The Insider

The White House issued an executive order Aug. 18 to establish a Classified National Security Information Program designed to safeguard and govern access to classified national security information that is shared by the federal government with state, local, tribal and private sector (SLTPS) entities. The program -- which uses non-disclosure agreements to keep secrets under wraps -- is led by the Department of Homeland Security, but the Pentagon will have a seat on a new SLTPS Policy Advisory Committee, the order states.

"The level of access granted shall not exceed the Secret level, unless the sponsoring agency determines on a case-by-case basis that the applicant has a demonstrated and foreseeable need for access to Top Secret, Special Access Program, or Sensitive Compartmented Information," according to the order.

Also on Aug. 18, the White House issued a separate executive order establishing a temporary Pakistan and Afghanistan Support Office in the State Department. The office will "perform the specific project of supporting executive departments and agencies in strengthening the governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan, enhancing the capacity of those governments to resist extremists, and maintaining an effective U.S. diplomatic presence in both countries," the order states.

The Marine Corps Force Structure Review ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates will begin in September and should wrap up this winter, according to a statement issued by the service.

And: It will not address end-strength numbers.

The statement says that the review will focus on capabilities and, specifically, options for "multi-capable Marine Air Ground Task Forces that can disaggregate and aggregate to engage, respond to crises, rapidly project power, and assure access."

"There is no active-duty end strength target; the results will be based on the Force Structure Review Group's (FSRG) analysis of the capabilities and capacity required," the statement quotes Marine Corps Combat Development Command head Lt. Gen. George Flynn as saying.

The review also "must not reduce current readiness," the release adds.

"The intent is to ensure the Marine Corps is designed first and foremost, to remain our Nation's premier crisis response force," the release says. "The implications of this are many, including the requirement for Marine forces that are adaptable, highly trained and organizationally and operationally flexible. The Corps must be expeditionary -- light, powerful, sustainable, and able to operate where there is no infrastructure."

The statement matches what Secretary Gates said recently to a Marines' Memorial Association gathering in California about the Corps' future role, which he suggested might not include plans for large-scale amphibious assaults.

"The counterinsurgency skills the Marines developed during this past decade," Gates said, "combined with the agility and esprit honed over two centuries, will position the Corps in my view to be at the 'tip of the spear' in the future, when the U.S. military is likely to confront a range of irregular and hybrid conflicts."

Navy Under Secretary Robert Work recently told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the decisions from the force structure review could start influencing investment decisions as soon as next summer.

"The earliest you might see concrete changes to the structure, organization and size of the Marine Corps is in [the fiscal year 2013 program objective memorandum], but all of the changes are going to be conditions-based on what happens in Afghanistan, obviously," Work added. "If we're still hard in the fight, then the Marine Corps will stay focused on that fight, but we will at least be thinking of what the Marine Corps might look like."

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.