The Insider

The Energy Department has nuclear detonation detection sensors that it would like to place on the Pentagon's ballistic missile early warning satellites. The only problem: Delays and cost overruns to the Space Based Infrared System program that have resulted in it being renamed as the Precision Tracking Space Surveillance (PTSS) system.

NNSA has budgeted $126.5 million for the effort in fiscal year 2011, according to the organization's FY-11 budget justification book:

The satellite-based segment of the program builds the Global Burst Detector (GBD) and Space and Atmospheric Burst Reporting System (SABRS) payloads for detecting and reporting nuclear detonations. These payloads are launched on Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites and missile warning replenishment satellites. In addition to building the payloads, the program supports the integration, initialization, and operation of these payloads. The NDD subprogram supports the research, development, and engineering efforts to prepare next generation sensors. For FY 2011, production and delivery of GBD and SABRS payloads will continue at a pace to support timely Air Force launch of host satellites.

Kenneth Baker, principal assistant deputy administrator in the National Nuclear Security Administration's office of defense nuclear nonproliferation, answered a question on that from Senate Armed Services emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee Chairman Bill Nelson (D-FL) at a hearing today:

We are still building, and if I can, sir, I'll give you a more expanded answer for the record, if it's okay. But we have expanded, we have continued to build nuclear detection sensors. You are right, it's been a struggle with the Air Force on launching these things and we're trying to work that right now. But we have a commitment in DOE to continue to build these sensors and hopefully they will fly on (SBIRS) one day or however they get up there, but if I can, I'd like to provide you a more detailed, classified answer to that question. But there is a problem here and I agree with you.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has penned an essay in the May/June 2010 issue of Foreign Affairs calling -- again -- for the U.S. government to bolster its capacity to assist partner nations' efforts to improve both security forces and governing structures.

Last year, in an essay published just as the Obama administration was transitioning into power, the defense secretary -- a holdover from the Bush administration -- outlined his vision to “rebalance” the Defense Department. That article was closely read by Pentagon officials trying to anticipate what potential changes to the weapon systems investment accounts Gates might direct during the fiscal year 2010 budget revision.

The new essay -- “Helping Others Defend Themselves: The Future of U.S. Security Assistance” -- captures in four-and-a-half pages points Gates has made in a number of speeches since taking the helm at the Pentagon. The thrust of the new article highlights a policy proposal first reported by InsideDefense.com -- for DOD and the State Department to pool funds for security capacity building, stabilization and conflict prevention.

The security assistance system in place in 2001 "proved unequal to the task" the U.S. government faced in the weeks and months after the Sept. 11 attacks, he writes.

(T)he United States interagency took kit is still a hodgepodge of jury-rigged arrangements constrained by a dated and complex patchwork of authorities, persistent shortfalls in resources, and unwieldy processes.

The so-called Section 1206 authorities, established by Congress in 2005, give the secretaries of Defense and State “dual key” decision-making authority to fund programs to train and equip foreign security forces.

Those authorities and programs -- and the role of the Defense Department in foreign assistance writ large -- have stirred debates across Washington. I never miss an opportunity to call for a greater emphasis on civilian programs.

The defense secretary reiterates previous calls “to move beyond the ideological debates and bureaucratic squabbles that have in the past characterized the issue of building partner capacity and move forward with a set of solutions that can address what will be a persistent and enduring challenge.”

The essay then recaps a proposal to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- detailed in this Dec. 15, 2009 memo -- that Gates says in the essay “would create incentives for collaboration between different agencies of the government, unlike the existing structure and processes left over from the Cold War, which often conspire to hinder true whole-of-government approaches.”

A senior member of the House Armed Services Committee wants the Missile Defense Agency to provide Congress with more information regarding the Obama administration's proposed "Phased Adaptive Approach" toward European missile defense.

Specifically, strategic forces subcommittee Ranking Member Michael Turner (R-OH) writes in an April 15 letter to MDA Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly:

I am concerned that the portions of the proposed system that are intended to protect the mainland United States are not yet defined to support sufficient evaluation of its merits and the resources necessary to implement it.

Details such as system and inventory requirements, research-and-development milestones, independent assessments, technology maturity levels, coverage and performance analysis, program schedules, acquisition strategies, cost estimates, deployment plans timelines for host-nation agreements, operational plans, and NATO integration plans, would be vital to supporting such an evaluation. Also, the options considered and how those options were assessed would . . . be important information for Congress to review. However, as the missile defense acquisition expert, I seek your judgment and input on what information you believe is necessary for Congress to conduct its oversight and evaluation of the PAA.

As Iran continues to represent an emerging threat, congressional oversight and evaluation of the administration's proposal is imperative. Further, since the administration scrapped a plan that would have provided missile defense coverage for the mainland United States, the administration's proposal should be evaluated within the context of the missile defense protection provide(d) to the United States mainland. Congress must be confident that the PAA is the best approach for increasing the protection of the mainland United States; but to have this confidence requires information.

The letter was sent the same day as a strategic forces subcommittee hearing on the Ballistic Missile Defense Review and MDA's fiscal year 2011 budget request, where Turner, in his opening statement, reiterated his concern about Congress' lack of information on the PAA:

I am very concerned by recent comments from administration officials that essentially Congress has everything it needs to know about the phased adaptive approach, PAA. As Undersecretary Tauscher said at our hearing yesterday in reference to PAA details, "It's on the Internet."

Well, unfortunately, the Internet does not provide sufficient details on the four phases of the PAA, nor does it provide a description of the options considered by the administration in addition to the PAA and the analysis to support why it was chosen as the preferred approach.

