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27 Aug 21. Collaboration Between China, Russia Compounds Threat, Stratcom Commander Says. During the Cold War, the U.S. faced one peer competitor, the Soviet Union. Today, Russia and China, both peer competitors, are seen as sometimes collaborating in opportunistic ways, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command said.
Navy Adm. Charles “Chas” A. Richard, commander, U.S. Strategic Command, spoke today at the Hudson Institute.
“China’s strategic breakout means that they are now additive to what it takes to deter Russia,” he said.
“We’re in uncharted waters,” he said, referring to the twin threat, “and that threat is growing rapidly.
“Both Russia and China have the ability to unilaterally at their own choosing, go to any level of violence, to go to any domain to go worldwide, with all instruments of national power,” Richard said, noting that if they work in tandem, it is even worse.
By domain, Richard referred to threats in the space, cyber, air, ground and sea domains.
The admiral pointed to the path forward for the U.S.
“We need to reexamine any number of our basic operating concepts starting with our escalation control. I think we need to be far more humble about our ability to control escalation in a crisis than we currently do,” he said.
“Every operational plan in the Department of Defense and every other capability that we have rests on [the] assumption that strategic deterrence is holding. If I can’t get strategic deterrence, and in particular nuclear deterrence to hold, no other plan and no other capability in the department is going to work as designed,” he said.
Stratcom is currently rewriting deterrence theory operationally, but this effort requires all of the combatant commands’ broader focus efforts as well, he said.
“This is a good time to be doing a National Defense Strategy Review, to be doing a Nuclear Posture Review and Missile Defense Review,” Richard said, applauding the timing of the revisions to those reviews. (Source: US DoD)
27 Aug 21. Pentagon holds talks with Chinese military for first time under Biden, official says. A senior Pentagon official held talks with the Chinese military for the first time since President Joe Biden took office in January to focus on managing risk between the two countries, a U.S. official told Reuters on Friday. The United States has put countering China at the heart of its national security policy for years and Biden’s administration has described rivalry with Beijing as “the biggest geopolitical test” of this century.
Relations between China and the United States have grown increasingly tense, with the world’s two largest economies clashing over everything from Taiwan and China’s human rights record to its military activity in the South China Sea.
Despite the tensions and heated rhetoric, U.S. military officials have long sought to have open lines of communication with their Chinese counterparts to be able to mitigate potential flare-ups or deal with any accidents.
Michael Chase, deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, spoke last week with Chinese Major General Huang Xueping, deputy director for the People’s Liberation Army Office for International Military Cooperation.
“(They) utilized the U.S.-PRC Defense Telephone Link to conduct a secure video conference,” the U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Both sides agreed on the importance of maintaining open channels of communication between the two militaries,” the official added.
Officials said U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has yet to speak with his Chinese counterpart, in part because there was a debate about which Chinese official was Austin’s counterpart.
Vice President Kamala Harris said on Thursday that the United States welcomes competition and does not seek conflict with Beijing, but will speak up on issues such as maritime disputes in the South China Sea.
China, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan lay claim to parts of the South China Sea, which is crossed by vital shipping lanes and contains gas fields and rich fishing grounds.
Biden has ramped up sanctions on China over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
In a shift from his predecessor as president, Donald Trump, Biden has broadly sought to rally allies and partners to help counter what the White House says is China’s increasingly coercive economic and foreign policies. (Source: Reuters)
28 Aug 21. ‘Didn’t need to happen’: Pentagon seeks answers for deadly attack. By Wednesday night, U.S. intelligence agencies were near certain that an attack was imminent outside Kabul airport, triggering a State Department warning to American citizens to leave the area immediately.
Just over 12 hours later, a suicide bomber walked through the large crowds to a gate manned by U.S. troops and detonated explosives, killing at least 13 U.S. service members and 79 Afghans.
It was a tragic coda to America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, the largest loss of life for the U.S. military there in a decade, on the cusp of the full withdrawal of troops by Aug. 31 ordered by President Joe Biden.
Among the most pressing questions as the U.S. military launches its investigation: How did the bomber make it through Taliban checkpoints? Why were U.S. troops in such a concentrated space when they knew an attack was imminent?
