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25 June 21. Leaders Discuss Future Warfighting on an Unpredictable Battlespace. Warfighters will experience a less predictable battlefield in the future, compared to past experience. Therefore, warfighters need to be more comfortable with uncertainty. They need to be more understanding of the strategy underpinning the guidance that they’re given, the director of science and technology for Special Operations Forces said.
Lisa Sanders, provided remarks at Defense One Tech Summit today. She was joined by Tim Grayson, the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Strategic Technology Office.
“The unknown is an opportunity, not just a risk,” she said, noting that there’s a mindset that wants risk removed.
With some coaching, Sanders said warfighters can be trained to become disruptive and innovative thinkers who thrive in chaotic environments.
Grayson said DARPA is studying the challenges of warfighters dealing with battlefield unpredictability and also creating unpredictability for the adversary.
There are basically two types of warriors, he said, the high-level commanders who focus on strategy and the young soldiers who do the fighting with different skill levels, training and experience.
A key aspect of training the junior soldiers is to give them what they need to do their jobs without overwhelming them with complexity, he said.
Grayson said he has a lot of hope for the younger generation, which seems to be technologically savvy, having grown up in the digital age. They may be more comfortable operating technically complex systems of the future like the Joint All-Domain Command and Control system.
“One of the challenges that we’re going to see in the military is how do we bring up someone who can perform with the discipline needed to be in the military, while at the same time, not losing that sort of independent thinking that’s so common today in America’s youth,” he said.
Grayson also spoke of the legacy mindset that needs to be changed on the future battlespace. He used the example of stealth aircraft back in the 1970s, where it was difficult to convince the Air Force of the value of stealth as a different way of fighting wars. Legacy thinking could also affect the implementation of JADC2 in the future.
Sanders said she’s encouraged by leaders today who focus on experimentation, ask hard questions and don’t accept the status quo at face value.
“One of the traps that we can get into as an enterprise department-wide is, well, we’ve defined the problem, we’ve defined the processes, and this is how we’re going to get to the solution. But what if the problem isn’t the right problem? What if we haven’t defined what success looks like? That’s where I think experimentation can help us avoid falling into that trap,” she said.
Taking a certain amount of risk needs to be incentivized, whether or not the soldier succeeds or fails, she said. If failure results, then one needs to ask what they’ve learned from that and what might they do differently next time. (Source: US DoD)
24 June 21. Harker: Navy Planning New Multi-Year Destroyer Buy. The Navy plans to enter into another multi-year contract for the Arleigh Burke-class Flight III destroyers, the acting secretary confirmed to Congress today.
The service will sign a contract for Fiscal Year 2023 through 2027, acting Navy Secretary Thomas Harker told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee.
“Multi-year contracts are very important to us. We do intend to sign another multi-year for DDGs starting in ‘23 through ‘27 and continue that procurement into the foreseeable future,” Harker told Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the panel’s ranking member. “DDG-51 is a very valuable asset for us.”
Harker did not say how many more destroyers the service plans to purchase under the future multi-year contract.
The acting secretary defended the Navy’s decision in the FY 2022 budget submission to only ask for one destroyer, as opposed to the two planned under the current multi-year procurement contract.
“We really struggled with the decision to take that out of this year’s budget. It was the hardest decision we made. And we would loved to have been able to include it,” Harker said. “Going into this next year, we are committed to multi-years for both submarines and for DDGs.”
When asked by Shelby if the service no longer needed the second destroyer, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday during the hearing emphasized that the service had to manage several priorities, including readiness.
“No, sir it wasn’t playing with the numbers. So, I go back to the thesis of our budget proposal, which is to field the best, most capable and most lethal fleet that we can – and that’s 296 ships – and make it the best that we can, including a modernization plan that gives us increased capabilities and then growing the Navy at an affordable rate. And so it was a balance across those three areas, sir,” Gilday told Shelby.
“Based on instances like the collisions in 17, we are unwilling – at least my best advice, sir – is to continue to prioritize training and readiness as our top priority,” he added.
While the service only asked to buy one destroyer in the FY 2022 shipbuilding request, the second destroyer appeared as the Navy’s top unfunded priority on its annual wish list.
