The Insider

Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- vacationing this week on Whidbey Island, WA -- made time to sign a memo codifying the efficiency targets he outlined on Aug. 9 that aim to reduce excess and duplication across the Defense Department.

On Aug. 16, he signed a three-page memo to Defense Department leaders codifying the 20 initiatives he outlined last week -- which include closing U.S. Joint Forces Command and thinning the ranks of high-level officers and civilians. Gates' memo also formally establishes a temporary task force headed by Robert Rangel, a special assistant to the defense secretary, to ensure "proper implementation of these critical initiatives."

Gates directs the task force to complete its work in 120 days -- in other words, by Dec. 14, which is less than two weeks before the Pentagon is scheduled to finalize its fiscal year 2012 budget proposal and its FY-12 to FY-15 investment plan.

Katherine Hammack, an energy and "green" building expert, assumed the position of the Army's top installations and environment official earlier this month, Defense Environment Alert reports this morning. Her taking the job completes a move by all three services to fill their top environment positions with people who have a strong link or commitment to climate and energy security, one environmentalist notes. Specifically:

Hammack was sworn in as the Army's assistant secretary for installations and environment Aug. 4. In her new role, Hammack will oversee installation policy, energy security and management, environmental, BRAC, housing, utility and occupational safety programs for the Army. Prior to her appointment, she led Ernst & Young's climate change and sustainability services practice, her biography says. She was a founding member of the U.S. Green Building Council, helped develop the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, building standard, and has over 30 years experience in offering energy and sustainability advisory services, according to her biography. She was also a consultant to the White House on the "greening" of the White House and the Executive Office Building.

In correspondence to the Senate related to her nomination, Hammack said that her top environmental challenges will be to ensure the execution of the 2005 BRAC decisions and Army transformation efforts, which include challenges related to cleanups and environmental impact analyses. Other important challenges, she said, are "ensuring compliance with environmental sustainability and energy goals in federal mandates," according to a response she gave to advance questions from the Senate. On the green building front, she said she has spent the last three and a half years serving on a LEED committee developing the LEED building standard, adding that she believes compliance with that standard, "as part of the Army's LEED program, will result in more sustainable, energy efficient buildings."

Her appointment means that all of the top installations and environment positions within the services and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense have people with strong commitments to climate security, the environmentalist source says, noting it indicates they all view energy conservation and surety and renewable energy as key elements of DOD's mission. "That should reinforce efforts within the Department to move from simply being the biggest energy guzzler to a leader in the transition to a non-carbon economy," the source says.

Her appointment comes at a time when the Army, along with the other services, is looking to reduce its energy consumption and boost its use of renewable fuels, as compared to traditional fossil fuels, and comes as the services are required by an October 2009 executive order on sustainability to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, undertake water conservation efforts and meet sustainability requirements for federal buildings by certain dates.

Similarly, President Obama has put in place energy and environmental experts in the Navy and Air Force top installations and environment slots. Jackalyne Pfannenstiel and Terry Yonkers were confirmed by the Senate in March to lead the Navy and Air Force's installations and environment offices, respectively. Pfannenstiel was previously a top California energy regulator and chaired Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) Climate Action Team's subcommittee on energy and land use, as well as helped create the state's low-carbon fuel standards, according to her biography.

While House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) is encouraged by China's military efforts to combat piracy, "we clearly still have a long way to go in U.S.-China security relations," the lawmaker said in a statement following the release of the Pentagon's annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments during 2009. Specifically:

Particularly troubling is China's continuing trend of suspending U.S.-China military-to-military contacts, which limits the extent to which our nations can explore areas of cooperation and is not a helpful approach to addressing our differences.  There is a dangerous risk that miscommunication and misperception between the U.S. and China could lead to a miscalculation, particularly given China’s increasing military capabilities, and military-to-military contacts are an essential tool to help prevent such instances. These contacts promote understanding, build trust, prevent conflict, and when appropriate, foster cooperation.

I am also concerned by some continuing trends and ambiguities regarding China's military modernization, including its missile buildup across from Taiwan, its maritime activities in the South China Sea, and the steady increase of its power projection capabilities, which do not obviously support China's stated national security objectives.  I encourage meaningful action by China to reduce its military presence directly opposite Taiwan and to implement the points made in President Hu Jintao's December 2008 speech governing the future of cross-Strait relations.

