The Insider

The Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee hearing scheduled for Wednesday on the Missile Defense Agency's fiscal year 2013 budget request will likely feature questions from subpanel members related to a Government Accountability Office report that came out last Friday. As the report's executive summary states:

In fiscal year 2011, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) experienced mixed results in executing its development goals and Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) tests. For the first time in 5 years, GAO found that all of the targets used in this year's tests were delivered and performed as expected. None of the programs GAO assessed were able to fully accomplish their asset delivery and capability goals for the year. Flight test failures, an anomaly, and delays disrupted the development of several components and models and simulations challenges remain. Flight test failures forced MDA to suspend or slow production of three out of four interceptors currently being manufactured while failure review boards investigated their test problems.

To meet the presidential 2002 direction to initially rapidly field and update missile defense capabilities as well as the 2009 announcement to deploy missile defenses in Europe, MDA has undertaken and continues to undertake highly concurrent acquisitions. Concurrency is broadly defined as the overlap between technology development and product development or between product development and production. While some concurrency is understandable, committing to product development before requirements are understood and technologies mature or committing to production and fielding before development is complete is a high-risk strategy that often results in performance shortfalls, unexpected cost increases, schedule delays, and test problems. It can also create pressure to keep producing to avoid work stoppages. In contrast, as shown in the notional graphic below, successful programs that deliver promised capabilities for the estimated cost and schedule use a disciplined knowledge-based approach.

High levels of concurrency were present in MDA's initial efforts and are present in current efforts, though the agency has begun emphasizing the need to follow knowledge-based development practices. During 2011, the Ground-based Midcourse Defense, the Aegis Standard Missile 3 Block IB, and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense experienced significant ill effects from concurrency. For example, MDA's discovery of a design problem in a new variant of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program's interceptors while production was underway increased costs, may require retrofit of fielded equipment, and delayed delivery. Flight test cost to confirm its capability has increased from $236 million to about $1 billion. Because MDA continues to employ concurrent strategies, it is likely that it will continue to experience these kinds of acquisition problems.

In addition to GAO Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management Cristina Chaplain and MDA Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, additional witnesses scheduled for the hearing include Operational Test and Evaluation Director Michael Gilmore and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy Bradley Roberts.

At the Navy League's annual SeaAirSpace symposium last week, Navy Under Secretary Bob Work delivered a passionate defense of the Littoral Combat Ship, pushing back against critics who doubt the effectiveness of the ship and the wisdom of buying 55 of them. As Inside the Navy reports this morning:

"People who don't get the LCS don't understand what design we're going for," Work said April 18 during a panel on budget challenges. "We have to prove the LCS is a good platform. I know there are a lot of skeptics. But this ship is the right ship at the right time for the right fleet design, and this will be the best United States Navy battle force that history has ever seen."

Work said the critics are mistaken for comparing the fleet size of today with the fleet size in years past, saying that the "only question you ask yourself is, 'How many ships do we need to implement the national strategy of today?'"

He said the 600-ship Navy concept of the 1980s called for 138 anti-submarine warfare ships, and today's ASW threat "isn't as bad" as during that era, "so we have replaced those 138 ASW ships with 55 multipurpose vessels called the LCS." The 138 ships of a 1980s Navy would be able to provide 34 ships forward on a day-to-day basis, whereas 55 LCSs will be able to push 27 forward at any given time, Work added.

Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley gave a brief update of the LCS program during a Senate Armed Services seapower subcommittee hearing last week:

The history of the startup of this program is well known. I'm not going to re-plow that turf there. However, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we have the first follow-on ships that -- one near complete; the LCS-3 up north is complete and her builder's trial is getting ready for acceptance trial to be delivered this spring. Near textbook -- it's going extremely well in terms of schedule, in terms of being on target, in terms of quality of construction. That's the result of not just plowing in the lessons learned from the lead ship, but the significant investment that was made by that shipyard to support this construction program. Separate but very similar on the Gulf Coast: Austal, which is nine to 12 months removed from the construction up north simply by the sequencing of the contracts -- again, plowing the lessons learned, investing in the facilities, accomplishing the training that needs to be accomplished for the workforce, cleaning up the design, and we're seeing the same rate of improvement on the Gulf Coast.

So both construction efforts north and south are quickly capturing lessons learned from the lead ships, making the investments necessary and on the production ramp that we need to see to support the 55-ship program. That's the construction side.

So we see stability. We see steady improvement. We see good cost returns on the front end of this dual-block buy strategy.

Now we have to be talking about mission packages. The mission package development efforts we have today, three-plus mission packages in development: mine countermeasures, anti-surface warfare and anti- submarine warfare. As well, we have a search and seize small module that we've put to work. These are developing -- they're conducting development testing to support their initial operational capability milestones in 2014 through 2016 time frame.

