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14 Sep 22. Senate advances $6.5bn Taiwan military aid bill. The Senate on Wednesday advanced a sprawling bill that would give Taiwan the same benefits as major non-NATO allies, provide $6.5bn in military aid, expedite arms sales and prioritize the transfer of excess U.S. defense articles there.
The Foreign Relations Committee advanced the Taiwan Policy Act 17-5 after amending certain provisions to address the White House’s concerns with some components of the legislation.
The committee’s chairman, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., told Defense News this week that the changes occurred following “some very constructive conversations” with national security adviser Jake Sullivan. “We’ve heard their views, and we think we’re landing in a good spot that still produces a very strong bill and then meets and assuages some of their concerns,” Menendez said.
The bipartisan bill would provide $6.5 billion in military aid to Taiwan through 2027 via Foreign Military Financing — a program that provides foreign countries the ability to purchase U.S. military equipment with grants and loans. The initial bill would have provided $4.5bn through 2026, but the committee amended the legislation with a $2bn increase.
At the same time, the initial bill would have designated Taiwan as a major non-NATO ally, a designation that falls short of a mutual defense pact but helps expedite arms transfers. The amended version that the Foreign Relations Committee advanced instead states that “Taiwan shall be treated as though it were designated a major non-NATO ally.”
While the new language allows Taiwan to receive all the same benefits as non-NATO allies under U.S. law, it stops short of a formal designation that could raise questions about Washington’s recognition of Taiwanese sovereignty — a matter that could potentially upend Sino-U.S. relations.
Still, the designation will help accelerate Taiwan’s purchases of U.S. military equipment. Taiwan currently faces a $14bn backlog in delivery of weapons it purchased from the United States via the Foreign Military Sales process, according to a document obtained by Defense News in April.
The Taiwan Policy Act directs the Defense and State departments to “prioritize and expedite” foreign military sales for Taipei and prohibits both departments from delaying the sales through a bundling route, whereby a defense manufacturer would simultaneously produce weapons systems from multiple contracts.
The amended version of the legislation also builds upon that language with several other provisions to address the backlog. Chiefly, the new language also requires U.S. defense manufacturers to “expedite and prioritize” the production of weapons that Taiwan purchased above other items in their queues. Another new provision would require the Defense and State departments to develop a list of weapons systems that are “pre-cleared and prioritized for sale and release to Taiwan through the foreign military sales program.”
The State Department approved earlier this month an additional $1.1bn in arms sales to Taiwan, including logistics support for Taipei’s Surveillance Radar Program, 60 Harpoon anti-ship missiles and 100 Sidewinder tactical missiles.
The initial version of the Taiwan Policy Act would also have allowed the president to establish a “war reserve stockpile” that would authorize the placement of pre-positioned U.S. munitions and other assets in Taiwan for use against a Chinese attack. The amended bill instead alters this to a “regional contingency stockpile” at an unspecified location, but still allocates $500 million per year in funding for those stocks through 2025.
Lastly, the bill directs the president to establish a five-year plan to prioritize the delivery of excess defense articles to Taiwan while requiring the Defense and State departments to develop a comprehensive training program with the Taiwanese military.
“This program will accelerate Taiwan’s military reform and expand training for the Taiwanese military using realistic scenarios,” Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; and Rand Paul, R-Ky., were the five committee members who voted against the legislation.
In addition to numerous other nondefense provisions, the bill also includes sanctions on China if it “is knowingly engaged in a significant escalation in aggression” against Taiwan. China considers the island a rogue province and has threatened to return it under the mainland’s control, by force if necessary. (Source: Defense News)
15 Sep 22. Commandant Says Innovative Marines Key to Battlefield Success. The Marine Corps is blessed to have leaders at all levels who are creative and adept at taking the initiative, Gen. David H. Berger, its commandant, said today in a speech at Defense One’s virtual State of Defense.