If the Navy only buys one destroyer in FY 2022, it will incur a $33m penalty for breaking the current multi-year contract, USNI News previously reported.
Service officials have cited cost as the reason why the Navy only sought one destroyer in the recent shipbuilding request. The move has irked lawmakers, who expected the Navy to ask for two destroyers to adhere to the multi-year contract currently in place between the service and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works and Ingalls Shipbuilding.
The new multi-year Harker announced today would come as the service continues the early research and development stages of the DDG(X) program. The Navy’s FY 2022 budget submission asked for $79.7m in research and development money for “concept development” of DDG(X). (Source: Defense News Early Bird/USNI)
24 June 21. U.S. government prepares to issue landmark report on UFOs. The U.S. government, once openly dismissive of UFO sightings that for decades sparked the popular imagination, is poised to issue an expansive account of what it calls “unidentified aerial phenomena,” based heavily on observations by American military pilots.
The U.S. intelligence community, in conjunction with the Pentagon, is due in the coming days to submit a report to Congress on the subject. The Pentagon in recent years has released or confirmed the authenticity of video from naval aviators showing enigmatic aircraft exhibiting speed and maneuverability exceeding known aviation technologies.
In the lead-up to its forthcoming report, Defense Department officials have made clear they take the issue seriously while sidestepping questions about any potential extraterrestrial origins. The report marks a turning point for the U.S. military after decades of deflecting, debunking and discrediting observations of unidentified flying objects and “flying saucers.”
“We take reports of incursions into our airspace – by any aircraft, identified or unidentified – very seriously, and investigate each one,” Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough said.
The experience of retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich is a case in point. The fighter pilot was among several aviators from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz involved in a 2004 encounter off California’s coast with unknown aircraft described as resembling large “Tic Tac” breath mints.
Dietrich recalled in an interview with Reuters this week that the oblong object lacked “any visible flight control surfaces or means of propulsion.” Dietrich said she believes the episode was “analyzed in a professional, sober way” by the military chain of command after she and her colleagues were debriefed.
She said she hopes her ability to go public will help ease the stigma others once faced under similar circumstances, encouraging them to “speak up, even if they don’t know what they saw.”
“I’m trying to normalize it by talking about it,” Dietrich said, adding, “I hope I’m not the ‘UFO, Tic Tac person’ for the rest of my life.”
The New York Times reported on June 3 that U.S. intelligence officials have found no evidence that unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) witnessed by Navy pilots are alien spacecraft, but cannot explain the unusual movements of these objects and cannot definitively rule out extraterrestrial explanations.
The Times, citing senior administration officials briefed on a classified version of the report, said officials found that the vast majority of more than 120 UAP incidents over the past two decades – many observed by personnel aboard U.S. Navy aircraft and warships – did not originate from any American military or other advanced government technology.
The term “unidentified flying objects,” or UFOs, long associated with the notion of alien spacecraft, has been replaced in official government parlance by “UAP.” In addition to the UAP 2004 incident, others from 2014 and 2015 occurring off the U.S. East Coast have been confirmed by the Navy, with the objects deemed “unidentified.”
The report, to be issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, will include the work of a U.S. Navy-led task force established by the Pentagon in August 2020 to examine UAP incidents. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio was instrumental in commissioning the report, ordered as part of broader legislation passed last year.
COLD WAR FLYING SAUCERS
Public fascination with UFOs generally dates to 1947, when the pilot of a small airplane reported seeing nine “saucer-like” objects flying at supersonic speed near Mount Rainier in Washington state. His account gave rise to a newspaper headline about “flying saucers” and preceded a wave of similar U.S. sightings in subsequent months.
That same year, U.S. military officials said wreckage recovered near Roswell, New Mexico, represented remnants of a crashed weather balloon, though theories of a downed alien spacecraft and recovered bodies of extraterrestrial beings have lingered in UFO lore.
Reacting to such incidents during the height of the Cold War, a CIA advisory panel concluded that UFO sightings posed a potential threat to national security. So began the government’s history of official skepticism toward such reports, according to Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant defense secretary for intelligence who has urged greater official transparency on the subject.