“It was a failure somewhere,” General Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, told reporters hours after the attack, which was claimed by Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K).
But at some point, McKenzie added, troops had no choice but to come in contact with people trying to board evacuation flights, screen them, pat them down for weapons, and ensure they did not make it into the airport if they posed a threat.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the conditions for the attack were set months in advance.
They told Reuters that weeks before the evacuation from Kabul airport began following the Taliban’s takeover of the capital, the military had been seeking approval to get at-risk Afghans out of the country.
But the slow tempo of processing and inability to secure housing for the evacuees in third countries slowed down the pace of departures, according to the officials, at one point halting all flights from Kabul for six hours.
That meant troops were on the frontlines at the airport gates in the face of chaos outside.
“This didn’t need to happen,” a U.S. military official told Reuters.
“They didn’t need to die.”
DEBATE OVER BAGRAM
In the maelstrom of criticism aimed at Biden for the perilous evacuation of both U.S. citizens and Afghans who worked for the Americans, some have questioned his decision to hand back Bagram airbase in July, by far the United States’ largest military facility in Afghanistan.
Some Republican lawmakers have argued that if the base had been kept open, the evacuation would have been more orderly.
U.S. officials rejected those arguments.
One U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it would have taken an estimated 8,000 U.S. troops to secure Bagram, which likely would have been attacked by the Taliban as they swept to power. Americans wanting to leave the capital then would have faced a roughly 40-minute drive through Taliban checkpoints.
In the coming hours, the United States will turn its attention to withdrawing the approximately 5,000 troops at Kabul’s airport – and the White House said on Friday the next few days will likely be the most dangerous of the operation.
Islamic State militants have shot at aircraft already during the evacuation operation, but have had little success, according to the officials, who added that rocket attacks and suicide bombings will become an even larger threat as the number of U.S. troops dwindles.
The military is expected to continue to fly out evacuees even as they withdraw equipment and troops, though the number is expected to drop precipitously.
Officials said the withdrawal was particularly challenging because of a mixture of security threats along with a humanitarian crisis taking place outside the airport.
Unlike many previous military withdrawals, such as from Iraq in 2011, militant groups have been able to develop plans that focus on a single target, the airport, rather than on a number of U.S. bases.
Military planners are also desperate to avoid any repeat of the situation where thousands of desperate Afghans stormed the runway, hoping to get on a plane. Several died, some falling from airborne craft.
One of the U.S. officials said Biden’s “Saigon” moment, the infamous U.S. evacuation from Vietnam in 1975, could still be to come as Afghans outside the airport realize the final stages of Washington’s military withdrawal are underway.
SYMBOLIC RETALIATION?
Biden, his voice breaking with emotion, vowed on Thursday that the United States would hunt down those responsible for the airport attack, and said he had ordered the Pentagon to come up with plans to strike at the perpetrators. read more
On Friday, the U.S. military said it launched a drone strike that it believed had killed an Islamic State attack planner in eastern Afghanistan. read more
But officials have cautioned that beyond a symbolic act or limited operation, the United States could in fact do little to degrade ISIS-K.
“We’ve been trying to destroy the group in Afghanistan since 2014 and couldn’t do it with thousands of troops on the ground,” the defense official said. (Source: Reuters)
27 Aug 21. DOD’s Office of Industrial Policy Promotes Defense Industrial Workforce Strategy at Stakeholder Summit. On Aug. 25, 2021, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy, Jesse Salazar, presented the “Department of Defense’s Perspectives on Industrial Workforce Challenges” at the Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing (ATDM) Summit in Danville, Virginia. Mr. Salazar was among a group of U.S. government officials—including U.S. Senator Mark Warner (Virginia), who gave the keynote address; Rear Admiral Scott Pappano, Program Executive Officer for Columbia class submarine program; and Ms. Adele Ratcliff, DOD Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) Program Director—who shared their perspectives on closing defense industrial base workforce skills gaps, particularly in the submarine shipbuilding sector.
In his keynote address, Senator Warner set the tone for the summit by emphasizing that “the whole notion of how we view investment in human capital…has to fundamentally change…if we don’t start viewing investing in human capital in the same kind of broad way that we view investing in research and development or plant equipment, then we’re not going to make it.”
