The Insider

President Barack Obama said last week that he would direct Defense Secretary Robert Gates to find $400 billion in spending cuts to help reduce the nation's deficit. Accompanying  that drill, he said, would be “a fundamental review of America's missions, capabilities and our role in a changing world.”

For the Army's brand new chief of staff, it appears the work has already begun.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, who was sworn-in as the Army's 37th chief on April 11, wrote on his Facebook wall over the weekend that the service was beginning a “comprehensive review” of its “missions, roles, and capabilities as directed by the Secretary of Defense

The Obama administration's goal is to decrease defense spending by $400 billion by 2023. While the Army's contributions to the cuts remain unknown, Dempsey sought to frame the effort as “an opportunity to 'see ourselves,' to articulate what is core in our profession, and to determine what capabilities we simply must provide for the nation.”

A senior Army official is pledging to boost the service's use of legal contract authorities to increase energy efficiencies or renewable energy use at its facilities, seeking advice from the White House Office of Management and Budget as well as government auditors about ways to better leverage the use of these authorities, Defense Environment Alert reports this week. Specifically:

The move follows findings released by the Defense Department that the military failed to meet key energy mandates last year, largely due to demands placed on the Army to move troops and to complete the base closure process.

The push to use more energy savings performance contracts (ESPCs), enhanced use leasing (EULs) and other third-party financing mechanisms available to it comes as the Army is gearing up to announce several installations that are expected to become so-called net-zero energy bases by 2020.

The Army wants to leverage private sector investments such as through ESPCs, especially at net-zero bases, to optimize the tight budgets it is now seeing, Army Assistant Secretary for Installations, Energy and the Environment Katherine Hammack said March 30 at an Association of Climate Change Officials (ACCO) forum in Washington.

Congress has given the military several authorities to leverage private sector investments in energy technology, she said, but of the 183 installations her office oversees, only 60 are using ESPCs, only 30 are using utility energy service contracts (UESCs) and only seven are using EULs. "These are underutilized authorities," she said, noting that is because sometimes "installations don't understand them, or they do not have the resources." Hammack also plans to increase the use of power purchase agreements, another type of contract authority that can be used to purchase or sell renewable energy-generated electricity.

She committed to increase the staffing and focus on leveraging these authorities "so that we can at least double if not increase quite a bit more our public-private partnerships and relationships."

Inside the Army reported on Monday that the service's operational energy strategy is focused on integrating innovative technologies capable of driving efficiency rather than fuel restrictions that might hamper the service's operations. Specifically:

While the service has yet to publish key guidance that would address specifics, Inside the Army has obtained an abstract of the Army's operational energy initial capabilities document (ICD) that reveals several newly created metrics to evaluate operationally based performance energy goals.

The new metrics include evaluations of "increased mobility" to measure the time required to relocate or deploy based on distance and force size, "increased mission focus" to determine the man-hours dedicated to a primary mission, "extended endurance" to track the hours or miles between energy resupply, "increased availability and resilience" to determine the number of alternative energy sources available, and the "reduction of the fully burdened cost" of energy.

The ICD also "draws upon a newly developed operational energy concept of operations or 'CONOP' for context that covers the range of military operations, from combat to humanitarian assistance" and addresses "urgent gaps" including power source duration, energy management processes, high-efficiency energy conversion and distribution systems, common power sources for soldier systems, reduced energy demand, energy interoperable interfaces and widely dispersed power generation, according to the abstract.

Katherine Hammack, the Army's assistant secretary for installations, energy and environment, told reporters April 5 that her office expected the ICD and CONOP to be published within 60 days, but noted that the service's operational energy strategy was focused less on regulating use and more on technological solutions that make installations, dismounted soldiers and vehicles more energy-efficient.

"We cannot tell soldiers that they have a fuel budget and, therefore, they cannot meet their mission requirements," she said. "We are not going to say that we are going to reduce our operational energy use overall by 20 percent because we don't know what missions we will be involved in. When we look at operational energy improvements, we're looking at it as a technology-based improvement. That is a generator that is more efficient, it is better management of a power grid so that you have fewer generators and those that you have are more highly loaded. It is tents that are better insulated and use less energy. It is lighting that is more efficient, it is leveraging solar energy and other renewable resources so that you use less energy."