While publicly dismissive of UFOs, the Air Force investigated and cataloged more than 12,000 sightings under its Project Blue Book program, categorizing 701 cases as “unidentified” before the project ended in 1969. The Air Force later said it found no indication of a national security threat or evidence of extraterrestrial craft.
Conventional national security risks posed by such incidents will likely be covered in the forthcoming report, according to Mick West, a UFO skeptic and researcher. On the other hand, West added, “evidence that UAPs represent something extraordinary – like anti-gravity, possibly aliens – has not been forthcoming and it is unlikely it will be.” (Source: Reuters)
24 June 21. Iraq AUMF repeal vote delayed until mid-July. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee plans to take up a bipartisan measure to repeal the 2002 and 1991 war authorizations for Iraq in mid-July, the panel’s chairman confirmed Thursday.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said he is working with the Biden administration to schedule a classified briefing for panel members about the policy implications of the measure, opposed by some top Senate Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Punchbowl News first reported the committee’s plans.
The Senate adjourned Thursday until July 12, and Menendez is expected to hold the briefing shortly after its return. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a co-sponsor of the repeal resolution with Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., said he expects the markup on July 20.
Five panel Republicans ― Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah; Marco Rubio of Florida; Mike Rounds of South Dakota; Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee ― asked for a delay in the committee vote on the resolution. They noted that the Trump administration opposed repeal of the 2002 authorization for the use of military force and that the Obama administration used it in the fight against the Islamic State.
“We should fully evaluate the conditions on the ground, the implications of repealing the 2002 AUMF for our friends, and how adversaries — including ISIS and Iranian backed militia groups — would react,” they wrote in a July 19 letter to Menendez. “It is also important to consider the policy and potential legal consequences of our reduced presence in the region and the impending withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan.”
They sought the briefing and a public hearing with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as outside experts.
Menendez said he did not agree to a hearing, and an aide with knowledge of the situation said it was hard to imagine the briefing would involve Cabinet-level officials.
“We’re going to have a classified briefing for members so this way they can ask all the questions they want from the administration, where they can get answers to every question, and then we’ll have a markup after that,” Menendez said.
Under the committee’s rules, any member can delay legislation for one business meeting, which means Menendez could have held the markup before the recess. However, he said he wanted to afford time for the briefing.
“I think it’s a legitimate opportunity,” Menendez said. “This shouldn’t be a partisan issue, it should be bipartisan, so I’m going to have the ability for them to answer those questions.”
The Biden administration has a tough sell with some Republicans, including Johnson, who said he opposes the repeal effort because the 2002 authorization gives U.S. troops in a “hostile situation” in Iraq the added coverage to defend themselves.
“The Iraqis want our troops there. I think it’s important for us to maintain a presence there to maintain stability, and as long as we have troops there, I think you probably need that AUMF so they can keep themselves safe,” Johnson told reporters Thursday.
The White House said earlier this month it supports the legislation, stressing that no ongoing military activities rely upon the 2002 authorization. It also said President Joe Biden is committed to working with Congress to replace war authorizations with a narrow framework meant to ensure the U.S. can protect Americans against terrorist threats.
The House voted on a bipartisan basis June 17 to repeal the 2002 AUMF. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to bring a repeal of the 2002 AUMF to the Senate floor this year. (Source: Defense News)
24 June 21. DOD Officials Say Budget Request Reflects Reforms, Pacing Challenge of China. Of the $715bn Defense Department’s fiscal year 2022 budget request, $5bn will go to the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to answer threats from China and maintain U.S. competitive advantages in the Indo-Pacific region, the undersecretary of defense comptroller and chief financial officer said.
Mike McCord and Navy Vice Adm. Ronald A. Boxall, director of force structure, resources and assessment for the Joint Staff, testified today at a House Budget Committee hearing.
McCord said key enabling technology budget items that address the challenges from China include:
- Artificial intelligence
- Microelectronics
- Hypersonics
- 5G technology
- Long-range fires
- Space-based systems
- Shipbuilding
- Nuclear modernization
The budget also addresses persistent threats from Russia, Iran, North Korea and other transnational and non-state actors and supports the orderly and deliberate drawdown of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, McCord said.