Looks like the Obama administration's plan to have full coverage of Europe from ballistic missile attack would be fully realized a bit sooner than originally anticipated. As Reuters reported yesterday:

U.S. anti-ballistic missile systems will cover all of Europe by 2018, a senior Pentagon official said, laying out an ambitious target for defending against a perceived threat from Iran.

"One hundred percent," Bradley Roberts, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, said in reply to a question at a hearing of a House of Representatives Armed Services subcommittee Thursday.

Roberts said the Obama administration was putting "proven" sea-based and land-based missile shields into Europe as quickly as possible as part of a revised shield announced last September to any Iranian ballistic-missile strike.

Full coverage of NATO territory in Europe would be achieved around 2018, he said, when a second land-based site is to be established in northern Europe for updated Raytheon Co Standard Missile-3 missile interceptors.

Inside Missile Defense reported last November that that capability would be fully realized a couple years later:

Lockheed Martin officials said last week they can deliver a land-based version of the Aegis combat system by 2015, the date the Obama administration has targeted for installing ashore missile and radar batteries in Europe to defend against medium-range ballistic missiles that could potentially be launched by Iran.

The land-based Aegis system would likely be the exact same capability now residing on Navy destroyers and cruisers, the officials said.

Termed “Aegis ashore,” the plan is to use the Aegis Spy-1 radar along with a land-based version of the Standard Missile-3. During an Oct. 1 appearance before the House Armed Services Committee, Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly said two land-based sites using SM-3 block IIB missiles -- that would be capable of intercepting long-range ballistic missiles -- “could protect all of Europe.” The block IIB missiles are in development. The administration’s plan would have that capability in place by 2020.

Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly today outlined some of the things his agency is doing to get contractors to improve their quality control on missile defense contracts. Specifically, according to his prepared testimony at a House Armed Services strategic forces committee hearing:

Until we complete planned competitions, including the greater use of firm fixed price contracts, we will have to motivate greater attention by senior industry management through intensive government inspections, low award fees, the issuance of cure notices, stopping the funding of new contract scope, and documenting inadequate quality control performance to influence future contract awards by DOD.

O'Reilly took contractors to task last month at an MDA conference, Inside Missile Defense reported, saying: "I have gone to a point where I am withholding funding for current contracts because I don't see the level of scrutiny and a level of culture necessary for the precision work that's required -- not in engineers' design capability, but actually in manufacturing."

O'Reilly went further during today's question-and-answer portion of the hearing, responding to a query from subcommittee Chairman James Langevin (D-RI) regarding target failures. O'Reilly cited the case of a failed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense intercept test last December where the air-launched target failed to ignite after separating from a C-130 aircraft. A Failure Review Board found "systemic problems" with the aircraft's launch system, he added.

As a result of the target failure, O'Reilly halted any future use of air-launched targets and said that one option is to expand "the number of contractors which we use so we can induce competition, which I believe is part of the solution to quality control issues."

He continues:

It's not that these are poorly built systems -- the precision required of missile defense systems is very high, and it is achievable, but it requires a specific disciplined experience base and investment in testing . . . that's required. And so to motivate that, I have delayed any new scope to that particular company so that until they satisfy that they have made corrective actions in management structure and in approaches to targets and so forth. And also at the same time I have taken the planned work that I was going to use with that company in 2012 and put that scope on another contract that I have with another company and asked that second company to develop an air-launched capability so that we have true competition to emphasize the fact that it is an absolute requirement in the missile defense business that you have the highest repeatable quality. It is a condition on which our contracts should be set.

Richard Genaille will be the next deputy director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, according to an April 9 DSCA statement.

Genaille, who is currently the director of policy in the office of the under secretary of the Air Force for international affairs, was tabbed by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michéle Flournoy. His first day in his new position has not been set.

Genaille is a retired Air Force pilot with 22 years of active duty service. In his current job, he develops and implements national, Defense Department and Air Force policy governing security assistance, foreign disclosure and technology transfer. Genaille was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 2005.

The Pentagon's public affairs shop attempted last week to steer Defense Department reporters away from the math laid out in DOD's own F-35 Selected Acquisition Report -- which definitively says the total cost for Joint Strike Fighter program will increase to as much as $388 billion this June. (See pages 36 and 37 of the report.)

However, at least one key lawmaker has questions about the numbers laid out in the document -- the sole basis for the math cited in our story (derided by a Pentagon spokesman as "fuzzy," though no one -- including DOD-- has yet to explain how that could be given that the numbers are in the SAR).

Sen. John Thune (R-SD), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee, this morning referred to the F-35 SAR at a hearing on tactical aircraft programs. He suggested that an upwardly revised JSF independent cost estimate will raise questions about the affordability of the Pentagon's plans to buy 2,443 of the fighters, just as we reported. Here's what he said:

The Defense Department is warning Congress that the overall cost for buying the JSF will increase yet again as a result of the independent cost estimate, when it comes out this summer. The magnitude of that revised cost estimate could raise basic questions about the department's plans for and the commitment of the program's international partners to the program as it is currently envisioned.

Thune asked the service representatives at the hearing how they were prepared to handle such increases. We'll have the answer for you later today.

But let's review that math: The SAR states that the $133.5 million program acquisition unit cost (PAUC) “will increase” by as much as 18.4 percent, which would raise the PAUC to $158.1 million.

From there, the arithmetic is simple: $158.1 million x 2,443 JSF aircraft = $388 billion. Nothing “fuzzy” about it. This is the way the Pentagon has calculated program costs for more than 40 years.