The United States has helped the Ukraine in eliminating the latter country's Scud missile inventory, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said today. According to the transcript of today's press briefing, Toner said:

The project was concluded on April 11th, 2011. Over 185 Scud missile airframes and 50 transporter erector launchers were destroyed or demilitarized. Support equipment was also eliminated, including refueling trucks, warhead transport vans, command and control trucks, and other items associated with the Scud system. In addition, 1,441 tons of Scud missile liquid oxidizer fuel that posed an environmental and safety threat to Ukraine's population is also being eliminated.

President Obama today announced plans for a sweeping assessment of the U.S. defense enterprise aimed at identifying where to cut hundreds of billions of dollars, part of a four-pronged effort to get the federal government's economic house in order.

In an address this afternoon, Obama quoted Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen's oft-repeated warning: “The greatest long-term threat to America's security is America's debt.”

Acknowledging Defense Secretary Robert Gates' efforts over the last year to wring $178 billion in savings for the Defense Department over the next five years, the president said: “I believe we can do that again.”

We need not only to eliminate waste and improve efficiency and effectiveness, but we're going to have to conduct a fundamental review of America's missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world.

I intend to work with Secretary Gates and the Joint Chiefs on this review. And I will make specific decisions about spending after it is complete.

Looks like proponents of the Israeli Iron Dome rocket defense program, recently said to have proved itself in combat, can rest easy. House lawmakers, in their version of the bill that will fund the Defense Department during the final six months of fiscal year 2011, included the full $205 million for Iron Dome requested by the Obama administration.

According to the FY-11 appropriations bill, released early this morning by the House Rules Committee, lawmakers have allocated slightly more than $415 million for Israeli cooperative programs. Other than the $205 million for Iron Dome, $84.7 million "shall be for the Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense (SRBMD) program, including cruise missile defense research and development under the SRBMD program." Further, nearly $59 million "shall be available for an upper-tier component to the Israeli Missile Defense Architecture," the bill states.

Additionally, $66.4 million "shall be for the Arrow System Improvement Program including development of a long range, ground and airborne, detection suite, of which $12 million shall be for producing Arrow missile components in the United States and Arrow missile components in Israel to meet Israel’s defense requirements, consistent with each nation's laws, regulations and procedures: Provided further, That funds made available under this provision for production of missiles and missile components may be transferred to appropriations available for the procurement of weapons and equipment, to be merged with and to be available for the same time period and the same purposes as the appropriation to which transferred: Provided further, That the transfer authority provided under this provision is in addition to any other transfer authority contained in this Act."

Adm. Robert Willard, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, is appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning to provide an update on his corner of the world. China's military modernization is a main part of every PACOM commander's report to Congress.

The following assessment of China is taken from Willard's written testimony to the committee:

Beginning in the mid-1990s, China’s peacetime military modernization program has progressed at a rapid rate. While force modernization is understandable in light of China’s growing regional and global roles and accompanying requirements, the scope and pace of its modernization without clarity on China’s ultimate goals remains troubling. For example, China continues to accelerate its offensive air and missile developments without corresponding public clarification about how these forces will be utilized. Of particular concern is the expanding inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles (which include anti-ship capability) and the development of modern, fourth- and fifth-generation stealthy combat aircraft. In conjunction, China is pursuing counter-space and -cyber capabilities that can be used to not only disrupt U.S. military operations, but also to threaten the space- and cyber-based information infrastructure that enables international communications and commerce.