This spring, for example, we conducted the first shipboard demonstration of the mine countermeasure mission package onboard the Independence, working down at the Navy's warfare center in Panama City. It's the first time we brought all the elements that make up the first increment of the MCM package to the ship, operated with sailors. We learned some things, but we also demonstrated the ability to conduct these mission scenarios using the unmanned and remote operated vehicles that make up a large part of the LCS mission package.

So the development testing for the mission packages, in that case MCM separately, the antisurface warfare mission package, testing in effect -- we'll be outfitting the LCS 1 with the first increment of the anti-surface warfare mission package when it deploys next year to Singapore and then development of the ASW mission package all moving forward. So that effort lags the construction time frame by deliberation, so that the ships and mission packages are all IOC'ing in the middle of this decade.

The third important piece is fleet introduction. So we have one lead ship on the West Coast, LCS 1 and LCS 2 right now making its way to her home port in San Diego. So we're on the front end of fleet introduction at the same time. And as with any new ship class, we learn a lot. We also train up a sailor force that becomes proficient in this ship class.

So we're on the front end of this program. I don't spend too much time studying the reports that come from the press, other than to be aware of what information is out there and try to correct any misperceptions. But she's going well. We're learning a lot. We look forward to deploying LCS-1 next year and we've got a lot of work that we have to do to make sure that when she deploys, she is well supported and succeeds in all the mission areas that we assign to her.

When asked whether he saw any cost or technical problems of concern, Stackley responded: "I see cost under control. I think I've addressed that fairly well."

The Pentagon's Hypersonic Technology Vehicle most likely broke up and crashed into the ocean during its second flight last year because of "unexpected aeroshell degradation" that activated the flight safety system, according to findings by an independent engineering review board released today.

The HTV-2 experienced a "series of shocks culminating in an anomaly, which prompted the autonomous flight safety system to use the vehicle's aerodynamic systems to make a controlled descent and splashdown into the ocean," states a press release from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. These shocks started about nine minutes into the Aug. 11, 2011, test flight.

However, DARPA noted that the hypersonic glider "successfully demonstrated stable aerodynamically-controlled flight at speeds up to Mach 20 (twenty times the speed of sound) for nearly three minutes."

"The initial shockwave disturbances experienced during second flight, from which the vehicle was able to recover and continue controlled flight, exceeded by more than 100 times what the vehicle was designed to withstand," said DARPA Acting Director, Kaigham J. Gabriel in the release. "That's a major validation that we're advancing our understanding of aerodynamic control for hypersonic flight."

"Moving forward, the HTV-2 program will incorporate new knowledge gained to improve models for characterizing thermal uncertainties and heat-stress allowances for the vehicle's outer shell," the release states. "The remediation phase will involve further analysis and ground testing using flight data to validate new tools for this flight regime. The [board] findings and remediation phase efforts will inform policy, acquisition and operational decisions for future Conventional Prompt Global Strike initiatives."

Program manager Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz also noted that the greatest achievement was "that we successfully incorporated aerodynamic knowledge gained from the first flight into the second flight."

According to the release:

Based on state-of-the-art models, ground testing of high-temperature materials and understanding of thermal effects in other more well-known flight regimes, a gradual wearing away of the vehicle's skin as it reached stress tolerance limits was expected. However, larger than anticipated portions of the vehicle's skin peeled from the aerostructure. The resulting gaps created strong, impulsive shock waves around the vehicle as it travelled nearly 13,000 miles per hour, causing the vehicle to roll abruptly. Based on knowledge gained from the first flight in 2010 and incorporated into the second flight, the vehicle's aerodynamic stability allowed it to right itself successfully after several shockwave-induced rolls. Eventually, however, the severity of the continued disturbances finally exceeded the vehicle’s ability to recover.

According to Schulz, "HTV-2's first flight test corrected our models regarding aerodynamic design within this flight regime. We applied that data in flight test two, which ultimately led to stable aerodynamically controlled flight. Data collected during the second test flight revealed new knowledge about thermal-protective material properties and uncertainties for Mach 20 flight inside the atmosphere, which can now be used to adjust our assumptions based on actual flight data and modify our modeling and simulation to better characterize thermal uncertainties and determine how to assess integrated thermal systems."

Aerodynamic assumptions and extrapolations from known flight regimes proved inadequate when preparing for HTV-2 inaugural flight test. The data from second flight revealed that extrapolating from known flight regimes and relying solely on advanced thermal modeling and ground testing could not successfully predict the harsh realities of Mach 20 atmospheric flight.

"A group of nationally-recognized experts from government and academia came together to analyze the flight data and conduct extensive additional modeling and ground testing for this review," Schulz said. "The result of these findings is a profound advancement in understanding the areas we need to focus on to advance aerothermal structures for future hypersonic vehicles. Only actual flight data could have revealed this to us."

