The Insider

A quick note today on a new Inside the Air Force story about the future of space -- that is, the U.S. military's dominance of space.

Retired Maj. Gen. James Armor -- former director of the National Security Space Office -- talked about what the next president should do during an Oct. 16 panel discussion -- dubbed “A Day Without Space” -- in Washington. A career space officer, the retired two-star also held the position of program manager of the NAVSTAR Global Positioning Systems Joint Program Office at the Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force base between 1996 and 1999.

. . . Armor said a loss of the country’s space assets means “that we, the United States, have gotten to a point where we’re looking at a decade without U.S. preeminence in space, and that would be, I think, a terrible tragedy. I think space preeminence is essential to being a great power. Primarily, it is ensuring the physical security of the homeland. Without space, I’m not sure we could do it. It is absolutely essential to the security of the homeland. Furthermore, it also provides for the general welfare in the sense of peaceful use of space for all free nations, not just the United States. I’m not convinced that, if the United States doesn’t sustain its preeminence in space, that we can guarantee that peaceful use of space.”

Making space a national priority and assigning “commensurate resources” is an “urgent, compelling priority,” Armor said, adding that space is still a “secondary thought” in the Air Force and needs to be a “principal priority.” . . .

After the next president makes securing the space domain a national priority, he needs to assign “accountable leadership” to ensure the United States keeps its superiority in the area beyond the atmosphere, Armor asserted.

“I know the Air Force and the ((Defense)) Department has put maybe tens of hundreds of millions of additional dollars into space situational awareness; I think it should be hundreds of billions of dollars, because, without rapid attribution . . . we put ourselves at a disadvantage, we put ourselves in a position to be surprised, which could lead to bad behavior or a military escalation where you don’t really want it,” the retired two-star added.

Both presidential candidates in last night’s debate said a new energy policy will be a top priority should they be elected.

It will be interesting to see how prominently an Obama or McCain administration treats energy issues at the Pentagon -- the federal government’s largest energy consumer.

On Tuesday, President Bush announced he plans to effectively ignore a provision of a law he enacted requiring the Pentagon to create a new post to champion energy policy issues.

In a signing statement, a device he has routinely -- and controversially -- used to modify the meaning of laws, the president pointed to four provisions of the Fiscal Year 2009 Defense Authorization Act that he believes he has the constitutional authority to ignore:

Sec. 902: A provision that would establish a director for operational energy plans and programs within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and senior operational energy officials within each of the military services.

Sec. 851: A provision that ensures federal retirees working on the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan be paid without forfeiting retired pay.

Sec. 1211: a provision that would prohibit the use of funds to establish permanent U.S. bases in Iraq or to control Iraqi oil resources.

Sec. 1508: A provision that calls for the U.S. to initiate negotiations with Iraq on a cost-sharing agreement on resources required to support Iraqi Security Forces and U.S. forces in Iraq.

Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told students at Johns Hopkins’ Carey Business School today that the current financial crisis -- particularly the intricate economic interdependence among nations with major militaries -- creates a powerful deterrence against conflict.

Moscow’s military adventure in August against Georgia exacted a toll on Russia’s economy.

“In this market turmoil, Russia and China could have chosen a different path that would have been incredibly difficult for us to survive,” Cartwright told the audience in Baltimore, according to the Armed Forces Press Service.

The interdependence of the world’s economy influenced “a conscious choice by their governments” to think twice about aggression, the Marine general speculated.

Cartwright said that interdependence is reflected in an “as they go, we go and as we go, they go” mentality, which is something that is easier to deal with than the Russian-U.S. strategy during the 1950s to 1980s.

“Much as nuclear weapons in the Cold War tended to be able to tell each other when we were uncomfortable, it’s far more comfortable in my mind to use the economy to tell each other when we’re uncomfortable,” he said.

The 2008 National Defense Strategy, signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this summer, directs Pentagon planners to try to account for the consequences of globalization and possible economic shocks.

Globalization and growing economic interdependence, while creating new levels of wealth and opportunity, also create a web of interrelated vulnerabilities and spread risks even further, increasing sensitivity to crises and shocks around the globe and generating more uncertainty regarding their speed and effect. Current defense policy must account for these areas of uncertainty.

With Congress threatening to assert itself in Round Three of the Pentagon’s aerial refueling competition set to begin early next year, EADS North America -- whose Airbus tanker the Air Force selected before Defense Secretary Robert Gates scrapped the award -- today announced the appointment of a seasoned Capitol Hill hand to its board of directors: Trent Lott.

The Republican Mississippi lawmaker served 19 years in the House, including a stint as minority whip, and 16 years in the Senate, where he worked his way up to Senate Majority Leader before resigning last December and setting up a shop with John Breaux, a former Democratic senator from Louisiana.

Lott will find at least one very familiar face at EADS North America: the company’s senior vice president for government relations, Sam Adcock. Adcock joined Lott’s staff full time in 1990 after a one-year stint as a military liaison and worked on national security issues for the Mississippi senator for the next seven years, winning his boss’ praise for securing funding for Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, MS.

Other retired senior U.S. government officials on the board of EADS North America include:
William Schneider, head of the Defense Science Board who has held senior posts in the State Department and the Office of Management and Budget; former acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee; retired Navy Adm. Joseph Lopez; and retired Air Force Gen. James McCarthy.

Whether the economic downturn will hit defense spending remains a theme out there, with a couple of new stories of note to tell you about.