Absent clarification from China, its military modernization efforts hold significant implications for regional stability. The region is developing its own conclusions about why the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to expand its ability to project power outside China’s borders, and to range both U.S. forces and U.S. Allies and partners in the region with new anti-access and area-denial weaponry. Of growing concern is China’s maritime behavior. China’s recent official statements and actions in what Beijing calls its ―near seas represent a direct challenge to accepted interpretations of international law and established international norms. While China does not make legal claims to this entire body of water, it does seek to restrict or exclude foreign, in particular, U.S., military maritime and air activities in the ―near seas - an area that roughly corresponds to the maritime area from the Chinese mainland out to the ―first island chain (described, generally, as a line through Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, and Indonesia) and including the Bohai Gulf, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. Chinese naval and maritime law enforcement vessels have been assertive in recent years in trying to advance China’s territorial claims in the South China and East China Seas which has resulted U.S. partners and allies in East Asia seeking additional support and reassurance to balance and curb the Chinese behavior. Many of China's maritime policy statements and claims stand in contrast to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The U.S. has consistently sought the appropriate balance between the interests of countries in controlling activities off their coasts with the interests of all countries in protecting freedom of navigation. China has questioned whether a non-party may assert such rights under UNCLOS, a baseless argument but one that would be removed if the U.S. was a party to UNCLOS.

The Pentagon has changed its plans to withdraw two brigade combat teams from Europe. Here's the explanation in a Defense Department statement:

Based on the administration's review, consultations with allies and the findings of NATO's new Strategic Concept, the department will retain three BCTs in Europe to maintain a flexible and rapidly deployable ground force to fulfill the United States' commitments to NATO, to engage effectively with allies and partners, and to meet the broad range of 21st century challenges.  This decision will be implemented in 2015, when we project a reduced demand on our ground forces.

The three BCTs remaining in Europe after 2015 -- the Heavy, Stryker and Airborne BCTs -- offer capabilities that enable U.S. European Command to build partner capacity and to meet interoperability objectives while supporting the full range of military operations, including collective defense of our NATO allies under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.

This BCT mix will be complemented by other capability enhancements, including the forward deployment of Aegis ships, land-based missile defense systems in Poland and Romania as part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, forward-stationing of special operations aircraft, and a permanent aviation detachment in Poland.  Taken together, these measures will enhance and rebalance the U.S. force posture in Europe to make it more capable, more effective, and better aligned with current and future security challenges.

InsideDefense.com reported last month that with almost 10 years of irregular warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan under their belts, Army intelligence leaders have been reassessing what kinds of capabilities and force makeup the service should have to fight similar wars in the future. Specifically:

One key question is what the Army should do with its 42 quick-reaction capabilities amassed outside the regular acquisition process to plug shortfalls that programs of record were unable to fill. To Lt. Gen. Richard Zahner, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, the number represents the mismatch the ground service found itself in after initial operations began in Afghanistan in late 2001.

"Nine or 10 years of war told us that the programs that walked into this set were probably well-designed for the framework that we started with; they certainly didn't reflect the full range of requirements," Zahner said in a March 22 interview with Inside the Army.

A key yardstick in absorbing QRCs created since then into the Army inventory is the new concept of a "LandISRNet." Its central tenet is that all aspects of Army intelligence -- processing, communications, sensors and personnel structure -- must be seen as interdependent. Without this kind of treatment, "You wind up with a thousand points of light, but no consistent spotlight against those networks," Zahner said, referring to the way terrorist and insurgent formations are organized.

Additional guidelines for key intelligence capabilities in irregular wars have come from Defense Department studies that identified what Zahner called "driving capability sets." They include full-motion video, precision, geolocation, the exploitation of people and documents, source operations and "the internals of communications," he told ITA.

Additionally, ITA reports:

According to the three-star, a more flexible, rotational force pool would free intelligence personnel for missions at lower echelons -- a requirement also considered during an ongoing review of the Army's brigade combat team design. Possible organizational constructs include company intelligence support teams and so-called "multifunction teams."

The multifunction teams consist of 8 to 10 soldiers specializing in signals and human intelligence, according to briefing slides presented by Zahner at an industry conference in Washington last month. According to the slides, the construct envisions each team would have two Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicles tricked out with communications technology, equipment for "exploiting" documents or cell phones, and biometrics capabilities. The teams also would have a "Portable Aerial Imagery Exploitation Supercomputer" and a see-through-walls radar capability, among others, according to the slides.

The goal is to "provide multi-disciplined intelligence collection, exploitation and limited analysis to generate actionable intelligence; time-sensitive detection, tracking and locating of key targets," the briefing states.