“Small-unit leaders who are well trained, who have the experience and maturity to make decisions and empowered to make decisions in lieu of detailed guidance powerful, even when outnumbered even when up against formations that are two, three, four times as big. … This is the bread and butter of the Marine Corps,” he said.
When Marines are given latitude to make decisions without detailed guidance, they will prove to be innovative, he added.
“The ones who can adapt faster have a huge advantage. That’s agility of the mind, which we press into Marine leaders all the time,” he said.
It’s not a big surprise that many Ukrainian tactical leaders trained with U.S. Marines and have taken the initiative, even when facing larger battlefield formations, he mentioned.
Berger said innovative Marines who take the initiative with very little guidance are especially important on a battlefield where Marine formations will be small, disbursed and could be facing large numbers of well-equipped peer adversaries.
To meet the current and future threat, the Marine Corps is doing a lot of experimentation, not just in the laboratory, but by Marines in the field.
The commandant referred to this as “a perpetual sort of campaign of learning, nonstop experimenting, trying new concepts, new formations, new equipment, new ways of training.”
Feedback from the Marines in the field on new gear or systems is incredibly important, he said.
Ten years ago, it might have taken five years to develop something. Now, Marines in the field can successfully test things in as little as two weeks and they can even come up with new uses or solutions for that gear that the designers never even thought of, he said.
In the future, unmanned air, ground, sea and undersea vehicles teamed with manned vehicles will be increasingly important for such things as intelligence gathering, weapons platforms, delivery of supplies and even medevac missions, he said.
Young Marines are completely comfortable operating with these new, unmanned platforms, he added. “But the question is, are senior leaders comfortable with that?” (Source: US DoD)
15 Sep 22. White House Announces New Restrictions on Foreign Investment in US Tech, Supply Lines.
Administration will require investments to be weighed on whether they will put U.S. national security at risk.
More foreign investments in U.S. companies will require federal approval under a new executive order intended to bar transactions that might allow potential adversaries control of crucial American supply chains or sensitive technology, the White House announced on Thursday.
The order adds specific guidelines and additional focus to the reviews already performed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, three senior administration officials said in a call with reporters on the condition they not be identified.
”Some countries use foreign investment to obtain access to sensitive data and technologies for purposes that are detrimental to U.S. national security,” the White House said in a background statement on the order.
The order focuses on transactions in specific sectors, such as microelectronics, but could apply to any transaction where it’s determined that sensitive data, technologies or supply chains could be impacted and it allows the president to retroactively order divestment of a previously completed transaction if an issue is found, the White House said.
While the order does not name China or Russia, “it’s going to matter where investments are coming from and who the investors are,” said one of the senior administration officials.
One of the biggest concerns continues to be access to sensitive data, such as medical information or biological data, and the order seeks to prevent foreign firms from obtaining personal data on U.S. citizens that could be exploited, such as obtaining personal data on a hotel chain’s guests, administration officials said on background in response to follow up questions from Defense One.
Even if the data managed by a company is anonymized, “advances in technology, combined with access to large data sets, increasingly enable the re-identification or de-anonymization of what once was unidentifiable data,” the White House said in its statement on the order.
Under the order, foreign transactions involving microelectronics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum computing, advanced clean energy, climate adaptation technologies and food security, or involving critical minerals, manufacturing or technology in those fields should be reviewed for whether the investment “could reasonably result in future advancements and applications in technology that could undermine national security, and whether a foreign person involved in the transaction has ties to third parties that may pose a threat to U.S. national security,” the statement said.
CIFUS will also be directed to look at whether the investment is one of several by a foreign entity in a sector to avoid any area of sensitive U.S. commerce being too dominated by a foreign interest.
“There may be a comparatively low threat associated with a foreign company or country acquiring a single firm in a sector, but a much higher threat associated with a foreign company or country acquiring multiple firms within the sector,” the White House said in its statement.