To address some of these human capital challenges, the Office of Industrial Policy, through its IBAS program, recently awarded the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) in Danville, Virginia an additional $4.3 m that expands on the previous IBAS investments. The award supports an ongoing three-year pilot project to develop, exercise, and evaluate ATDM’s ability to accelerate and expand the production of highly skilled workers to meet increasingly demanding defense maritime production requirements. Successful demonstration of this training platform, which aims to reduce the typical 1-2 year training times to only four months, could underpin the creation of an expanded network of similar Regional Training Centers across the United States.
The ATDM project is a prime example of how the Department partners more actively with industry, academia, and state and local governments to address industrial workforce shortages affecting production and sustainment of critical defense systems. This is one of 12 currently funded projects launched under the DOD’s “National Imperative for Industrial Skills” initiative (or “the Skills Imperative”), which has invested over $80 m in the last two fiscal years.
“The advances here in Danville have resonance far beyond shipbuilding and will enable the future of American production by cultivating the people who will build our country back better,” said Jesse Salazar, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy. “The ATDM model, led by Team Danville, will help the DOD scale American capacity to manufacture the exceptional parts, machines, and resilient supply chain materials our warfighters need.”
The Skills Imperative is a part of the Department’s broader efforts to build resilient supply chains and a prepared and capable workforce in order to enhance the manufacturing and industrial skills needed to strengthen our economic and national security. Led by the IBAS program in the DOD’s Office of Industrial Policy, the Skills Imperative goals are to promote the prestige of manufacturing and industrial careers, accelerate training development pipelines, and elevate U.S. manufacturing to world-leading status.
Adele Ratcliff, IBAS Director, went on to say, “our Team Danville partners led by the Institute of Advanced Learning and Research, as well as all the world class students in the ATDM program, are on the leading edge of this exciting and innovative effort to rebuild America’s manufacturing and industrial workforce. I look forward to our continued success together.”
Those interested in learning more about the National Imperative for Industrial Skills or how to join the IBAS program’s Cornerstone Consortium of members eligible to propose prototyping efforts in support of the Skills Imperative should email: .
(Source: US DoD)
26 Aug 21. Government Contracting Insights: Major Changes Proposed to Buy American Rules. On July 30, the Biden administration issued a proposed rule billed as “the most robust changes to the implementation of the Buy American Act in almost 70 years.”
Aimed at strengthening domestic content requirements and bolstering domestic procurement preferences, it comes on the heels of several other actions by the administration to limit reliance on foreign sources of critical components and promote greater economic and national security by supporting domestic manufacturing.
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposed three major changes.
Consistent with Executive Order 14005 on “Ensuring the Future Is Made in All of America by All of America’s Workers,” it would initially increase the domestic content threshold for determining whether an item qualifies as “domestic end product” or “domestic construction material” from 55 percent to 60 percent. It also proposes to increase the threshold to 65 percent in two years, and to 75 percent five years after the second increase.
Suppliers holding a contract with a period of performance that spans the schedule of threshold increases would be required to comply with each step increase for the items in the year of delivery. However, there is a “fallback threshold” exception that would allow end products — other than certain iron and steel products — that meet the current 55 percent threshold to qualify as “domestic” when other products that meet the higher thresholds are unavailable or unreasonably expensive.
The proposal outlines a framework for enhanced price preferences for certain “critical items” and “critical components” manufactured in the United States. Notably, it does not designate any specific articles as “critical” — the list of “critical” items and associated preference factors will be set forth in a separate rulemaking. This list will be updated periodically and published in the Federal Register to allow for public comment.
The proposed rule also sets forth new domestic content disclosure requirements for “critical items” and end products containing “critical components.” Contractors that supply these items would be required to submit a post-award disclosure to the newly established Made in America Office identifying the percentage of domestic content in each critical product, and the percentage of domestic content in each domestic end-product they supply that includes a critical component.
If implemented without revision, the proposed rule has the potential to alter the contracting landscape in several important ways.
