The Insider

House Armed Services Committee Democrats today elected Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) to chair the panel's air and land forces subcommittee and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) to head the terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities subcommittee.

Smith takes the place of Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), who retired from the panel, and Sanchez will take Smith's place.

"I am confident that Congressman Smith and Congresswoman Sanchez will continue to serve our committee and our country well as they take on these new leadership responsibilities. I look forward to working with them in their new roles as the House Armed Services Committee begins work on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011," committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) said in a statement, adding:

I want to express my gratitude to Congressman Neil Abercrombie for serving Hawaii and our country for more than 19 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. On the House Armed Services Committee, Neil's hallmark has been making sure our troops have the equipment they need to protect our country and stay safe. His leadership helped prompt the Pentagon to speed up the delivery of life-saving body armor and ((Mine Resistant Ambush Protected)) vehicles to our forces on the frontlines. I have been honored to serve with Neil, and I will greatly miss his wise counsel, his good humor, and his loyal friendship. I know Congressman Abercrombie will continue to be a forceful and effective advocate on behalf of Hawaii's needs and interests.

The Reserve Officers Association today announced that its legislative agenda for 2010 will focus on maintaining the operational capabilities of the reserve component by fully funding equipment and training accounts.

"The agenda includes provisions to support Active and Reserve end-strengths that support mission requirements, and to adequately equip forces through regeneration and improved tracking of equipment," the ROA's announcement reads. "In addition, the agenda establishes the need to fully fund a minimum of 48 paid drill periods and two weeks of paid training per year."

ROA will also promote policies intended to improve recruitment and retention efforts within the Guard and Reserve and seek better continuity of health care coverage, the announcement states.

It notes that agenda items are "member-driven, organized by ROA’s legislative director, and acted on by the staff and grass roots initiatives."

The military command keeping an eye on events like last week's Chinese missile defense test says the incident has left no measurable debris floating around in orbit.

As of Friday last week, officials were "not tracking" any debris as a result of the test, a U.S. Strategic Command spokesman told us today. The spokesman said there was debris in space immediately after the event, but the parts entered the Earth's atmosphere within 10 minutes.

In a widely reported statement following the Jan. 11 test, a Pentagon spokeswoman said military officials "detected two geographically separated missile launch events with an exoatmospheric collision also being observed by space-based sensors."

As the Pentagon prepares to unveil its fiscal year 2011 budget request the first week of February, a new analysis of defense spending over the last three decades concludes the Obama administration's forthcoming military spending request “locks into place (an) unprecedented rise in defense spending -- 90 percent -- that began in the late 1990s, consolidating a return to Reagan-ear budget levels.”

Based on spending forecasts the White House detailed in May, the Project on Defense Alternatives calculates the Obama administration will allocate $5 trillion to military spending between fiscal years 2010 and 2017, “assuming it stays its current course” and the president is elected to a second term.

Indeed, by a substantial margin, it would represent the greatest amount allotted the Pentagon in any eight years since 1946 -- a period encompassing the Korean, Vietnam, and Cold Wars.

The 61-page report is titled "An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the $2 Trillion Surge in U.S. Defense Spending."

With the Obama administration planning on submitting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Senate for ratification before the end of this year, more than one think tank has begun to examine the pact's pros and cons.

The EastWest Institute today released a report calling for a fresh U.S. debate on the CTBT, calling the pact "a critical step that will reflect the U.S. commitment to nuclear nonproliferation." According to an institute statement:

The report, The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: New Technology, New Prospects?, is the result of discussions between a bipartisan group of 30 technical and policy experts about Senate ratification of the CTBT in light of recent technological advances. The CTBT is unanimously considered a key component of the global nonproliferation regime. The U.S. Senate rejected it in 1999, in part because of concerns that it would not ensure compliance by other states and that it would prevent the U.S. from maintaining the safety and reliability of its nuclear arsenal.

EWI's report suggests that ten years later, technological developments have changed that picture. It investigates how technical advances affect the debate and identifies concerns the Obama administration must address if it wants to pursue Senate ratification of the CTBT.