(Source: Defense One)
14 Sep 22. Pentagon to pour $1.2bn into ‘critical’ biomanufacturing industry. A month after a think tank said US was losing race to China, DoD hopes the tech will help fix a number of problems, including avoiding supply chain woes. The Pentagon today announced $1.2bn in new investments into biomanufacturing, which it hopes will help lessen the impact of supply chain squeezes and “enhance” everything from hypersonic weapons to submarines.
“The Department recognizes biotechnology as a Critical Technology Area that will change the way the DoD develops new capabilities, conducts missions, and adapts to major global changes,” Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said in a Defense Department release.
Of the funding, $1bn will be invested in the next five years into “bioindustrial domestic manufacturing infrastructure” to speed the growth of that industrial base, including through providing incentives for “private- and public-sector partners to expand manufacturing capacity […].” The remaining $200m will help protect that initial investment by improving “biosecurity and cybersecurity postures at these facilities.”
The Pentagon release is glowingly optimistic about the potential for biomanufacturing to help solve a myriad of problems, saying it will “enable the Department to source mission-critical materials domestically without relying on fragile supply chains; develop materials with novel properties to enhance systems ranging from hypersonics to submarines; and greatly reduce logistical and resupply timelines by providing point-of-need manufacturing for building materials and energy production.”
“In recognition of biotechnology’s benefits, the DoD aims to accelerate biotechnology towards prototyping, operational demonstration, and production at a faster rate,” the Pentagon said.
The Pentagon announcement comes two days after the White House announced a new executive order focused on a government-wide biomanufacturing effort.
“Although the power of these technologies is most vivid at the moment in the context of human health, biotechnology and biomanufacturing can also be used to achieve our climate and energy goals, improve food security and sustainability, secure our supply chains, and grow the economy across all of America,” the EO says.
As for what particular biotechnologies the White House has in mind, the EO says, “We need to develop genetic engineering technologies and techniques to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers; unlock the power of biological data, including through computing tools and artificial intelligence; and advance the science of scale‑up production while reducing the obstacles for commercialization so that innovative technologies and products can reach markets faster.”
While the EO calls on the DoD to work with other government departments in a number of areas related to biotech — including working with the Intelligence Community on foreign bio threats — it specifically orders the military to “incentivize the expansion of domestic, flexible industrial biomanufacturing capacity for a wide range of materials that can be used to make a diversity of products for the defense supply chain.”
The executive order and new DoD investments come a month after a Center for New American Security report said the US was at a “relative disadvantage” compared to China in the field of biotechnology.
According to that report, the US is falling behind because incentive structures in the private sector are generally biased against risk, constraining development in ways that don’t have the same effect on firms in other countries like China. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Breaking Defense.com)
12 Sep 22. Pentagon needs an extra $42bn due to soaring inflation -industry group. The U.S. Department of Defense will need an extra $42 bn in the next fiscal year to make up for a shortfall in how much it can buy as rising prices eat into its procurement budget, a defense industry group said in a report coming out this week.
“Significant inflation is a major challenge” for the Pentagon and its thousands of contractors, compounding the challenge from COVID-19 and dealing with the supply-chain crisis, said the National Defense Industrial Association report, which was reviewed by Reuters ahead of publication.
From fiscal years 2021 to 2023, the total loss of buying power to the Pentagon from inflation will exceed $110bn, the report said.
The drop in supply from the defense industrial base, which is bleeding money due to higher costs, risks slowing the pace of U.S. defense modernization at a time of rising confrontation with China and the war in Ukraine.
The NDIA called on the U.S. Congress, which is set to vote on a resolution later this month to keep the government funded, to provide inflationary relief to companies that hold long-term fixed price contracts, while suggesting future contracts automatically account for price rises.
The call for relief comes as smaller U.S. defense companies holding contracts that cannot be renegotiated complain they are losing money on them due to a shortage of workers and spiking raw material prices.
Small companies are important to the health of the defense industrial base, as they compete with each other and help the Pentagon drive down costs of contracts. They also help nurture and provide a steady pool of talent, essential in maintaining the United States’ cutting edge in weapons.