While China has taken some steps toward increasing transparency and openness regarding its defense strategy and expenditures in recent years, such steps are modest.  China's most recent military budget continues a trend of sustained annual increases, and China's strategic intentions remain opaque.  This was highlighted by China's missile intercept test on January 11 and by the cyber-attacks on Google earlier this year.  I hope China will increasingly come to view transparency more as a responsibility to accompany the accumulation of national power and less as a transaction to be negotiated.

I continue to believe that China is not necessarily destined to be a threat to the United States and that China doesn’t need to view the United States as a threat to its interests.  Yet, conflict between our nations remains a possibility, and we must remain prepared for whatever the future holds in the U.S.-China security relationship. At the same time, we must each be mindful that our actions can produce unintended consequences, and although cooperation is a difficult path, it is ultimately the path that is in both nations' best interest.

The Government Accountability Office has shot down a protest by ITT Corp. claiming that Boeing was unfairly awarded a contract for Joint Tactical Radio System software.

According to the GAO's summary of the protest, released today, ITT claimed that Boeing had unfair access to technical information that could help it in a bid over enterprise network manager support because ITT was forced to share details about its waveform generation software during negotiations over a related contract. ITT also claimed that the Navy had given certain aspects of its bid unfairly low scores.

The GAO decided that the protest didn't hold water because ITT had access to the same information it wanted withheld from Boeing.

“ITT is complaining, not that Boeing had unequal access to information, but that ITT lost an informational advantage to which it believes it was entitled,” the GAO concluded. “An unequal access to information [organizational conflict of interest] can only be established where a protester shows that the awardee had information that it did not possess.”

The GAO also decided that even if the Navy had made a few mistakes in evaluating ITT's bid, they weren't important enough to change the outcome of the competition, and at the most, the two companies would have been neck-and-neck on technical grounds, in which case Boeing would have won on cost.

Colombian drug cartel leaders shouldn't think the United States will discontinue its narcotics interdiction flights off the coast of Colombia anytime soon. In a memo to the secretaries of state and defense this week, President Obama writes:

Pursuant to the authority vested in me by section 1012 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1995, as amended (22 U.S.C. 2291-4), I hereby certify, with respect to Colombia, that (1) interdiction of aircraft reasonably suspected to be primarily engaged in illicit drug trafficking in that country's airspace is necessary, because of the extraordinary threat posed by illicit drug trafficking to the national security of that country; and (2) that country has appropriate procedures in place to protect against innocent loss of life in the air and on the ground in connection with such interdiction, which shall at a minimum include effective means to identify and warn an aircraft before the use of force is directed against the aircraft.

The Secretary of State is authorized and directed to publish this determination in the Federal Register and to notify the Congress of this determination.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon notified Congress of a proposed $167 million sale of nine Black Hawk helicopters to Colombia. "This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country, which has been and continues to be an important force for political stability and economic progress in South America," the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement.

Last month, Inside the Pentagon reported that the Defense Department was formulating a new concept of operations and force-planning strategy for counternarcotics operations in Colombia, focusing those efforts on the premier air base in the country. Specifically:

"We are in review mode on what form the [military] construction is going to take and what the concept of operations . . . is going to be," said a military official in the region with knowledge of the plan.

"Both of those are in development and that work is ongoing," the official added.

While the official could not comment on when DOD expects to finalize the Colombian resourcing plan, the official noted those plans will center on future counternarcotics operations based out of Palanquero air base in Puerto Salgar.

The internal DOD work regarding the Colombian CONOPS and subsequent resourcing plan is based on "developing and defining what mission sets we would fly out of Palanquero, what the construction requirements would be to support those mission sets, how we would operate and that sort of thing."

Exactly how U.S. forces will conduct counterdrug missions from Palanquero will be guided, in part, by a defense cooperation agreement inked between the United States and Colombia last year.

According to the agreement, U.S. forces will be allowed to conduct counternarcotics and counterterrorism operations from Colombia for 10 years, with an option to extend the agreement another 10 years in 2019, another DOD official said at the time.

With the Airborne Laser's next shoot-down attempt of a boosting ballistic missile target due to take place by the end of next month, the system recently went through a "continuing series of calibration and targeting tests," Missile Defense Agency spokesman Rick Lehner tells Inside Missile Defense.