The immediate increase to a 60 percent domestic content requirement — and the phased increase to 65 percent and then 75 percent — represent a significant strengthening of the traditional Buy American Act regime. Prior to 2021, the 50 percent domestic content threshold had been in place for nearly 70 years, and many contractors built their supply chains around that requirement. The increase to 55 percent in January 2021 required many contractors to engage in renewed analyses of their supply chains, and a further jump up to 75 percent may present a significant challenge for companies with global supply chains.
The current regulations calculate domestic content based on the cost of components, but Executive Order 14005 directed the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council to consider a new test that considers “the value that is added to the product through U.S.-based production or U.S. job supporting economic activity.” For now, the council has proposed to retain the cost of components test, but it has also left the door open to adopting a value-added test at some point in the future, as it elected to solicit public comment on the feasibility of such a test and the strengths and weaknesses of the current cost of component test.
The impact of the other two changes related to “critical” items will turn largely on the products and components that receive this designation.
But the enhanced price evaluation preferences may result in significant competitive advantages for certain domestic manufacturers, while the new reporting requirements would add to contractors’ existing administrative burdens. For that reason, we can be sure that the separate rulemaking identifying “critical” items and components will be the subject of intense interest. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking requests public comment on “what specific items or components … should receive an enhanced price preference and why,” so we expect industry to be particularly engaged on this issue from the outset.
The recent focus on new Buy American Act standards has coincided with a marked increase in enforcement. In the past 18 months, there has been a clear uptick in enforcement actions — both civil and criminal — based on alleged noncompliance with the BAA and other domestic sourcing requirements. Given the government’s appetite for pursuing investigations in this space, contractors should carefully consider how these latest proposed changes would affect their internal processes for making required certifications and obtaining the same from their suppliers.
The proposed rule does not represent the end of the road for this rulemaking effort. Comments on the proposed rule may be submitted until Sept. 28. Given the implications for industry, we foresee significant interest in — and likely changes to — the rule before it is finalized. (Source: glstrade.com/Breaking Defense.com)
26 Aug 21. US Army has flexibility in its path to a future attack recon aircraft, program leaders say. Army leaders in charge of aviation modernization say they have carved out a realistic, but ambitious schedule to move through a competitive development effort and field a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft by 2030.
The service has struggled to procure new helicopters for several decades, failing three times to replace its armed reconnaissance helicopter — the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior — with something more capable.
Yet, it is speeding down a path to build and fly two competitive prototypes — from Textron’s Bell and Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky — as it shapes final requirements for the future aircraft ahead of a program of record.
FARA is intended to finally fill the gap left open when the service decided to retire the Kiowa in 2013. The Army has used the AH-64E Apache attack helicopter teamed with unmanned aircraft to meet that mission, but procuring an attack reconnaissance aircraft is the Army’s No. 1 priority in vertical lift modernization.
The service has spent roughly a decade developing another aircraft expected to come online around the same time as FARA — the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, or FLRAA — and has spent years flying technology demonstrators to reduce risk on the program.
The FARA program won’t have the same experience.
But the companies competing in the FLRAA program are familiar to the Army’s future vertical lift endeavors — a Bell team pitted against a Sikorsky-Boeing team — and are bringing that experience to the FARA effort.
Brig. Gen. Rob Barrie, the program executive officer for Army aviation, told Defense News both competitors for FARA are “satisfactorily advancing their designs on pace with overall program expectations, goals and milestones,” and are roughly 50 percent complete with air vehicle prototype production.
In the coming months, the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) — the engine that will power FARA — will go through its first test and “will add clarity as we charge into [fiscal] [20]22,” Barrie said. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Defense News)
25 Aug 21. HASC Chairman’s Mark Adds 12 Navy Super Hornets, Preserves Navy Nuclear Cruise Missile Funds. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is preserving money to develop a new surface-launched nuclear cruise missile, and is adding 12 Super Hornets and a second guided-missile destroyer to the Navy’s shipbuilding plan, according to a copy of the chairman’s mark for the Fiscal Year 2022 budget obtained by USNI News on Wednesday.
The mark, headed by HASC chair Rep Adam Smith (D-Wash.) largely keeps to the Biden administration’s request for a topline of $704bn, with adjustments to some Navy programs.
Politico first reported on the mark on Wednesday.
The mark questions assumptions the Navy has made about its strike fighter inventory. The Navy said a reduction in squadron size for its F-35C and other measures would bridge the strike fighter gap by 2025, an assertion the bill disputes.