To be sure, inflation has affected contracts in every other sector. But given the rigid nature of DoD contracts and the fact that there is one buyer, firms are unable to negotiate prices with the Pentagon, leading to calls by some companies to reassess fixed-price contracts.
“Re-evaluation of fixed price contracts is essential in this environment for mission success,” Parsons Corp (PSN.N) Vice President Jai Spivey told Reuters.
However, industry sources warned that any inflation relief may not be in the offing.
“I am skeptical that a sector-oriented solution will be passed this year which fully makes up for the inflation numbers due to competing interests and election season,” said Pawel Chudzicki, leader of Aerospace and Defense practice at Miller Canfield law firm. The Pentagon released a memo on Monday evening signed by pricing and contracting director John Tenaglia on Sept. 9 stating that schedule relief could be granted to contractors impacted by inflation. It said, however, that only in “extraordinary circumstances” would existing firm-fixed-price contracts get “upward adjustment to the price.” (Source: Reuters)
12 Sep 22. Modernization of Armed Forces a Collaborative Effort, Official Says. The Defense Department, in collaboration with academia, industry, allies and partners, is developing cutting-edge technology to ensure the warfighter has the upper edge on the battlefield. Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, provided virtual opening remarks at the Inaugural Defense Department Basic Research Conference today in Arlington, Virginia. The fiscal year 2022 National Defense Strategy sets out three main themes, she said.
The first theme is integrated deterrence. Research and engineering, or R&E, is working to ensure that the joint force can operate seamlessly across all domains — air, land, sea, cyber and space — and in concert with allies and partners, she said.
R&E is advancing several international partnerships, including with Australia, the United Kingdom, Israel and NATO, she said.
“Our foreign comparative test program also promotes coalition interoperability and strengthens our shared defense industrial base. Our mission engineering division is using modeling and simulation to assess joint capability gaps, and how we’re integrating critical enabling technologies into mission architectures,” Shyu said.
The second theme is campaigning. This relies upon R&E’s efforts to work with partners across the interagency, including the Departments of Treasury and Commerce, the State Department and the Small Business Administration, she said.
The Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve program has embarked on a continuous campaign of joint experimentation to close the gaps in joint warfighting capability, she said. These joint experiments are scenario-based and will be conducted in six-month cycles starting next year.
This experimentation, she said, will involve 14 critical technology areas for the warfighter. The technology areas include biotechnology; quantum sciences; advanced materials; future G, which is beyond 5G technologies that also have a lot of commercial development, trusted artificial intelligence and autonomy; microelectronics; space technology; renewable energy; integrated network; systems of systems; advanced computing and software; human-machine interfaces; hypersonics; direct energy; and integrated sensing and cyber.
The third theme is building enduring advantages, Shyu said. R&E is working to identify reforms to accelerate the development and acquisition of critical technologies and is making necessary investments to the workforce.
“We’re supporting the future defense innovation base through initiatives to support small businesses, startups and other nontraditional companies and encouraging them to work with the DOD,” she said.
R&E’s mission has three focal points:
First, the DOD is leveraging the United States’ incredible science and technology innovation community to solve the department’s toughest operational and engineering challenges with cross-cutting solutions that benefit all military services, she said.
Second, R&E is setting the foundation today to attract and build a strong talented future technical workforce that will work in modernized laboratories and test facilities, she said.
R&E-supported university affiliated research centers and federally funded research and development centers work on cutting-edge technologies including space dynamics, system engineering, applied physics, software engineering, and geophysical detection, she said.
“We’re committed to fostering a culture that encourages innovation and risk taking. Our future depends on our STEM workforce, so we must invest in multiple talent pipelines for the defense innovation base,” Shyu said. STEM refers to science, technology, engineering and math.
Shyu mentioned that the department is also working with underrepresented talent in academia, including historically Black colleges and universities and other minority institutions.
The third focal point is success through teamwork.
