The Insider

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.

House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Buck McKeon (R-CA) doesn't like the fact that $3.3 billion in defense spending will go instead to fund education programs. According to the text of a floor statement he delivered yesterday:

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in opposition to this measure, which will increase domestic spending at the expense of national security. Specifically, the federal government will spend $10 billion for this teacher bailout, paid for in part with a $3.3 billion cut in defense programs. As the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, I can assure you that the Department of Defense has need for these funds, including unfunded requirements related to our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. I say this fully aware of the needs of our educational system, as the former Chairman and Ranking Member of Education and Labor.

Those in favor of this bill will say that this money was previously identified by the Department of Defense as unspent and available for higher priorities. This includes $683.5 million unspent from last year’s economic stimulus package and $325 million for military construction projects. They will use this argument to convince members that these cuts will not harm the Department and to assure you that this next bailout is fully paid for.

But this argument misses two larger points. First, as yesterday’s Military Times observed, ‘…diverting money from the defense budget to education programs would eliminate any opportunity for the Defense Department or Congress to take unobligated money from one defense program to spend on another defense program.’ For example, in the Fiscal Year 2011 National Defense Authorization Act, we used the unobligated balances for military construction projects to fund other more pressing infrastructure needs, such as barracks and armories, and many of the services’ unfunded requirements. Now these funds will no longer be available for these purposes and the services will have outstanding needs go unmet.

Second, rescissions to the DoD budget this late in the fiscal year are problematic and disruptive to operations. As the Department of Defense Comptroller has told the Armed Services Committee, this rescission will require that DoD restructure or postpone programs. I am confident the Department will try to avoid adverse effects on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but when this nation is fighting two wars, Congress should not be pulling the financial rug out from under DoD at the end of the year.

Moreover, while these funds were identified as ‘unspent’ earlier this year, some of these 'unspent' dollars have already been diverted to other defense programs. When we cut the original accounts now, it will mean that some of these accounts no longer have enough money in them. Think about your own checking account—at the beginning of the year, you see that you have $1,000 more than your budget says you’ll need. So you move $800 into another account or give it to one of your children. If the government comes and takes $1,000 from you at the end of the year, your remaining account balance may not be sufficient and you find yourself in an overdraft situation. In the case of government agencies, it is against the law to overdraft an account. We have been told that the Department of Defense may find itself in violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act in some accounts.

Finally, I remain concerned that this is the beginning of a slippery slope. The Secretary of Defense has initiated an ongoing effort to generate $100 billion in savings within the Department of Defense over the next five years. Yesterday he announced a series of spending freezes and closures of organizations within his office and combatant commands. Secretary Gates plans on plowing these savings back into force structure and modernization accounts.

Foreign defense contractors that want to work with the Pentagon while employing people with more than one passport have had no shortage of headaches when trying to comply with the U.S. government's export control policies, as a State Department notice in this morning's Federal Register states:

The current requirement for the provision of additional information within a license to cover dual national and third-country national foreign employees has created a tremendous administrative burden on approved end-users and has evolved into a human rights issue, which has become a focus of contention between the U.S. and allies and friends without a commensurate gain in national security.

Consequently, the State Department has changed the rule:

Based on available intelligence and law enforcement information, and given the current licensing requirements regarding access by dual or third country national employees, most diversions of U.S. Munitions List (USML) items appears to occur outside the scope of approved licenses, not within foreign companies or organizations providing access to properly screened dual national or third country national employees. This amendment will place the affirmative responsibility upon the foreign company, government, or international organization, with the understanding that by accepting the USML defense article, they must comply with the provisions of U.S. laws and regulations to prevent the possible diversion of U.S. defense articles and technology. This change, by no means, reduces the due diligence requirements of the applicant to ensure, to the best of their ability, that the end-use and end-user are consistent with the approved authorization. The Department views due diligence as a requirement for security clearances or other effective screening procedures as a condition for access to ITAR-controlled defense articles and technology.

As National Security Adviser James Jones said in June:

We should be striving for a system that prevents harmful exports while facilitating useful ones. Our current system is not meeting that objective. In fact, our system itself poses a potential national security risk based on the fact that its structure is overly complicated, contains too many redundancies, and tries to protect too much. In short, we are hard to work with. As Secretary Gates has often said, we need to have a "higher fence around a smaller yard."

EADS North America said today its CEO, Sean O’Keefe, was a passenger on a private aircraft that crashed in Alaska last night.

Local authorities are reporting that there are survivors and a rescue operation is under way. "No other details are available at this time," said Guy Hicks, EADS North America spokesman.

CNN is reporting Ted Stevens, the former Republican senator from Alaska, was also a passenger on the plane.

(UPDATE 3 p.m.: CNN is now reporting that Stevens was killed in the crash. Reuters is reporting that O'Keefe survived.)