"Barack Obama laid out a promising and exciting agenda in Prague in April," said W. Pal Sidhu, Vice President of Programs at the EastWest Institute. "Now it's time to deliver."

The CTBT cannot come in to force until the U.S. and eight other countries, including China, India and Pakistan, ratify it. Many countries, including key nuclear powers such as Russia, see the U.S. Senate's failure to ratify the CTBT as a major hurdle to renewed U.S. leadership on nuclear nonproliferation.

"The Senate has had valid concerns about the CTBT, and the administration must address these concerns," said Sidhu. "If the Obama administration is serious about leading the world towards nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament, it's got to get serious about the CTBT."

Additionally, the National Academy of Sciences is due to release an update to its 2002 analysis of the treaty within the next 90 days.

An "ad hoc committee" is reviewing and updating "aspects of the analysis in the 2002 National Academies’ report, Technical Issues Related to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty," according to the NAS Web site. The committee is examining the following areas:

1) Maintaining the safety and reliability of the U.S. stockpile. The committee will assess, including information developed for and produced by the Nuclear Posture Review, the Administration’s plan to manage the risks in ensuring, over the longer term, a safe and reliable nuclear weapons stockpile absent underground nuclear testing. The experience of the U.S. stockpile stewardship program, particularly in the last decade, will also be taken into account.

2) Nuclear explosion detection, location and identification. The committee will assess present nuclear explosion detection capabilities, taking into account the totality of assets accessible to the United States, including: (a) any improvements in U.S. national technical means in the last decade, and (b) operating experience of the international monitoring system. The committee might also consider how these capabilities are expected to improve over time.

3) Sustainability. The committee will assess what commitments are required to sustain: (a) America’s nuclear stockpile; (b) the U.S. monitoring system; and (c) an adequate international verification regime, including On-Site Inspection.

4) Technical Advances. The committee will assess the potential technical advances to nuclear weapon capabilities for other countries: (a) that result from evasive and non-evasive testing at levels below the U.S. detection capability; and (b) that result from returning to full-yield testing in a non-test-ban environment.

No pressure, Army, but the ground combat vehicle -- set to replace the Future Combat Systems manned ground platforms -- will be a profoundly significant system, influencing "all other ground programs from the network to sensors, aircraft, fire support and dismounted soldier systems," a retired two-star writes in a new Armed Forces Journal article.

Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, a former commandant of the Army War College and the current president of consulting firm Colgen Inc., notes in the piece that the Army does not have a great track record for equipping ground forces. Citing a "string of failures" from FCS to the Comanche helicopter, he stresses the importance of getting GCV right from the start.

"The GCV concept must fit the needs of today’s wars and yet be sufficiently expansive and adaptable to meet the needs of forces fighting higher-order battles," Scales writes.

To successfully produce the vehicle, he promotes changing the design focus of the GCV's network "from the operational and strategic to the tactical" and changing "the customer from the general to the individual soldier."

An individual soldier "should be well-connected inside or outside the GCV and should lose no situational awareness when making the transition from mounted to dismounted combat," Scales adds. Comparing the GCV to a "mothership," he says it must be "optimized to operate in small units for prolonged periods in inhospitable terrain and climate."

Additionally, Scales calls for the GCV to be a "universal carrier" whose design embraces the needs of all ground combat services and to be "optimized for the common purpose of transporting a squad-sized team to the fight, not just infantry but any small team likely to be placed in harm's way."

Writing that Strykers "have proven to be too thinly armored to survive the very large explosive power of Taliban IEDs and too immobile to maneuver off road to avoid them" in Afghanistan, Scales says the "new universal carrier must be able to travel and maneuver off roads that today are studded with IEDs." The GCV must also be fast -- able to sustain speeds of 70 kilometers per hour over broken terrain -- and quiet to perform counterinsurgency.

Despite his recommendations, Scales argues that no legacy system can meet the needs of all ground services across the spectrum of conflict. "The only practical solution is to build the GCV around the concept of a universal small-unit carrier and then stretch the system as far as possible to accommodate other functions," he writes.