“We’re working collaboratively with partners across the technology ecosystem to strengthen our foundation. The work that’s being done by our basic research office and by all of you is foundational for the continued technological dominance of the United States. Basic research is a core of what we do in research and engineering. And it’s a core of every single system that we use. Collaboration is the key to creating new and novel ideas,” Shyu said. (Source: US DoD)
12 Sep 22. USAF warns of ageing fighters. The F-16 Fighting Falcon was the backbone of allied air power in Europe for a generation. Three squadrons on the continent fought over Serbia during the Kosovo War in the late 1990s, repeatedly deployed to the Middle East and Afghanistan during the last two decades, and served as a deterrent to keep Russia from making moves in Eastern Europe.
Today, however, the fourth-generation fighters are aging: The average Fighting Falcon is more than 30 years old, and some started flying in the early 1980s. While the Air Force tries to breathe new life into some F-16s in hopes they’ll keep flying into the 2040s, the general in charge of planning for the service’s future knows a replacement is inevitable.
What makes that equation a problem for Lt. Gen. Richard Moore is that replacement fighters, particularly F-35As, aren’t arriving fast enough.
Top Air Force officials have long said the service should buy at least 72 fighters each year. Moore said funding such procurements would help the service both modernize and lower the average age of the fleet. Today, the average fighter aircraft in the service is about 28 years old.
The original budget request for fiscal 2023 called for nearly $7.2bn to procure 57 new fighters: 24 F-15EXs and 33 F-35As. The Senate’s version of the annual defense policy bill could add another seven F-35As for the Air Force, which the service said could cost another $921m.
“That’s a long ways from 72,” Moore said during an August interview with Defense News.
With China and its advanced military as the “pacing threat” the Air Force is readying to face, Moore said, the need to modernize its fighter fleet is urgent.
The Air Force is approaching its 75th anniversary, and for roughly half that time the F-16 has been a stalwart. But, Moore said, the time will come when the service is without it, and the United States must get serious about funding fighter procurements to face that future.
But cutting checks isn’t enough, Andrew Hunter, who oversees Air Force acquisition, explained during a roundtable in Ohio last month, given the service will be unable to modernize properly if Congress doesn’t approve the retirement of older airframes, which would free up airmen and maintenance resources to direct at the new aircraft.
“Money alone does not solve our problem,” Hunter said. “There are key constraints on people and infrastructure as well.”
Planning for the future
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall earlier this year detailed his top priorities, which he dubbed “operational imperatives” for how the service needs to modernize. Moore said his office is building a resource plan that will outline a path toward those priorities.
Putting together that plan is a two-phase process — one that requires projecting what the Air Force needs to look like three decades into the future. In the near term, that means producing the five-year Future Years Defense Program, which informs budget proposals that go before Congress.
Long-range planning takes over from there, beginning in fiscal 2029 and projecting out the next 25 years, to look at the capabilities the Air Force will need in 2054.
The planners then work backward, identifying how long it will take to develop and field capabilities, which allows them to determine a timeline. Moore’s office also determines what resources the service needs to develop those capabilities.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upending the European defense environment and China launching missiles near Taiwan in August after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit, the Air Force is under pressure to determine its future force posture in Europe and the Pacific.
The size of the fighter fleet is a major part of that question.
In Europe, the Air Force plans to have two permanent F-35A squadrons with the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath in England. The Valkyries of the 495th Fighter Squadron received their first fighters last December, and the Reapers of the 493rd Fighter Squadron will follow. Within a few years, the Air Force expects to have 54 F-35 fighters stationed at Lakenheath.
As more F-35As come into the Air Force, Moore said, the aircraft type will increasingly serve as the “cornerstone” of the U.S. fighter fleet in Europe. The variant’s interoperability with other F-35s flown by allies and partners in the region, such as the U.K. and Italy, increases their usefulness, he added.
But the long-term picture of that fleet in Europe is undetermined, Moore said, and will depend on several factors — most significantly, the security conditions in Europe in years to come, and how many new fighters the Air Force can buy.
“The conditions in Europe right now are extraordinary,” Moore said. “How long does it persist? We don’t know. And what does our posture need to be when we get to the point where we make these decisions? We don’t know.”
