The Insider

The Farnborough Air Show kicks off on Monday just outside London and the Defense Department will be represented. Senior DOD officials will make presentations and U.S. military aircraft will conduct aerial demonstrations at the week-long event, according to a Pentagon statement, which adds:

Various models of U.S. military aircraft and equipment and approximately 100 aircrew and support personnel from military bases in Europe and the U.S. are scheduled to attend. Platforms include: the Army LUH-72 Lakota helicopter and ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle; Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet and P-3C Orion; the Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey; and several Air Force aircraft including the F-16C Fighting Falcon, C-130J Super Hercules, C-17A Globemaster III, F-15E Strike Eagle, and B-52 Stratofortress.

Participation in the biennial airshow highlights the strength of the U.S. commitment to the security of Europe and demonstrates the contributions the U.S. defense industry offers with various state-of-the-art capabilities vital for the support and protection of our allies' and partners' national-security interests.

The Senate Armed Services Committee's fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill would cost $634 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released yesterday:

That total includes an estimated $89 billion for the cost of overseas contingency operations, primarily in Afghanistan. In addition, S. 3254 would prescribe personnel strengths for each active-duty and selected-reserve component of the U.S. armed forces. CBO estimates that appropriation of the authorized amounts would result in outlays of $622 billion over the 2013-2017 period.

The bill also contains provisions that would increase or decrease costs of discretionary defense programs in 2014 and future years. Those implicit authorizations would affect force structure, DoD compensation and benefits, DoD’s use of multiyear procurement authority, and other programs and activities. CBO has analyzed the costs of a select number of those authorizations and we estimate they would raise net costs by about $42 billion over the 2014-2017 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts for those years. Those amounts are not included in the totals in the previous paragraph because funding for those activities would be covered by specific authorizations in future years.

S. 3254 contains provisions that would decrease direct spending by $31 million over the 2013-2017 period and $75 million over the 2013-2022 period. Because enacting the legislation would affect direct spending, pay-as-you-go procedures apply. Enacting the bill would not affect revenues.

U.S. and Romanian defense officials have signed "implementing arrangements" related to the planned construction and operation of the Aegis Ashore missile defense facility, according to a U.S. European Command statement issued today.

Romanian State Secretary for Defense Policy and Planning Sebastian Hulaban and Air Force Maj. Gen. Mark Schissler, director of plans and policy at EUCOM, "signed two implementing arrangements and three amendments to existing implementing arrangements related to the construction and operation of the planned missile defense facility in Deveselu," the command statement reads. It further states:

One implementing arrangement is for the use of land areas surrounding Deveselu Base, which is located near Caracal, Romania. The other implementing arrangement is for the use of airspace over Deveselu Base.

The two governments also signed three amendments to existing implementing arrangements regarding security, real estate and the functioning of the joint committee.  Each of these implementing arrangements supports Phase II of the European Phased Adaptive Approach.

The Ballistic Missile Defense Agreement between U.S. and Romania was signed Sept 13, 2011 and entered into force on Dec. 23, 2011.

The signing of these implementing arrangements is another step forward toward making the missile defense facility in Deveselu a reality.

Rear Admiral Randall M. Hendrickson, the Deputy Director of the Missile Defense Agency, and Brigadier General Thomas J. Sharpy, Director of Plans, Programs and Analyses, U.S. Air Forces in Europe, also attended the signing.

House Armed Services Committee Republicans sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) today calling on him to immediately bring a plan to the Senate floor to resolve sequestration.

According to the letter:

The time for rhetoric has passed. Resolution cannot wait until next month, or a lame duck session, or even the next Congress. News reports indicate that you are waiting for a "better" proposal. If you have a solution in mind, it is incumbent upon you to bring it to the floor of your own chamber, pass it, and allow us to move into a conference. Further cuts to the military don't affect some faceless bureaucracy. The White House has determined that sequestration will arbitrarily gut the funding to our troops who are putting their lives on the line for our country every day. Unless you allow a plan to resolve sequestration to come to the Senate floor, you will not only force the automatic cuts to your domestic agenda, but you will bear responsibility for a morally unconscionable outcome that breaks faith with our service members and their families. We must resolve sequestration now.

The White House strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 5856, the House's fiscal year 2013 defense appropriations bill, according to a statement of administration policy issued today.

"If the president were presented with H.R. 5856, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill," according to the statement. By adding unrequested funding for defense, lawmakers have crafted a bill that would require "significant and harmful cuts to critical national priorities such as education, research and development, job training and health care," the statement notes.

The legislation also "undermines key investments in high-priority programs," impeding the ability of the defense secretary to carry out the Defense Strategic Guidance issued earlier this year, and hindering the ability of the U.S. military to carry out missions consistent with the new strategy, the White House writes.

Additionally, the statement complains about proposed limitations on the retirement of aircraft, as well as cuts to the Medium Extended Air Defense System, the MQ-8 Fire Scout drone and the Defense Acquisition Workforce Development Fund, among other priorities.

The agency responsible for managing the U.S. nuclear weapons complex still has lots of room for improvement, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In prepared testimony for a House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee hearing held yesterday, GAO had this to say about the National Nuclear Security Administration:

NNSA has made considerable progress resolving some of its long-standing management deficiencies, but significant improvement is still needed especially in NNSA's management of its major projects and contracts. GAO reported in June 2004 that NNSA has better delineated lines of authority and has improved communication between its headquarters and site offices. In addition, NNSA's establishment of an effective headquarters security organization has made significant progress resolving many of the security weaknesses GAO has identified. Nevertheless, NNSA continues to experience major cost and schedule overruns on its projects, such as research and production facilities and nuclear weapons refurbishments, principally because of ineffective oversight and poor contractor management. In some areas, NNSA can be viewed as a success. Importantly, NNSA has continued to ensure that the nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable in the absence of underground nuclear testing. At the same time, NNSA's struggles in defining itself as a separately organized agency within DOE, and the considerable management problems that remain have led to calls in Congress and other organizations to increase NNSA's independence from DOE. However, senior DOE and NNSA officials have committed to continuing reform, and DOE’s and NNSA's efforts have led to some management improvements. As a result, GAO continues to believe, as it concluded in its January 2007 report, that drastic organizational change to increase independence is unnecessary and questions whether such change would solve the agency's remaining management problems.

Seven months after Rolls-Royce and General Electric stopped self-funding the Joint Strike Fighter's second engine -- and more than a year after the Defense Department issued the contractors a stop-work order on the F136 engine -- termination proceedings are still not complete, Rolls-Royce officials said today.

The GE-Rolls-Royce team developing the F136 engine formally ended its work at the end of calendar year 2011. At that point, it was unclear where F136-related property, such as spare and test engines, would end up. At a media briefing today, Tom Hartmann, Rolls-Royce's senior vice president of U.S. government programs, said the status of those items remains undecided.

“We are currently in the termination process for the F136 with the U.S. government, and so it is premature to say how that worked out until that process is complete,” Hartmann said. “There's a legal time frame -- I think we have up to a year -- to complete that work.”

The parts developed under the F136 program are property of the Defense Department, so the two companies are awaiting direction on the final disposition of those items, Hartmann said. Rolls spokesman George McLaren added that the parts have remained where they were at the time the F136 team received its termination notice -- namely, at a Rolls-Royce facility in Indianapolis, a General Electric facility in Evendale, OH, in the possession of some suppliers, and possibly at some government sites.

DOD issued the GE-Rolls team a stop-work order on the F136 on March 24, 2011. The companies then self-funded development on the motor until early December, at which point they announced plans to wind down the program at the end of the year.