Due largely to the drawdown in Afghanistan, the Overseas Contingency Operations funding category will be terminated, he said.
McCord stressed the budget’s reform aspects. He said four of the big ones are: investments to address the effects of climate change; investments to develop and field resilient, diverse and efficient energy-saving platforms; continued improvements on the annual department-wide audit; and divestiture of about $2.8bn in older and less capable platforms that the DOD considers ineffective for winning in a future fight.
“Department leaders take very seriously the importance of being good stewards of taxpayer dollars, ensuring transparency,” he said.
Lastly, McCord said the budget invests in troops and their families, the department’s most important resource, with a 2.7% pay raise request for military and civilian personnel and funds for health care, childcare and other people programs.
Boxall said: “The strategic landscape is rapidly changing. We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the character of war. In particular, China is increasing its military capability at an aggressive rate. We must ensure that we retain our competitive and technological edge against this pacing threat.”
He noted that China and Russia are fielding long-range and hypersonic weapons that are capable of threatening allies, partners, and U.S. forces.
Boxall said they’re also fielding space-based weapons that could be used to destroy U.S. space capabilities, but he said the budget request addresses those threats. (Source: US DoD)
24 June 21. Austin Says Proposed Budget Matches Policy to Will of American People. The Defense Department’s budget request will help DOD match its resources to strategy, strategy to policy, and policy to the will of the American people, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday.
Austin and Army Gen. Mark. A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified about DOD’s budget in President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2022 request. Last month, the Biden administration submitted to Congress a request for $752.9bn for national defense, which includes $715bn for DOD.
Austin said the budget request would pay for the right mix of capabilities DOD needs to defend the nation now and in the future by investing in hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, microelectronics, 5G technology, space-based systems, shipbuilding and nuclear modernization, and other programs.
“[This] budget asks you to approve nearly $28bn to modernize our nuclear triad and $112bn for research, development, testing and evaluation, which is the largest R&D [research and development] request ever put forth by this department,” Austin said. “Our request also gives us the flexibility to divest ourselves of systems and platforms that no longer meet our needs, including older ships, aircraft [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] platforms that demand more maintenance, upkeep and risk than we can afford.”
The department must be ready to keep pace with its competitors and, if necessary, fight and win the next war, he said, adding that’s why DOD has commissioned a Global Posture Review in the new National Defense Strategy to further inform and guide its resource decisions.
“This budget reflects our focus on the pacing challenge we bi
we are at today, and I’m concerned right now with the trends that are out there, where we’re going to be with budget cuts in the near future,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member for the Senate Armed Services Committee, said during an Army budget hearing on June 15.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said that despite budget constraints, the service has focused on science and technology investments and priorities, but it would like more funding to modernize legacy weapons systems.
“The budget gives us the most efficient capability when it comes to readiness…. We have to modernize the Army. Every 40 years, the Army has to transform: It did in 1940 right before World War II, it did in 1980…. Quite frankly, I think in 2020 we must do the same,” he said.
“So we have done all we can, the secretary and myself, to protect the modernization of the Army, and we believe we must do that.”
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth concurred, adding that despite those efforts the service was still “under stress” in some areas, including in air defense.
“We are in a very, very, very tough international security environment, there is no shortage of threats,” she said. “We are still under stress, particularly in certain areas like air defense as you know, so we’re going to be strong advocates going into the future budget discussions.”
However, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned the Army’s modernization plans in an opening statement, saying that priority areas, such as long-range precision fires and the communications network were “ambitious and far-sighted objectives, but we must acknowledge that the Army has historically struggled to effectively modernize.”
The Army has been working to change that through its acquisition process, focusing on developing prototypes with soldier feedback before developing requirements and going into production. But there are still barriers to that, according to Douglas Bush, the Army’s acting assistant secretary for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology.
“That transition from prototyping, at different levels of fidelity, to actual production is the difficult part of this new approach,” Bush said during a separate SASC hearing on Army modernization June 15.