Moore said the Air Force’s F-16s stationed at three squadrons in Europe — two in Italy and one in Germany — will eventually require replacements, likely F-35s the service is yet to procure.
Asked if that meant a one-for-one replacement of an F-35 squadron for each retiring F-16 squadron, Moore said that will depend in part on local conditions at the time. The Air Force will also likely continue temporarily rotating fighters such as F-35s through Europe to respond to emerging conditions.
Ultimately, the decisions on what to do with those F-16 squadrons and the time frame for making those choices will depend on how fast the Air Force can bring on new fighters.
Heather Penney, a former F-16 pilot and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and Heritage Foundation aviation expert John Venable each noted the Air Force in recent years hasn’t met the 72-fighter threshold. And Penney said the Air Force needs to bring on more than 72 to both lower the average age of the fleet and grow it.
Under the Air Force’s FY23 budget proposal, retirements of older F-15s, F-16s and F-22s would more than offset growth in the F-35A and F-15EX fleets, bringing the total number of fighter aircraft from the more than 1,850 it now has in its fleet to about 1,770 next year.
“It isn’t just about stabilizing the fleet,” Penney said. “We need to not only meaningfully decrease the age of the fleet; we need to grow the fleet in terms of total numbers for fighters because we’re looking now at a totally new global security environment where we need to be able to deter and prevail in the Pacific [and] Europe.”
In a report, an advance copy of which was provided to Defense News, the Mitchell Institute blasted what it sees as a chronically underfunded and atrophying Air Force fleet — one that won’t be ready for a fight against China.
The report, by the institute’s David Deptula and Mark Gunzinger, argued that decades of the service having to “do more with less,” amid about 20 years of nonstop war in the Middle East, has worn out the fleet. Simultaneously, the report read, critical modernization needs were put on the back burner for so long that the Air Force’s ability to fight and win a high-end war is now in jeopardy.
The report also found the fighter fleet is less able to fight a war than overall numbers suggest, with hundreds of those aircraft meant for training, testing or other noncombat roles. This means the Air Force has about 1,200 fighters that can fight; and when non-mission-capable aircraft are considered, the number drops below 1,000.
“This is the force that can fly and fight today, a force that is wholly inadequate to simultaneously defeat peer aggression, defend U.S. sovereign airspace from enemy attacks, and deter threats in another theater as required by the National Defense Strategy,” the report stated.
The Mitchell Institute recommends the Air Force dramatically increase its purchases of F-35As to 60-80 per year. The report does not put a price tag on this, but such a move could at least double the $4.5bn requested to buy 33 F-35As in the FY23 budget.
Old iron, hard choices
The Air Force has long fought with Congress over retiring older airframes. When the service is forced to hold onto planes it wants to retire, such as the A-10 Warthog, airmen must work to maintain those aircraft instead of focusing on newer airframes entering the fleet.
Year after year, divestments emerge as a sticking point between the Air Force and lawmakers. The service’s FY23 budget proposal outlined plans for cutting 150 aircraft in all, including 15 of its E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system planes and 33 Block 20 F-22 fighters now used for training purposes that aren’t combat capable.
The House’s version of the authorization bill would require the Air Force to keep and upgrade those F-22s, and would also block the retirement of five E-3 Sentry AWACS the Air Force wants to send to the so-called boneyard — where the service stores retired military planes should it need to harvest parts.
At last month’s roundtable, Hunter said the inability to shift aircrews and maintenance personnel to next-generation capabilities would hinder the Air Force’s effort to deliver unmanned, autonomous aircraft to accompany its sixth-generation fighter family of systems. This effort is known as Next Generation Air Dominance.
If Congress bars the service’s planned retirements, Hunter said, then Kendall and other top Air Force leaders would have to figure out “what tradeoffs we would make.”
Can drone wingmen broaden reach?
Kendall and other senior leaders are hoping technology could help solve the problem.
