuclear policy and posture, the department still considers nuclear deterrence its highest priority mission, defense leaders said.
“Our nuclear forces remain essential to ensure that no adversary believes they can ever employ nuclear weapons for any reason, under any circumstances, against the United States or our allies and partners without risking devastating consequences,” Leonor Tomero, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
The department plans to begin specific reviews of nuclear posture and policy soon, Tomero said, and those reviews will extend through the summer and fall.
“Our reviews will assess the U.S. nuclear modernization programs to ensure that they deliver on time and are aligned with policy,” Romero said. “Importantly, the reviews will include a renewed focus on strategic stability, including risk reduction and arms control.”
Right now, the Defense Department is engaged in a recapitalization of the “nuclear triad,” which involves new submarines, such as the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines; new intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program; and new bomber aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider.
Modernization of that triad remains a top priority for defense leadership, Tomero said.
“There is very strong support for modernization of the triad, as Secretary Austin testified before Congress, as Deputy Secretary Hicks testified,” she said. “And so that will be a high priority for our review….to ensure that we continue to modernize the triad. Of course, we’ll look at how the programs are doing, what the program risks are to make sure that we have the capabilities we need when we need them.”
While the president’s fiscal year 2022 budget has yet to be given to Congress, Tomero did say she’s aware there is support for nuclear modernization and sustaining U.S. nuclear forces, but she didn’t go into more detail.
“Having a strong nuclear deterrence is one of our highest priorities,” she said. “And, so, we will continue to maintain a strong and reliable nuclear deterrence, which has been the cornerstone of our national security.” (Source: US DoD)
12 May 21. The Air Force Is Planning For a Future Without the F-22. Just four fighters will make up the future fleet: F-35, F-16, F-15EX, and NGAD, chief says. The U.S. Air Force aims to pare its fighter fleet to just four types — and the F-22 Raptor won’t be among them, the service’s top general said Wednesday. Those four will be the F-35, F-15EX, F-16, and the Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, fighter, Gen. CQ Brown, Air Force chief of staff, said at a McAleese and Associates virtual conference.
“Right now we have seven fighter fleets,” Brown said. “My intent is to get down to about four, OK, and with that four, what is the right mix?”
Brown said the fighter makeup is “really a four-plus-one, because we’re going to have the A-10 for a while as we re-wing” the venerable Warthog to extend its service life into the 2030s.
The F-22 will be replaced by the NGAD jet, which will fly alongside the “F-35, which will be the cornerstone, [the] F-15EX as we come in, and then we’ll have F-16 for a while as well,” Brown said.
The Air Force currently has 186 F-22s, according to a Heritage Foundation count in November. They are just 12 years old on average, Heritage reported, making the type among the youngest in the fleet. But the F-22 has faced low mission capability rates, in part due to structural upgrades that often take multiple aircraft offline.
Last year, Air Force leaders hinted that they might buy the F-15EX not just to replace older F-15Cs but also the 218 newer F-15E Strike Eagles.
Brown said the Air Force is determining the right mix of fighters through an internal tactical air study that all of the services are participating in, to look “across the board, [at] all of our combat aircraft, our attack, our fighter portfolio.”
“I’m really looking for a window of options, because the facts and assumptions based on a threat will change over time,” he said. “But I want to get us shaped in a direction, because right now we have seven fighter fleets. Okay, my intent is to get down to about four.”
The study is not expected to shape the Air Force’s fiscal year 2022 budget request. “It’s really designed to help me build out ’23,” Brown said.
Brown said the service is still considering what will be the replacement for the F-16, “whether it’s additional F-35, or something else into the future. But I don’t need to make that decision today. That’s probably six, seven, eight years away into the future,” he said.
One analyst cautioned against overestimating the potential savings of retiring jets.
“They never get the numbers they expect when they downsize to save money first,” said John “JV” Venable, a former F-16 pilot and a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense. “The numbers of tactical airframes are already too small and the service can’t afford to suffer another cost-saving move that results in it getting even smaller.”
“The F-35 was supposed to replace the F-16 and the A-10,” Venable noted. “How the service justifies acquiring a new combat-equipped 4th-gen platform” — the F-15EX — defies logic, he said.
The F-22, built to dominate Soviet warplanes in air-to-air dogfights, has never shot down an enemy plane in combat. Instead, the plane made its combat debut over Syria in 2014. Raptors have also deployed to the Middle East to deter Iran.
Decades ago, the Air Force envisioned a fleet of 750 Raptors, but the fleet was capped at just 187 jets. Contractor Lockheed Martin delivered the final F-22 to the Air Force in 2012.