The first is from The Washington Post, which sent someone to the Association of the U.S. Army's convention last week to ask around:

"There's a lot of uncertainty out there," said Kevin G. Kroger, president of Pura Dyn, a small Boynton Beach, Fla., company, who came to the trade show to pitch the Army on buying more of its oil filters for armored trucks. "We're not sure where the budgets are going and what's going to get funded. It leaves us nervous."

Indeed, in his report on the show, Ron Epstein, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, said vendors acknowledged their worries about the rescue plan. "We expect the bailout plan will put downward pressure on defense spending," Epstein had written a week earlier in a research note to clients.

Although no one is expecting a dramatic drop in next year's Pentagon budget, there is a widespread expectation that spending will begin to level off. Many contractors have begun to prepare.

With nearly 60 percent of its $42 billion in annual sales coming from the Defense Department, Lockheed Martin is pursuing other areas of business to compensate for any slowdown in defense spending. For the past eight years, the Bethesda company has tried to expand its information technology services business. Already, it expects double-digit sales growth in that unit this year compared with last year.

And then we have a look from late last week penned by Cox News Service, which uses the financial meltdown as a springboard to examine the specifics on the Obama and McCain plans for defense:

"It's likely to have some negative impact on defense spending, but it's hard to say how much," said Steven Kosiak, vice president for budget studies with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a non-partisan Washington think tank.

Neither Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, nor his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, has provided a basic defense spending blueprint, never mind a list of options for adjusting to the government's deteriorating fiscal outlook.

"There's not a lot of detail in terms of what they're thinking about overall defense spending levels," said Kosiak. Beyond that, "things can change pretty quickly if the international environment changes."

Finally, The Los Angeles Times recently ran a piece titled "Pentagon divided over John McCain" that's worth a read, though it's not likely to surprise any of our readers.

Inside the Air Force today runs a story that should be of interest to all, taking a look at the likely impacts of the congressional races on national security.

The Air Force’s legislative chief is expecting a shake up of Republican leadership on key congressional defense committees propelled by retirements, legal difficulties and major Democratic gains in both the House and Senate in next month’s general election.

In all, 35 Senate seats -- 23 currently held by Republicans -- are up for grabs, while the entire House is up for reelection in 2008. The latest estimates show the Democrats increasing their majority in both chambers, according to Maj. Gen. Herbert Carlisle -- director of the Air Force’s Legislative Liaison division. Carlisle spoke at a weapons conference in Ft. Walton Beach, FL, this week. The two-star said his predictions are based on “conventional wisdom and polls inside the Beltway.”

“Worst case for the GOP on the Senate side is nine seats would change,” he said on Oct. 8. “That would give the Democrats a 61 ((seat advantage)). Best case, best guess is five to seven seats will go democratic and Democrats will maintain control of the Senate.”

On the house side, Republicans will likely lose 12-15 seats, although that number could go as high as 20, Carlisle said.

“Best guess for everybody is that the Democrats maintain control of both the House and Senate,” he said. “They’ll increase their majority by a slight number.”

Much more detail in the full story.

A bit of a grab bag this morning.

First up, Inside the Pentagon today has a good piece on a draft defense energy strategy:

The document, which has not been publicly released, is an eleventh-hour attempt by outgoing defense leaders to address the sorts of energy concerns identified by Defense Science Board studies, the most recent of which was published in February.

The ultimate fate of the plan -- which proffers four strategic goals, each with implementation steps -- will rest with whoever leads the Defense Department for the next president. If outgoing Pentagon leaders finalize the plan before the transition, it will still fall to the next administration to either embrace or change the goals and to supervise the implementation of energy security priorities. In a nod to the plan’s transitory nature, one paragraph notes “both presidential candidates” advocate enacting legislation to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.

More here.

As for that new administration team, the Huffington Post takes a look at the two transition teams and notes that one seems far more prepared than the other.

A taste:

"Government is becoming more complex and the time it is taking to put a leadership team in key departments is taking longer," said P.J. Crowley, who heads the Homeland Security Presidential Transition Initiative at the Center for American Progress. "I think that if a campaign is waiting until November 5 to start the transition process, they are going to be behind. It is not being presumptuous -- it is being prudent to be prepared before the election so that you can at least make the transition process effective as possible and be ready to govern on January 20."

A good taste of our own transition coverage is here.

Next up is a McClatchy Newspapers story on the financial crisis and its impacts on defense:

Congress' decision earlier this month to approve a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry adds to the strain on the federal budget, and the stock market decline and the credit crunch could slow economic activity and eliminate jobs, which in turn could reduce tax revenues.

"How the U.S. government funds its military answers the question of: How committed it is to fighting these kinds of war?" said James Quinlivan , a senior military analyst and mathematician at the RAND Corporation.

The pressure is likely to be felt most acutely by the Army , the military's largest and most expensive branch, which is already strained by the war in Iraq and planning for another decade of sustained conflict. . . .

The Army plans to add about 30,000 soldiers by 2010, and expanding the force to 547,000 would cost at least $5 billion , according to Army estimates.

But as we've reported this week, the Army is actually mulling whether it needs even more troops:

"A lot of people ask me that question, and they say, 'OK, how big an Army do you need?'" ((Army Chif of Staff Gen.)) Casey told reporters. "My first question is, 'What do you want it to do?'; my second question is, 'How much are you prepared to spend on that Army?'"

Casey said the service is "actively working" the question as part of the development of its six-year spending plan covering fiscal years 2010 to 2015. . . .

"So the short answer is: I don't have the answer to the question yet, but I know I'm going to get asked it after the 20th of January” -- Inauguration Day -- “and we're working hard to figure out what the right answer for the country is."