Bush said the acquisitions office is working with Army Futures Command to make sure the “handovers” are planned in advance and the teams work together throughout the process “to make sure it’s not being thrown over the fence” and done in a way that’s “responsible and properly tested.”
But there are funding challenges for the testing ranges — which the Army has increasingly relied on as it tests prototyped technologies for its Project Convergence exercises.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said he was concerned that test ranges, such as Yuma Proving Ground that hosted the Army’s first Project Convergence last year, were losing funding at a critical point in the Army’s modernization plan and that the innovation the Army is looking for will be reliant on rigorous testing of equipment which needs facilities to support that.
“These are premier testing sites for the advanced systems that will modernize America’s army. It is critical that we not only invest in programs but in range infrastructure — it’s often the thing that’s left out,” Kelly said. (Source: Defense Systems)
23 June 21. Centcom Commander Describes Regional Threats to Stability. Sustainable states throughout the Middle East and Central Asia are important for regional peace, stability and prosperity, the commander of U.S. Central Command said.
Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. discussed today how non-military factors, such as environmentally sustainable public utilities advance U.S. security interests in the Middle East, at a Center for Strategic and International Studies’ web event on Why Sustainable Public Utilities Are a Security Issue.
“Environmental concerns are often a key driver of conflict because they deal with basic human needs. Water scarcity, in particular, is an area of increasing concern throughout the region and beyond, McKenzie said.
As an example, one of Egypt’s top foreign policy priorities is finding a diplomatic resolution to Ethiopia’s filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, he said, mentioning that it’s on the Nile River which feeds into neighboring Sudan and Egypt.
Egypt characterizes the dam as an existential threat to its water supply, he added.
The Hindu Kush and Himalayan glaciers are quickly melting and can undermine the water supply for 2 bn people living across central South Asia, he said, citing another example.
“It is certainly not inconceivable that issues like water scarcity could drive a conflict involving three nuclear armed states: Pakistan, India and China,” he said.
Of note, 12 of the 17 most water-stressed countries in the world are in the U.S. Centcom region, McKenzie noted.
“Many of us take for granted access to basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity,” he said. “That’s not so in much of the world where a lack of access to these services often gives rise to the underlying frustrations that fuel local instability, [weaken] governance structures, and also embolden extremist groups that exploit community grievances.”
China, which still relies on the Persian Gulf for half of its energy supplies, is eager to supplant the United States as the preferred partner in the region, and is actively making inroads there, he said.
China’s principal mechanism for doing so is its Belt and Road Initiative, which offers nations the promise of a quick and easy infrastructure development at the cost of long term debt, disregard for sustainability and eventual entanglement, he said.
“China’s interest in the Middle East and North Africa extend well beyond oil. Straddling the world’s major shipping routes, the region will remain key terrain in a geostrategic sense, long after we’ve completed the transition to renewable sources of energy. As such, it is one of the principal arenas for strategic competition between two systems with very different values when it comes to fair play and the international system of states and indeed basic human rights,” McKenzie said.
McKenzie also mentioned other threats to the region, including:
- Spread of diseases and the need for better medical infrastructure.
- Deterring Iran from undermining security and stability in the region.
- Countering malign and opportunistic actors who work in the digitized shadows of social media to exploit discontent, and radicalize society’s youngest members in order to further their agendas to devastating effect.
- Vulnerabilities of refugees in displaced persons camps, such as in Syria.
Solutions
Dealing with all of these problems will require a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach, he said.
“When a country is stable politically and economically, it is less likely to exhibit violence,” he noted. (Source: US DoD)
23 June 21. Milley: Budget Request Is Down Payment on Investments of the Future. The U.S. military is a critical component of national power, and the combination of the nation’s diplomatic efforts, economic strength, overriding hope of the American message and military capability will deter its adversaries and preserve great power peace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley said today.
The chairman and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III testified before the House Armed Services Committee about the DOD budget based on the President’s Fiscal Year 2022 budget request for FY 2022. On May 28, the Biden administration submitted to Congress a budget request of $752.9bn for national defense, of which $715bn is for DOD.