Since then U.S. officials have occasionally pondered restarting production of the plane, but the efforts never materialized. At one point, Lockheed proposed building new F-22s with more modern electronics used in the F-35 stealth fighter. Ultimately, the Air Force chose to buy updated F-15 fighter jets from Boeing.
Various allies have expressed interest in buying the plane, but U.S. law prohibits its export.
Seventeen F-22s were damaged in 2018 when a hurricane destroyed Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. (Source: Defense One)
11 May 21. Army Wants 485K Active-Duty Soldiers, the Force It Had on 9/11. The Army is focusing on supporting and maintaining an active-duty force of 485,000 — the same size the service was on 9/11 but smaller than Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville previously said he wants.
Speaking with Acting Army Secretary John Whitley at a forum hosted by the Atlantic Council on Monday, McConville said they “have agreed … [that we’re] not going to grow the Army above 485,000-ish with the resources that we’re anticipating now.”
Combined with Army Reserve and National Guard forces numbering slightly more than 500,000, it’s a “million-person force” that serves as an “anchor” on which to base the service’s planning and resources, McConville said.
Read Next: Nearly Half of Female Soldiers Still Failing New Army Fitness Test, While Males Pass Easily
Just last week, McConville told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee that he believes the Army needs a force of 540,000 to 550,000 active-duty personnel but “recognizes that, quite frankly, we just can’t afford that.”
“What we must do is keep the force we have ready,” he added.
As of March 31, the Army had 483,742 active-duty members, 187,260 reservists and 335,741 National Guard members.
The 485,000 projected number marks a flattening of Army active-duty end strength and allows the service to focus on modernization of equipment and weapons and supporting ongoing operations in the Middle East and elsewhere, McConville said.
“When you look at the levers, you have your readiness in your current operations, you have end strength and you have modernization,” he said. “What we primarily are trying to do right now is fund that modernization.”
Fiscal 2022 Army budget discussions have been hampered by a delay in the release of the full federal budget: The Biden administration released a preliminary plan that calls for $1.5trn in spending, including $715bn for the Defense Department, but details of the proposal have yet to be released.
McConville said it is imperative that the Army pivot from a focus on irregular warfare and counterinsurgency operations to Russia and China — the “Great Power” competition based on “peace through strength.”
The need to transform the force has occurred every 40 years since 1940, McConville said — right before World War II, again in the 1980s and now.
“We’re standing up new doctrine. It’s joint all-domain operations in which our contribution is multi-domain operations. … We’re standing up a system that we’re working very closely with our sister services and our allies and partners with a combined joint all-domain command-and-control system so we can pass data very, very quickly between each of our weapons systems. … We’re standing up organizations to help us deal with the information environment,” he said.
Whitley said the Army has combed through its budget lines and reallocated $30bn toward modernization. But as budgets get tighter, “We’ll continue to have to make hard choices,” he said.
Still, the service may see additional resources freed up as the United States pulls its troops from Afghanistan, he added.
“That’d be nice if that [funding] stayed with the Army. That probably won’t be the department’s position, so how much of that becomes available is to be viewed by the leadership at the bench level,” Whitley said.
(Source: Military.com)
11 May 21. JROC Takes More Control Over Service Weapon Buys. The JROC now will issue “strategic directives” to the services prescribing how they craft buying plans to substantiate the emerging Joint Warfighting Concept, Brig. Gen. Rob Parker, Joint Staff J6 deputy director, says.
The Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), led by Joint Chiefs Vice-Chairman Gen. John Hyten, is asserting new powers to direct how the services fulfill Combatant Commanders’ needs to ensure the future Joint Warfighting Concept (JWC) is not undercut by competing service imperatives and parochial rivalries.
This represents “a little bit of a different take on how the JROC has been run before,” said Brig. Gen. Rob Parker, deputy director of the Joint Staff J6 directorate for Command, Control, Communications, & Computers/Cyber. The idea, he told AFCEA today, is for the JROC to be “more prescriptive, directive to the services.”
Rather than simply transmit requirements to the services, the JROC now will issue “strategic directives” to the services prescribing how they craft buying plans to substantiate the emerging JWC, Parker explained.
“Traditionally, you would see the services coming to the JROC to lay out their requirements, capabilities, [and] look for their endorsement so that they could move forward, get resourcing and execute,” Parker said. But under the new approach, he said, “using Title 10 authorities, the Vice [i.e. Hyten] wants to be more directive, so these strategic directives are focused at each of the supporting warfighting concepts: fires, information advantage, contested logistics, C2.”
The JWC will outline the new American way of war known as All Domain Operations; that is, next-generation, information-based wars using enormous amounts of AI-driven analysis across the five “domains” of land, air, sea, space and cyberspace. The services were tasked by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley with fleshing out the JWC sub-concepts: the Army has contested logistics; the Air Force Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2); the Navy joint, long-range fires; and the Joint Staff, information advantage.