In a roundtable with reporters at the Pentagon last month following a trip to the Indo-Pacific region, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown said the service views these kinds of autonomous drones — which it now calls collaborative combat aircraft, and which could team up with F-35s — as a way to extend the reach of manned fighters.
This concept could prove particularly helpful in the Pacific region given the long stretch of airspace over water, he said.
“It can be a sensor, it can be a jammer, it can be a shooter, it could bring additional capability,” Brown said. “And you don’t put our aircrew at risk as well. Because you get a lot less land, a lot more water and you get great distances you’ve got to travel, it does provide us a few more options than it would if you were operating in another part of the world.”
Moore said the Air Force is “fairly far forward on the cutting edge of what is possible” for collaborative combat aircraft, which the service wants to be at least somewhat stealthy to survive in a high-threat environment. The aircraft also need the speed and range to keep up with the manned aircraft they’d fight alongside. And they need the autonomous capability to successfully team up with a manned aircraft and operate on their own when necessary.
Kendall’s “goal is not for this to live in the labs for decades,” Moore said. “His goal is to turn it into something that can become warfighting capability as quickly as possible. And we’ll see what the technology supports.”
Nevertheless, the service plans to keep its F-16s flying. Col. Tim Bailey, F-16 program manager for the Air Force, told reporters last month that the service life extension program now underway could keep hundreds of them in the air for 20 more years.
The Air Force is also upgrading F-16s with improved capabilities such as the active electronically scanned array radar and a new electronic warfare suite.
“We need … lots of fighters to cover all the different combatant commander needs,” Bailey said. “And the F-16 has to be relevant in that kind of environment.”
However, Penney said, challenges facing the fighter fleet are emblematic of broader problems across the service caused by decades of delayed modernization.
“The Air Force has deferred meaningful recapitalization [and] modernization for well over 30 years,” Penney said. “Because we’ve been mired in low-intensity, permissive conflict over 20 years, the Department of Defense and Congress really [haven’t] prioritized ensuring that the Air Force is capable of operating in a highly contested environment.
“The Air Force is being put into a position where it’s having to cannibalize its current fleet … to hedge risk in the near- to mid-term. But they’re [creating] even bigger capability gaps because they’re trying to get to the fleet that they should have been allowed to invest in for the last 30 years.” (Source: Defense News)
09 Sep 22. Pentagon eyes commercial solution to supply chain problems. The U.S. Department of Defense is looking to commercially available software to help address supply chain disruptions, a growing concern as companies large and small deal with the continued fallout of pandemic-related parts availability issues.
In a solicitation from the Defense Innovation Unit, a Pentagon agency that fosters DoD adoption of commercial technology, the department is seeking software solutions to build new supply pathways for critical components and manage risk across key areas of the industrial base.
Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante said this week during the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia, that he is working on new guidance to help alleviate some of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic and inflation have had on supply bases, noting particular concern for small companies operating under firm fixed-price contracts.
“We want to keep our industrial base whole,” he said Sept. 7. “We want to keep them solvent. We need them.”
The pandemic isn’t the only supply chain threat the Pentagon is working to protect against. Dependence on foreign sources for semiconductor technology has driven Congress to take action to revive the U.S. microelectronic industrial base. And just this week, DoD announced it temporarily suspended deliveries of the Lockheed Martin-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter after discovering the raw material used to produce a magnet in the aircraft were made in China.
“Threats to this industrial base are real and actively evolving, specifically for critical technologies,” DIU said in the Sept. 8 solicitation. “Reliance on foreign-owned or controlled hardware, software or services introduces opportunities for exploitation of a product’s availability, integrity, trustworthiness or authenticity.”
DIU’s call for software solutions emphasizes the need for analytic techniques that would allow the department to take in data from commercial, proprietary and government sources to develop computer models of supply chains. DoD wants to use those models to estimate costs, establish digital representations and identify risk.