“In Fiscal Year 2022 analysis the Navy claims that the strike-fighter shortfall is resolved to zero in 2025, 5 years earlier than planned, but the committee is highly circumspect of the Navy’s new analysis,” reads the bill.
“The Navy has delayed the fielding of its planned F/A-XX aircraft, removed 104 F/A-18E/F Block II aircraft from the planned Service-Life Modification (SLM) program, and F-35C procurement quantity has still not reached 24 aircraft per year. The committee believes that these significant factors actually exacerbate the shortfall and would not contribute to the expedited timing of resolving the shortfall prior to 2030.”
The committee added $970m to buy 12 new F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters and directs the Director, Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) to do an independent analysis of the Navy’s strike fighter assumptions.
The language follows a plea from Navy leaders earlier this month for defense companies to not lobby Congress for legacy weapons programs, and to specifically resist buying more Super Hornets so the service can instead direct the money toward the development of the Navy’s Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform.
Super Hornets are, “a 30-year airframe at 10,000 hours. So that takes us out to about 2055. And there isn’t a lot of analysis out there that supports fourth-generation viability against any threat in that timeframe,” Rear Adm. Andrew Loiselle, head of the Navy’s air warfare directorate (OPNAV N98), said in early August.
The move in the latest mark follows one from the House Appropriations Committee that added 12 Super Hornets to the budget.
The mark also singles out the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter program for additional scrutiny. The bill’s language sets out specific affordability formulas for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, with a specific target number per airframe to be determined by the Navy and Air Force secretaries.
Compared to the Department of Defense’s original budget request, the mark adds an additional $1.5bn to the shipbuilding account for the second destroyer, with a total of $23.68bn for eight battle forces ships. The HASC seapower and projection forces subcommittee outlined a similar plan in their mark.
Additionally, the mark keeps $10m in the FY 2022 request for the Navy to develop a low-yield nuclear surface-launched cruise missile it has sought to develop to keep pace with Russian low-yield nuclear weapons in development.
The controversial program was set to be defunded as part of the FY 2023 budget deliberations, according to a memo obtained by USNI News from former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Harker.
Pentagon leaders faced blistering criticism on Capitol Hill for the proposal and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a House panel in June that no decision on the program would be final until a department-wide look at nuclear weapons.
“I would just say that, again, I am committed to a [Nuclear] Posture Review to make sure that we adequately analyze what our capabilities are, what’s needed in the future, and that we maintain the right balance in our nuclear forces going forward,” he said.
(Source: Defense News Early Bird/USNI)
25 Aug 21. Biden insists on Afghanistan withdrawal deadline. Despite calls for an extension of the deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan so evacuations from the Taliban-controlled country can continue, US President Joe Biden insists: “The sooner we finish the better.” The US is “on pace” to meet the target 31 August withdrawal date, he says, and some troops have already left, according to reports. This isn’t affecting evacuations of its nationals and eligible Afghans, but the president claims they must leave due to an “acute and growing risk of an attack” by another group in the country – Islamic State. The Taliban, according to Mr Biden, “have been taking steps to help get our people out”. However, this is on the backdrop of the Taliban saying Afghans shouldn’t go to Kabul airport or try to leave, working women must stay at home for now over safety fears and one Afghan journalist saying “it’s unbelievable to think no place was safe for me”. Mr Biden’s resolve to leave on the agreed date came despite pressure from G7 leaders in an emergency meeting chaired by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday. They wanted more time to evacuate more people but after it was clear an extension was unlikely, Mr Johnson turned to the Taliban saying they must guarantee a safe passage for those who want to leave after 31 August. The G7 leaders from the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan have agreed a “roadmap” for engaging with the Taliban. But the Taliban have made it clear that they probably wouldn’t agree to an extension. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the G7 leaders had “agreed that it is our moral duty to help the Afghan people and to provide as much possible support as conditions will allow”. So far thousands of people have been flown out of Afghanistan on relief fights but Mr Biden’s remarks were a bitter disappointment for many in Kabul, who say the mission is far from over, since it leaves them stranded, according to our White House reporter Tara McKelvey. (Source: BBC)
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