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24 Jul 24. Office of Strategic Capital Seeks Public Input on New Loan Program to Support Critical Technologies and Supply Chains. The Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) today announced the release of a Federal Register Notice and accompanying Request for Information (RFI) open for public comment. OSC seeks public input as it prepares to issue loans and loan guarantees for critical technology and supply chain components in support of the office’s mission to attract and scale private capital for national security.
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2024 (FY24 NDAA) formally established OSC into law, and granted the Department of Defense new authorities to issue loans and loan guarantees to increase private investment in the critical technologies and supply chains that support national security. With these authorities and appropriations, OSC is actively building the Department’s first loan program office.
OSC invites public comment on the RFI from companies and financial institutions, including their representatives and industry associations, regarding contemporary market activity, capital requirements, and where OSC-provided loans and loan guarantees can support investment in critical technologies. OSC is particularly interested in responses from companies and lenders working in the 31 component areas identified as promising critical technologies and assets in Section 903 of the FY24 NDAA.
“OSC-backed financing can help ensure the resilience and security of critical supply chains by supporting businesses that produce key components and materials,” said Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu. “Loans and loan guarantees can also help level the playing field by providing businesses with the financial support they need to bring new technologies to market, expand their operations, and create jobs.”
For additional information and to submit comments for consideration, please visit the official notices on the Federal Register website. OSC is publishing two separate RFI documents: one for lenders and financial institutions, linked here, and one for companies, relevant industry associations, and other stakeholders, linked here. This RFI is for informational and planning purposes only and is not a solicitation for applications or an obligation on the part of the Government to provide support for any ideas identified in response to it. OSC encourages the market to share the RFI opportunity widely with colleagues.
About the Office of Strategic Capital
Established by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in December 2022, the Office of Strategic Capital has a mission to attract and scale private capital for national and economic security priorities. Follow the work of the Office of Strategic Capital at https://www.cto.mil/osc. (Source: U.S. DoD)
24 Jul 24. US move to boost security alliance with UK, Australia just the start, officials say. A U.S. move to slash restrictions on transferring military gear and technology with Britain and Australia will bolster the AUKUS security alliance between the three countries, and there is more to come, government and industry officials told the Farnborough Airshow.
AUKUS, formed in 2021 to address shared worries about China’s growing power, includes A$368 bn ($245 bn) to help Australia acquire nuclear powered submarines.
Brian Burton, a senior adviser at the U.S. Defense Department on international and industrial base policy, said at a panel discussion at the air show that the goal is to enable industry across the three countries to work together more efficiently.
In April, the State Department proposed reducing licensing requirements for transferring military gear and sensitive technology among the United States, Australia and Britain under AUKUS. The final rule was cleared by the White House regulatory office July 19 and is set to be published in August.
“The things that we’re doing – particularly in the regulatory environment – are really built to last once we make these changes … they’re very hard once you’ve done that to start kind of going back to the way things were,” Burton said.
State Department AUKUS senior adviser Matthew Steinhelfer noted AUKUS has strong bipartisan congressional support.
“We’re very optimistic that we’re going to put in place some very big, bold moves that will be an enabling factor for AUKUS,” Steinhelfer said.
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Dak Hardwick, vice president for international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association representing many defense contractors, said the rule change “is the most significant change to the arms export control act since” it was signed in 1976.
Shimon Fhima, director of strategic programmes at Britain’s ministry of defense, said the next step is “how do we create the environment” to share information, work together and buy defense materials collectively.
Kylie Wright, Australia’s assistant secretary, defence industry, said: “We’re actually systematically going through each of the three systems and knocking down the barriers that are preventing us from working seamlessly and interoperably.”
(Source: Reuters)
23 Jul 24. U.S. Will Work With African Nations to Protect Interests, Encourage Cooperation.
The United States has vital interests on the African continent and will protect those interests in concert with African nations, said the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Africa during an interview earlier this month.
Maureen Farrell emphasized that Africa — with more than 1.5 bn people in 54 nations who speak hundreds of languages and have hundreds of cultures — is a diverse continent where a one-size-fits-all approach will not work.
Still, Farrell said there are commonalities. Nations in some sub-regions and particular climate belts share concerns, and often the U.S. government works with the nations in all aspect of government — from the economy to diplomacy to security and more, she said.