“We are in an era of increased strategic competition,” the chairman told the committee. “The current geostrategic landscape is witnessing rapid change, and the potential for threats to the peace and stability of various regions — and indeed the world — is increasing, not decreasing.”
States and non-state actors are rapidly transforming technologically, Milley said. “We are bearing witness to a fundamental change in the character of war.”
In particular, China is increasing its military capability at a very serious and sustained rate, and DOD must ensure it retains its competitive and technological edges against this pacing threat. Readiness, modernization and combat power are key to deter war and maintain the peace, he said, adding that equally important are the combat multipliers of teamwork, cohesion and well-led units.
“We [also] want to resolve the issue of sexual assault and confront the issue of extremism. Both are corrosive to the very essence of what it means to be in the military,” the chairman said, adding that the DOD must continue to invest in leader development and talent management required for the future operating environment.
“We must [also] continue to nurture and sustain a key strategic source of our strength, which is our network of many close allies and partners around the world,” Milley said.
The days of the Budget Control Act are over, and repeated continuing resolutions are “hopefully behind us for good,” he told the HASC.
The Joint Force will deliver modernization of our armed forces and security to the people of the United States at the FY22 budget request of $715bn. The American people have entrusted to us a significant commitment of treasure, and we will work diligently to ensure it is spent prudently in the best interest of the nation, the chairman said.
“In alignment with the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, this budget makes hard choices and delivers a ready, agile and capable Joint Force that will compete, deter and win across all domains, and [it] is postured for continued overmatch in the future,” he said.
The budget focuses on the future and prioritizes nuclear modernization, long-range fires, hypersonic technology, artificial intelligence, shipbuilding, microelectronics, space cyber and 5G. These investments are in concert with DOD’s recently developed joint-warfighting concept that will pave the way for a Joint Force of the future, Milley said.
“The PB FY22 budget request increases the readiness and ensures our people are our No. 1 priority,” he emphasized. “Consistent, predictable budgets informed by the will of the people are critical to our nation’s defense. And the passage of this budget in a timely way is important.”
The FY22 presidential budget strikes an appropriate balance between preserving present readiness and future modernization, Milley added.
“It’s a down payment on investments of the future, with a bias toward the future operating environment,” the chairman said of the defense budget request. “It is now that we must set ourselves on a path to modernize the Joint Force, and this budget contributes to doing that.” (Source: US DoD)
22 June 21. Cash-Strapped National Guard Warns It Will Be Forced to Cancel Training, Ground Aircraft. The National Guard is facing a severe funding shortage after its months-long mission securing the U.S. Capitol after the Jan. 6 pro-Trump assault. If the force isn’t reimbursed $520m soon, it will have to cancel training events, schools and weekend drills, and even ground aircraft, Military.com has learned.
According to a memo from the Guard to Congress and obtained by Military.com, funding to recuperate the costs the force spent from Jan. to May on Capitol security needs to be assured by July 1. If not, commanders in all 54 U.S. states and territories will be notified to brace for halted operations and the potential cancellation of drills in August and September.
Annual training in July could be shortened or canceled, the memo states. Come Aug. 1, all events and schools will be halted, it adds. If that happens, the National Guard Bureau estimates “thousands” of soldiers will lose out on enough service time this year to affect their retirement.
On top of unit-level training being canceled, the memo states that 2,000 “functional and occupational” schools will be suspended. This would likely mean courses troops take to reclass into new jobs and schools necessary for promotion, which could be a serious blow to career progression for officers and enlisted members. The memo said that school slots will be shifted to 2022, but noted “funds are not projected to be available.”
Pentagon leaders warned Congress its failure to act will have serious consequences for the Guard.
“It will impact their ability in the near term to be able to train and adequately prepare the Guard for its future, for its current responsibilities,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the Senate Appropriations Committee last week.
It is unclear how full-time troops will be impacted and whether they would be sent home temporarily; the National Guard Bureau wasn’t able to immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Army Guard will also cease all ground vehicle maintenance activities and halt all vehicle movement until sometime in fiscal 2022, which starts in October. The Guard estimates stalled training will set the force back “8-12 months” on vehicle readiness. Affected areas could range from training for gunnery, to qualifying soldiers to maintain and operate vehicles.