With the Defense and State departments having released their report this week recommending that it would be in the national security interests of the United States for the president to regain his authority to determine whether satellites and related items can be transferred from the U.S. Munitions List (USML) to the Commerce Control List (CCL), Inside U.S. Trade goes into further detail on that document. Here's an excerpt from the story:

The 44-page report to Congress -- also known as the Section 1248 report, after the section in which it is mandated in the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act -- recommended that only certain types of satellites be transferred to the CCL, where they will be subject to a greater range of export license exceptions. The report also recommended that China and other embargoed countries be excluded from the benefit of any relaxed controls on satellites and related items.

In addition to asking Congress to pass legislation returning the authority over satellites to the president, the report also called on Congress strengthen the Defense Department’s authority over the monitoring and oversight of launch activities of private companies that are of higher risk to U.S. national security. Moreover, it asked Congress to pass legislation to allow the administration to require industry to reimburse the government for those oversight activities.

Industry groups have long complained that U.S. satellite exports have suffered and that the U.S. space industrial base has eroded since 1999, when Congress, responding to the illegal transfer of satellite launch technology to China, decided to place all satellites under the strict controls of the USML.

The report is expected to spur legislation that will partially reverse those congressional restrictions, which would also allow the administration to proceed with its broader export control reform initiative when it comes to satellites. The ability of the president to determine the export control status of satellites is important because, as part of the reform effort, the administration is seeking to transfer thousands of items from the USML to the CCL, where they will be exempt from export license requirements if shipped to closely allied countries.

It will likely take a number of days at least for congressional members to decide, based on the report, whether they will sign onto legislation already introduced in the House and a companion bill that is forthcoming in the Senate, according to industry sources.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Howard Berman (D-CA), along with Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL), introduced bipartisan legislation last year that would return authority over satellites to the president, but also contains restrictions for China and state-sponsors of terrorism. Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), said yesterday that he is drafting legislation in his chamber to address the 1248 report's recommendations.

The report's release follows two days of intense briefings in on Capitol Hill, where officials from State, Commerce, Defense and the intelligence community presented a united front on this issue when meeting with congressional staff.

"This is really unprecedented in export control, all the agencies together and agreeing on an approach," said Lou Ann McFadden, chief of the Strategic Issues Division at the Defense Technology Security Administration. She spoke at an April 18 press conference at the National Space Symposium, where the release of the report was announced.

When asked whether legislation is likely to pass this year, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Greg Schulte said at the same press conference that administration officials would "continue our discussions with members and their staff on the best way to allow for necessary legislation."

"We know that a number of members and a number of senators have expressed interest in supporting legislation," he said. However, another senior administration official last week expressed doubts that legislation could get through Congress this year due to the political constraints of an election year (Inside U.S. Trade, April 13).

The Defense and State departments just released a congressionally mandated report on export controls for satellites.

From the report's executive summary:

The Departments of Defense (DoD) and State (DoS) conducted this review and identified two satellite types, and related items, that are not purely defense-related and thus should not be designated as defense articles on the USML or controlled under the International Traffic In Arms Regulations (ITAR) administered by DoS. These satellites and related items do not contain technologies unique to the United States (U.S.) military industrial base nor are they critical to national security. In particular, the Departments believe the following items are more appropriately designated as dual-use items on the Commerce Control List (CCL) and controlled under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR):

* Communications satellites (COMSATs) that do not contain classified components;

* Remote sensing satellites with performance parameters below certain thresholds; and

* Systems, subsystems, parts and components associated with these satellites and with performance parameters below thresholds specified for items remaining on the USML.

To view the full report, click here.

UPDATE 1:28 p.m.: House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee Chairman Mike turner (R-OH) just released a statement on the report:

"I am glad that the Administration has finally submitted this long overdue report. I look forward to looking at how the report takes into account the vital mission of protecting U.S. space technology from diversion to the space, counter-space and ballistic missile programs of other nations.

"However, the Administration's request for blanket authority to relax our export control regime over thousands of space technologies would not make this country safer, or further our goals. For four years the State Department has dragged its feet on enforcing the current regime; specifically when it comes to companies the Department believes have illegally diverted our space technology to China. Asking for this authority, with those facts in mind, suggests a lack of seriousness about the Administration's commitment to protecting U.S. space technology."

The Navy will begin extending the service lives of the first two F/A-18 Hornets slated to reach 10,000 hours later this year, Capt. Francis Morley, F/A-18 program manager, said yesterday at the Navy League's annual SeaAirSpace symposium at National Harbor, MD.

The Navy has identified 150 legacy Hornets that the service will extend to 10,000 hours -- 4,000 hours beyond their original planned service lives -- in order to mitigate a projected strike fighter shortfall in the coming years.

"Those first two airplanes occur this year, and then we go from there and ramp up," Morley said.

The captain said the work, which will require retrofits and modifications on certain areas of the aircraft, are usually done in concert with normal depot periods.

The service life extension process for each aircraft should take about six to eight months, he said.