Proposals are due Sept. 16. (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
09 Sep 22. DOD Security Cooperation Takes ‘LEAP’ Forward. The Defense Department is ensuring that it engages with its partners in ways that are holistic, effective, efficient and in direct support of the objectives in the National Defense Strategy, the assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities said today in prepared remarks.
Mara Karlin spoke at a virtual launch event for DOD’s first learning agenda for security cooperation — the Learning and Evaluation Agenda for Partnerships. The event, hosted by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was held in partnership with the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and the National Defense University.
Learning agendas help organizations identify knowledge gaps and coordinate research to fill those gaps. LEAP identifies the most urgent knowledge gaps in the security cooperation community and plans and prioritizes evidence-building activities over the next five years.
A defense official said the public launch was a demonstration of the commitment by Karlin’s office to evidence-based policymaking and lessons learned. The official said the department also hoped to generate interest and conversation on DOD’s learning priorities and to and support submissions and coordination of studies and evaluations by non-federal entities aligned with DOD priorities.
Today’s global geostrategic environment is laden with threats from states and non-state actors, Karlin said. “In this environment, the enduring U.S. strategic advantage is our unmatched network of allies and partners,” she said. ”Security cooperation is an important tool that helps the United States to act by, with, and through our partners to make a safer world.”
Security Cooperation
DOD wants to build capable partners with strong defense institutions, Karlin said. Such partners would operate alongside or in lieu of the U.S. to face global, regional and national threats, she said.
“Today, our cooperation with partners includes military-to-military engagements, capacity building, education and training activities, humanitarian assistance activities, and robust exercises with key partners,” Karlin noted.
She said DOD’s security cooperation focuses on three priority areas:
Prioritizing who and what the department invests in.
“The department’s thinking on security cooperation has evolved over time, and we continue to learn and adjust,” Karlin said. ”Five years ago, Congress enacted legislation empowering the department to support allies and partners through a consolidated range of Title 10 U.S. Code security cooperation authorities designed to advance U.S. interests and with full coordination of the State Department.”
As part of this reform process, DOD established the first comprehensive program of assessment, monitoring and evaluation to improve the practice and impact of security cooperation activities, she said.
Learning Agenda for Security Cooperation
Karlin said DOD built on that program to develop a comprehensive learning agenda framework aimed at providing more structure and longer-term thinking to the effort.
“LEAP identifies the most urgent knowledge gaps in the security cooperation community, centered around eight learning questions, and plans and prioritizes evidence-building activities over the next five years to help fill these gaps,” she said.
“This common framework will help us increase coordination, collaboration and return on investment across the security cooperation community,” she said.
Karlin noted that DOD has learned through large-scale assistance programs that in order to have a lasting impact a comprehensive engagement plan involves more than training and equipping.
“Resilient partnerships thrive when values and deeds align,” she said. “Security cooperation aims to uphold that approach.”
DOD helps partners with specific capabilities, Karlin said, but it also works to build institutional integrity and an ability to promote shared values — notably the promotion and protection of human rights and the good governance and legitimacy of the security sector.
She said she’s previously referred to institutional capacity-building activities as the ’secret sauce needed to get security cooperation right. Today’s announcement moves to centralize institution-building initiatives under broader security cooperation efforts. ”We’re moving such efforts from the secret sauce to the main dish,” Karlin said.
Partnership should not be measured by the quantity of security cooperation programs, but rather by their quality, she said.
Karlin said LEAP will help the department better understand what works and what doesn’t, while informing key decisions to improve policy and practice. “It will help ensure our approach to security cooperation is effective, efficient and directly supports the key defense objectives outlined in the NDS,” she said.
“These are hard issues to figure out, and we’ve come up with a quantitative and qualitative approach that represents a ’leap’ forward for the department,” Karlin said.
Alliances and partnerships can confer an unmatchable strategic advantage, she said, but this is not a given. Securing this advantage requires active involvement by the entire U.S. government, Karlin said, listening to partners’ concerns and taking a thoughtful and deliberate approach to how DOD employs its resources to meet its priorities. (Source: US DoD)
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