All Army Guard rotary wing operations are expected to be severely impacted. The Guard told Congress it will restrict flying and maintenance on aircraft. Aviation units “are unlikely to recover for 10-14 months,” according to the memo.
The Air National Guard will cut back two weeks worth of flying, which could have a vast impact on both the force’s ability to fly and pilots to maintain certifications. This would compound the Air Guard’s efforts to recover from the pandemic’s impact on training and reduced flying time.
Last week, Military.com reported that the National Guard will eliminate retention bonuses on July 1, the same day commanders will be warned to start reining in training. A spokesman for the Guard said the two issues are separate; the Guard already has far exceeded its retention goals this year and will not hand out bonuses for continuing service until sometime next year.
The House passed a bill to reimburse the National Guard and bolster Capitol security in May. The Senate is still crafting its own bil, but it is unclear how long it will take to pass its legislation once finished.
One lawmaker pointed out that the Capitol Police will also run into funding issues soon.
“Without Senate action, the National Guard, which provided protection to the Capitol after the attack of January 6, will have to begin cutting training in August,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “Senate Republicans have refused to join bipartisan negotiations to address these urgent security needs, and now the Capitol Police risks running out of funding this summer.”
A spokesperson for Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the top Republican on the committee, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Source: Military.com)
21 June 21. DOD Budget Request Focused on Innovations for Warfighter, Hicks Says. The fiscal year 2022 budget request reflect the pacing threat from China, as well as threats from Russia, North Korea, Iran, transnational challenges and climate change, to name a few, the deputy defense secretary said.
Kathleen H. Hicks spoke virtually from the Pentagon today at a Defense One Tech Summit.
The budget request includes a lot of joint concept work within the services, she said. “There’s lots of experimentation going on across the department. There’s also lots of innovation going on across the department.”
Hicks provided a few examples.
The Defense Department is moving from concepts to capabilities in its artificial intelligence and data accelerator initiative, she said.
“Teams will go out within the next 90 days to every single combatant command and start to tie in their data, and they’ll also have technical expert teams on AI and they’ll start looking at how to bring AI and data to the tactical edge in support of the warfighter,” she said.
The joint all-domain command and control is another big endeavor that involves innovation from all of the services, she said, adding that to bring it to fruition will require a cloud enterprise solution.
China relies on civil-military fusion, targeting government funding on civilian research related to military applications, Hicks said.
The U.S. uses a different model, which she termed “collaborative disruption.” That model involves collaboration between private sector research institutions, commercial industry and government labs, and uses seed money from the government to fund critical technologies. Hicks said the U.S. model is much more innovative.
Hicks also noted that the budget request also prioritizes nuclear modernization, space capabilities and cybersecurity. (Source: US DoD)
21 June 21. USMC explain vision for fewer traditional amphibious warships, supplemented by new light amphib. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have finessed their requirement for amphibious ships and are now asking for 28 to 31 traditional amphibious ships that could flow in to support other expeditionary forces already operating during a conflict.
The Marines had long held on to a requirement for two Marine Expeditionary Brigades (MEB) that could conduct fight their way into enemy territory – which led to the service having a stated requirement for 38 traditional amphibious warships to carry the two MEBs until 2019.
Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger backed away from the two-MEB requirement in his initial Commandant’s Planning Guidance after he took command in July 2019. He noted that “we will no longer use a ‘2.0 MEB requirement’ as the foundation for our arguments regarding amphibious ship building, to determine the requisite capacity of vehicles or other capabilities, or as pertains to the Maritime Prepositioning Force. We will no longer reference the 38-ship requirement memo from 2009, or the 2016 Force Structure Assessment, as the basis for our arguments and force structure justifications. … The global options for amphibs include many more options than simply LHAs, LPDs, and LSDs.”
Since that time, the Navy and Marine Corps have embraced new concepts like Distributed Maritime Operations and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, and they conducted a new integrated naval force structure assessment that led to a Pentagon-level look at Navy and Marine Corps future fleet needs.