But all of this is done “based on the feedback from our African colleagues, as opposed to what might make sense from a policy maker’s desk here in Washington, where if you haven’t worked on Africa in depth, it can all blend together without the nuance that one clearly needs to understand to be effective,” she said.
Listening and engaging with African leaders is an important part of Farrell’s job, and it is also an important aspect of the strategy of Marine Corps Gen. Michael Langley, commander of U.S. Africa Command. Farrell and Langley and Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., just returned from the African Chiefs of Defense Conference held in Gaborone, Botswana, where they did listen to and engage with African leaders.
“It was a fantastic opportunity for the chairman and the combatant commander to hear directly from their uniformed counterparts at a very senior level,” Farrell said. The two U.S. leaders, along with Farrell, were able to hold many bilateral talks with African chiefs of defense and have focused discussions. The discussions on West Africa were particularly important, she said, as Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso following recent coups have withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African States.
“There are some interesting politics and threat information at play in terms of the withdrawal of these three states from ECOWAS,” she said. The African nations in the region and beyond, Farrell said, are looking at the political implications of those policy decisions for the uniformed military services in the region.
African leaders very much want African solutions to African problems, Farrell said, and many nations are working together. She noted that two constellations of nations offered different approaches to the troubles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Southern African Development Community has sent peacekeeping forces to the Eastern region of Congo. SADC is also sending peacekeepers to Mozambique where an ISIS-affiliated uprising has killed thousands since 2017 and displaced more than 800,000.
African nations are also working together in the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia.
“These are all African-led initiatives,” Farrell said. “There are plenty of examples of African leadership on security solutions.”
One continent-wide problem is climate change. The Sahara is growing, and the Sahel nations are feeling that effect, Farrell said. This has meant increased migration and struggles for resources from water to food to energy.
“The expansion of the Sahel is posing resiliency challenges for the people of the Sahel and coastal West Africa and the broader the West African region.” Farrell said. “The drought problems afflicting the Horn of Africa are creating increased security pressures. Add to this the economic challenges from the global food crisis caused by the Russia and Ukraine war. All these issues have squeezed systems in Africa.”
She said the continent is also still feeling the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic. “All of these economic challenges create friction in societies that makes easy fodder for conflict,” she said. “I think our security service counterparts on the continent are very cognizant of the pressure of resource constraints and what that creates in terms of security challenges for them. So, it’s a reality that we’re acknowledging as a factor in a spark for conflict, usually over water.”
She pointed to Lake Chad — a main source of water for Niger, Chad and Nigeria — as an example. The lake has dramatically diminished in size in recent years placing enormous economic and political pressures on these countries. “If you look over time at the size of Lake Chad, you can see it has shrunk in a matter of years, not multiple decades, but just a handful of years,” she said.
The future in Africa involves more African leadership, Farrell said. The United States is listening to and deferring to African leaders. “Our African colleagues are leading, and I think that’s only going to grow,” she said. “I think the challenge for us in Washington and for our partners and allies is to appropriately support those mechanisms, as opposed to asserting our own particular worldview.”
Africa has its challenges, but it has opportunities as well. She noted that Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are investing in the continent. India, Japan and South Korea are active economically and diplomatically with African nations. “These are dynamics that I think we have to pay attention to,” she said. “There’s no question that the rest of the globe sees the importance of the continent, and not just for resource extraction, but for diplomatic maneuvering, and economic investment. Those are trends that I think have to be part of the consideration for DOD.”
China and Russia are also interested in expanding influence on the continent. “We recognize that Africans have a choice, and we are choosing to engage with African partners for our mutual benefit,” Farrell said. “It’s part of the landscape that there are other actors engaged. We’re interested in partnering with countries such as Angola, with Kenya, with Cote d’Ivoire, with Nigeria and with many others, because of the importance that we place on these bilateral relationships, and in many cases, those countries’ roles in the broader region.”
“There could be threats emanating from some of those other actors’ engagements on the continent, but in general, our priority is to engage with African partners for our own mutual benefit,” she continued. (Source: U.S. DoD)
19 Jul 24. Chairman Puts Strategic Picture in Focus During Aspen Talk. Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., gave some insight into the thought processes of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a Fireside Chat with Fox News luminary Jennifer Griffin at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, today.