According to the FAA Notice to Airmen posted late last month:

FDC 0/3348 ZDC SPECIAL NOTICE.. EFFECTIVE FROM 1007230400 UTC UNTIL 1008010400 UTC, AIRBORNE LASER OPERATIONS WILL BE INTERMITTENTLY CONDUCTED ABOVE FL400 WITHIN 50NM MILES ON EITHER SIDE OF THE LINE FROM KLFI TO KBKT TO KSDF TO KLRF TO KEFD. THE NON-VISIBLE, DOWNWARD SCANNING LASER BEAM MAY BE INJURIOUS TO PILOTS'/AIRCREWS' AND PASSENGERS' EYES TO A DISTANCE OF 4,500 FEET BELOW THE AIRCRAFT. TO PREVENT INJURY THE AIRCRAFT WILL BE OPERATING AT THE TOP OF AN ATC ASSIGNED 5,000 FOOT ALTITUDE BLOCK DURING ACTIVE LASING OPERATIONS. THIS AREA WILL BE MONITORED BY OBSERVERS AND OPERATION OF THE LASER WILL BE TERMINATED IF NON PARTICIPATING AIRCRAFT ARE DETECTED ENTERING THE AFFECTED AREA. THE CONTROLLING CENTER WILL BE NOTIFIED PRIOR TO THE START OF LASER OPERATIONS AND AGAIN WHEN LASER OPERATIONS ARE TERMINATED.

The above notice refers to the time frame between July 23 and Aug. 1 in an area "out over the Pacific off Point Mugu and vicinity," Lehner said. No missile intercepts were attempted during the tests, he added.

The House Armed Services Committee in May approved a $50 million increase for directed-energy research and the Airborne Laser Test Bed program "to facilitate the testing and development of technologies that are most likely to yield operational capabilities in the future," strategic forces subcommittee Chairman James Langevin (D-RI) said.

Subcommittee Ranking Member Michael Turner (R-OH) said at the time that he was "particularly pleased" with the ALTB funding increase. "It was clear that the budget request was not sufficient to support further flight testing using the Airborne Laser Test Bed as well as mature innovative directed energy technologies," he added.

The Pentagon recently updated its doctrine on helping other countries' counterinsurgency efforts. According to the preface to "Joint Publication 3-22 on Foreign Internal Defense":

This publication has been prepared under the direction of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It sets forth joint doctrine to govern the joint activities and performance of the Armed Forces of the United States in operations and provides the doctrinal basis for interagency coordination and for US military involvement in multinational operations while conducting or supporting FID. It provides military guidance for the exercise of authority by combatant commanders and other joint force commanders (JFCs) and prescribes joint doctrine for operations, education, and training. It provides military guidance for use by the Armed Forces in preparing their appropriate plans. It is not the intent of this publication to restrict the authority of the JFC from organizing the force and executing the mission in a manner the JFC deems most appropriate to ensure unity of effort in the accomplishment of the overall objectives.

Last month, Inside the Army reported that officials at Joint Forces Command's Joint Irregular Warfare Center plan to offer a still-classified metrics scheme as their answer to the question of how the U.S. military would know whether its irregular-warfare missions are succeeding or failing. Specifically:

Work on the metrics program, conducted in concert with the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, began in response to a March 11, 2009, irregular warfare vision statement from JFCOM chief Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis. The document gave JIWC and JWAC 18 months to craft "measures of effectiveness that will facilitate and guide the joint force in the planning and execution" of irregular warfare, the document said. Mattis last week was nominated to take over U.S. Central Command.

As a starting point, officials picked a classified program used by a combatant command, JIWC Director James O'Connell told Inside the Army in a June 16 interview. The plan now is to "expand . . . the aperture of that program" and get other COCOMs and services to also adopt it, O'Connell said. A common set of metrics for irregular warfare outcomes would serve to help DOD officials gauge "where we are" as they plan and execute missions, he added.

O'Connell declined to describe the program identified by JFCOM or name the combatant command using it, citing the effort's classification. Whether the program would be applied to measure progress in Afghanistan is still undecided, he said.

DOD leaders believe irregular warfare, a term loathed by many civilian development specialists outside the military, will constitute the predominant form of conflict facing the United States in the future. In DOD nomenclature, sub-disciplines of IW are the fields of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense and stability operations.

O'Connell suggested the metrics program's classification currently hinders it from being widely discussed by civilian experts and academics outside the military -- as it is customary with progress measures leaning heavily on development and nation-building. To that end, officials hope to make at least parts of the program unclassified within the next three to four months, according to O'Connell.