Now, the Marines are looking at a one-MEB lift requirement to move in Marines that would, if a fight occurred, augment and back up those already deployed and operating the region, Deputy Commandant of the Marine Corps for Combat Development and Integration Lt. Gen. Eric Smith explained during a June 17 House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee hearing.
“The requirement, based on a study that [Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfighting Requirements and Capabilities Vice Adm. Jim Kilby], my friend Jim, and I did together was you need 31 traditional amphibious ships in the appropriate mix, which is 10 big decks, LHA/LHD, and 21 LSD/LPD,” Smith said, with the LHAs and LHDs being the America-class and Wasp-class amphibious assault ships, respectively, supplemented by San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks (LPD-17s) and their Flight II variant that will replace the aging Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships (LSD-41/49).
“The low end of that study is 28, and the difference in those three is that there’s additional risk in arrival times,” he continued. “And that’s based on a single MEB, Marine Expeditionary Brigade, forcible entry, and our expeditionary units that are out always, and our forward deployed naval force in Japan.”
In the past, having just one MEB to flow in behind any deployed or forward-deployed Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) would not be enough – but now, those deployed MEUs will be supplemented by 35 Light Amphibious Warships with about 75 Marines and heavy weaponry on each hull, meaning there will be much more combat power already scattered across contested waters and therefore less need for a massive two-MEB follow-on force.
During the hearing, subcommittee ranking member Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., asked about the LAW design and requirements, and specifically whether it would be built to military or commercial standards.
Jay Stefany, the acting Navy acquisition chief, said the commandant wants a capable ship but also one that’s affordable.
“Commercial standards with specific Navy features is the way we need to go for this ship, and what those features are needs to be worked out with the Marine Corps,” he told Wittman.
“Adm. Kilby and I sit on the requirements evaluation team for that, the RET. So we are in lockstep, there’s zero daylight between Jim and myself on that. It needs to be something that is, as Sec. Stefany said, affordable so we can get it in numbers, and it has to be something that looks like everything else that’s out there,” Smith said. “You protect the cargo, meaning the Marines and sailors that are on it, for a limited period of time in order to be able to evacuate them – that is the purpose that ship. I know that’s not a loved sentiment, but that cargo is precious to us. So it has to go off, but it has to be affordable in large numbers and has to look like everything else.”
Though the LAW is expected to have some minimal self-defense capabilities, its ability to blend in with commercial traffic in the water is itself a defense mechanism, keeping the ship from being detected by an adversary seeking military targets to hit.
Kilby added that LAW will need some added survivability built into the hull in case it were to take a hit, so that sailors and Marines could survive and safely evacuate from the damaged ship. But it won’t be a surface combatant that’s expected to take a hit and keep on fighting, which will contribute to its lower cost and the ability to field nearly three dozen of them on a fairly rapid timeline.
The Navy had previously stated it wants to buy the first 10 LAWs between FY22 and FY26.
In its recent fiscal 2022 budget request, the Navy did not ask for money to begin procurement in FY22, though. Navy spokesman Capt. Clay Doss told Defense News the program would begin acquisition in FY23 if Congress funds the Navy’s request for just research and development funds in FY22 to prepare for acquisition in FY23. He said the decision to slow the program down was a fiscal one, not a sign of engineering or other challenges.
The traditional amphibious ship programs may also take a hit due to fiscal uncertainty around the shipbuilding budgets for FY22 and beyond. Stefany said in a June 8 hearing that a deal to buy four ships – one LHA and three LPDs – from Ingalls Shipbuilding had been worked out between the Navy and the shipyard but that top Navy and Pentagon leadership did not seem interested in committing to so many amphibious ships up front.
“The initial indications we’re getting from the department is that they would like to defer this decision” until they complete a force structure assessment associated with FY23 budget planning. The analysis will take place throughout the summer and fall, making it unlikely the Department of the Navy would be ready to make a decision before the multi-ship procurement authority that Congress gave the Navy before this contract expires at the end of the fiscal year, on Sept. 30.
In the June 17 HASC subcommittee hearing, Stefany added that negotiations between the Navy and Ingalls showed that the four-ship purchase would have saved 7.1 percent of the total cost of the four ships, or about $700m. (Source: Defense News)
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