Brown is the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military, and it is his job to advise the president, vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state and other members of the National Security Council on military matters.
Griffin asked Brown about a number of issues during her talk with the chairman, from Ukraine to China, to Russia, to the Red Sea and rebuilding the national armament infrastructure. Brown said all of these aspects of international relations have to be viewed as a whole. He said the U.S. government cannot really just deal with one aspect of a crisis, but what dealing with the aspect would mean to other governments in other parts of the world.
“We could look at things individually and , ‘Because this happened, we should go do X,'” he said. “But I’m looking at it from not only with X but what happens with Y and Z, too.”
The U.S. military has to look at any situation and determine the second and third orders of effects that are possible, he said. “I have a responsibility to be thinking strategically about the actions we take, the recommendations I make, and what the risks of broadening it further escalation or broader conflict,” Brown said.
In the Middle East, for example, that means looking at the Hamas attack on Israel in October, he said. One of the first lines of effort for the U.S. government from President Joe Biden was to “not to let the conflict in the Middle East broaden,” he said. “I think we’ve been so effective doing that.”
One effect of the Hamas attack was the Houthi effort to shut down the sea lanes in the Red Sea. U.S. service members serve magnificently in the effort to protect shipping and civilian mariners in that area, Brown said. “I have to say how proud I am of our service members,” he said.
One of his expectations upon becoming chairman was that honing warfighting skills has primacy in all the U.S. military does. The destroyer USS Carney, other ships, and air assets used that training to ensure the free flow of ships and supplies in that crucial waterway. “Our service members are proud of being able to do exactly that, to be able to defend themselves, and do it extremely well,” the chairman said.
Brown also spoke strategically about Russia’s war on Ukraine. The chairman flat out said that Ukraine matters. “Unprovoked aggression doesn’t stay in one part of the world,” he said. If Russian President Vladimir Putin manages to conquer Ukraine and wrest sovereignty from that nation, it will embolden autocrats in other parts of the world to do the same thing, he said.
Ukraine is the focus of not just the United States, but more than 50 other nations supplying the besieged country with the means to defend itself, the chairman said. “Putin went into Ukraine with the goal to take Ukraine very quickly and fracture NATO; neither one of those occurred,” Brown said. “He’s still fighting in Ukraine, and NATO is stronger.”
The NATO growth in strength is not limited to Finland and Sweden joining the alliance because of Putin’s reckless actions, but also because “the dialogue within NATO is stronger than it has ever been,” he said. NATO nations have stepped up and are investing in defense in ways not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union.
“What you are seeing here is this type of aggression has actually strengthened allies and partnerships,” he said. “That’s what I see in NATO. That’s what I saw just this past week when I was in the Indo-Pacific. It’s very important that we all stay together and focus on maintaining global security by the actions we take and how we work together.”
If, collectively, the nations stopped supporting Ukraine, Putin wins, Brown said. The democracies would lose credibility in the eyes of the world. “If we just back away, that opens the door for Xi Jinping and others that want to do unprovoked aggression,” he said.
Still, Brown does not see conflict with China as imminent or inevitable. That doesn’t mean the United States military is going to let down its guard. “In all we do, I want our service members to be so focused on their individual skill set: How they bring that individual skill set together as a team in their units, how we bring it together as a joint force, how we deal with their allies and partners,” the chairman said. “We exist to fight with our nation’s wars. We want to be so good at what we do, that our adversaries never want to mess with us. And if they do, we want to be their worst nightmare, personally, professionally.
“I do not play for second place,” the chairman continued. “I play to win, and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it’s an unfair fight. That’s my focus.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
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Founded in 1987, Exensor Technology is a world leading supplier of Networked Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) Systems providing tailored sensor solutions to customers all over the world. From our Headquarters in Lund Sweden, our centre of expertise in Network Communications at Communications Research Lab in Kalmar Sweden and our Production site outside of Basingstoke UK, we design, develop and produce latest state of the art rugged UGS solutions at the highest quality to meet the most stringent demands of our customers. Our systems are in operation and used in a wide number of Military as well as Homeland Security applications worldwide. The modular nature of the system ensures any external sensor can be integrated, providing the user with a fully meshed “silent” network capable of self-healing. Exensor Technology will continue to lead the field in UGS technology, provide our customers with excellent customer service and a bespoke package able to meet every need.
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