Launched in 2019 by then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a draft of the new warfighting concept and detailed articulations of its four sub-concepts were originally slated for completion by the end of 2020. After a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it now is expected to be blessed by Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin by the end of this month.
For the past year Hyten has advocted JROC reform to make it more proactive, and to speed its decision making. Further, he and other Joint Staff leaders have been telegraphing changes to that end for months as the JWC has been evolving.
In particular, Hyten has honed in on the need for more coherence in how service C2 networks are stitched together for use in battle by joint commanders, and eventually transitioned to a more seamless data web under the overarching JADC2 strategy being developed by the Joint Staff.
The JADC2 strategy itself is now in the hands of Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, Parker said today.
Parker noted that JROC already has approved four “required capabilities” for JADC2 developed by the Joint Staff JADC2 Cross Functional Team that he leads, that will then be transmitted to the services by a strategic directive “later this month.”
The Joint Staff is not specifying to the letter how services write software to enable those capabilities, however, Parker explained in an interview back in February. Instead, the goal is to develop open data standards for all future military sensors and weapons to connect at machine speed. Those data standards, in turn, will allow service-specific C2 networks to plug into a “common data fabric” that will create a common operational picture for battlefield commanders. (Source: Breaking Defense.com)
08 May 21. USAF F-35 Stealth Fighters Now Outnumber its F-15s, A-10s. The U.S. Air Force’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet has officially surpassed the number of F-15 Eagle jets and A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, becoming the second largest fighter jet fleet in its aircraft inventory, the service’s top general said Friday.
Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown revealed the new statistic during a hearing about the fiscal 2022 budget before the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. As of this week, he said, the F-35 fighter fleet is second in size only to the F-16 Fighting Falcon; the Air Force has 934 F-16 C and D models.
Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Malinda Singleton told Military.com the service has 283 F-35s, which also surpasses the A-10 Warthog fleet by two aircraft.
During the hearing, Brown discussed how the Air Force plans to move forward with its “TacAir study,” which will determine the right mix of aircraft for the future, and assess how future fighter concepts will fit into the current mix of fourth- and fifth-generation fighters.
“It won’t necessarily give us an answer, [but] a range of answers to take a look at the threat and make sure we have done the analysis to inform ourselves but also our key stakeholders, which includes this committee,” he said.
The F-35 fleet eclipsed the number of F-22 Raptors in 2019 — with 203 at the end of that fiscal year; the Air Force capped its Raptor fleet at 187 in 2009 (it currently has 186).
According to the Air Force Association’s 2020 aircraft almanac, the service has 241 F-15C/D Eagle models and 218 F-15E Strike Eagles.
Brown in February disputed reports calling the F-35 a high-cost Pentagon failure, saying that was “nowhere near the case.” In his prepared testimony before the subcommittee Friday, he said the jet remains “the cornerstone of our future fighter force and air superiority.”
He told reporters Feb. 17 that the Air Force hasn’t ruled out bringing a new fighter jet into its inventory as it looks to replace older, fourth-generation F-16s. This marks a change; since the beginning of the Joint Strike Fighter program, the service had held that older Falcons should be replaced by the fifth-generation Lightning II. Some critics view Brown’s comments as foreshadowing the stealth jet’s demise.
The Air Force is the largest customer for the F-35 and hopes to procure 1,763 F-35 conventional takeoff and landing A-variants.
But according to Aviation Week, future defense budgets could limit the inventory. The magazine reported in December that the service might cap its total F-35 buy at 1,050 fighters.
The Air Force expects to keep a well-rounded mix of fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft through the 2030s, officials have said.
Last month, the service added the F-15EX Eagle II to its ranks as its new fourth-plus generation fighter. (Source: Military.com)
————————————————————————-
Founded in 1987, Exensor Technology is a world leading supplier of Networked Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) Systems providing tailored sensor solutions to customers all over the world. From our Headquarters in Lund Sweden, our centre of expertise in Network Communications at Communications Research Lab in Kalmar Sweden and our Production site outside of Basingstoke UK, we design, develop and produce latest state of the art rugged UGS solutions at the highest quality to meet the most stringent demands of our customers. Our systems are in operation and used in a wide number of Military as well as Home land Security applications worldwide. The modular nature of the system ensures any external sensor can be integrated, providing the user with a fully meshed “silent” network capable of self-healing. Exensor Technology will continue to lead the field in UGS technology, provide our customers with excellent customer service and a bespoke package able to meet every need. A CNIM Group Company
————————————————————————-