The Insider

Shay Assad, the acting deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition and technology, recently reminded the military's contracting community to play by the book when it comes to paperwork for contracts within the U.S. Central Command area.

At issue is the mandatory Theater Business Clearance process, which provides crucial information on contracts and contractors to commanders in theater. The idea is for the services' various contracting shops to enforce compliance with the TBC process.

Apparently, not everyone got the memo.

"The Joint Contracting Command-Iraq/Afghanistan, CENTCOM, and our Joint Staff partners report that organizations are not complying with the TBC policy," Assad wrote in a Sept. 15 memo to the acquisition chiefs of the services, U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Transportation Command and the defense agencies.

Memo recipients have until Oct. 31 to have their contracting officers "affirm" compliance with TBC requirements, the missive states.

An August CENTCOM fact sheet describes some of the "recent operational challenges" resulting from missing TBC documentation. For example, "sensitive items" were shipped without the necessary in-transit visibility. Plus, DOD officials have no way of verifying that armed personnel working within the CENTCOM area have the proper training, licenses and authorizations needed to carry weapons, the fact sheet states.

Last week's press conference on the new way ahead for a European missile defense system left some questions unanswered on where exactly the two or three American Aegis missile defense-capable vessels, portrayed as an instantly available capability for protecting Europe from Iranian short- and medium-range missiles, would sail.

Deploying them to the waters "in and around the Mediterranean and the North Sea, et cetera" was as specific as Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was going to get.

(Arguably, the North Sea is a bit of a geographic outlier, but we were assured by Cartwright's spokesman that the general wasn't misspeaking.)

Following the principle of getting interceptors as close as possible to a launch site inside Iran, the Black Sea also would be a suitable location for Aegis ships, as experts have noted.

The idea was picked up in a February Congressional Budget Office study exploring alternatives to the Bush-proposed system of stationary radar and interceptor sites in the Czech Republic and Poland.

But as attractive as a Black Sea option might be -- and a hypothetical Caspian Sea option, too, for that matter -- existing agreements covering those waters could make for some hiccups.

As for the Black Sea, the CBO report notes the Montreux Convention. The agreement, in force since 1936, "establishes Turkish control over the flow of ships between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea," the document states. It stipulates that "warships of non-Black Sea nations are not supposed to remain in the Black Sea for more than 21 days at a time," according to the report.

It is unclear if Pentagon officials are indeed envisioning Aegis deployments to the Black Sea, and whether the Montreux Convention is on their radar at all. According to Cartwright's spokesman, exact deployment locations of the vessels have yet to be figured out.

Perhaps this issue is where Washington diplomats hope to get some form of support back from Russia, as a Black Sea nation, now that the highly contentious Bush-era missile defense plan is off the table.

Brigade commanders echoed a recent New York Times op-ed today when they stressed how important interpreters are to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I think the most important thing we could do to improve our operations dramatically in both Iraq and Afghanistan is increase the number of competent interpreters and to make sure that the contractors who provide interpreters, provide interpreters who speak English as well," said Army Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, speaking today at a counterinsurgency conference in Washington hosted by the Marines Corps University.

While this last point elicited laughter from the audience, McMaster and his fellow panel members emphasized the essential role interpreters play in counterinsurgency environments where local information and human intelligence are crucial to good decision-making.

An audience member asked the panel how much foreign language training soldiers and Marines need before they deploy.

"I think a commander needs a working vocabulary to be polite and make the effort to talk to people and greet them in their language," said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel, who's now a military history professor at Ohio State University. But, beyond that, a commander has to rely on an interpreter, he said.

"It is dangerous for a commander, unless he is fluent, to rely on his limited capabilities in some of these situations," said Mansoor. Misinterpretations and misunderstandings can cause serious setbacks, he added.

UPDATE: The post below, on analyst Loren Thompson's take on the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles protest, has generated some reader feedback, spurring us to find out more explicitly about Thompson's relationship with BAE Systems. Thompson, chief operating officer of the non-profit Lexington Institute, told us yesterday that BAE is one of the clients of his for-profit consulting firm (his leadership of which is noted in the original entry). However, Thompson insisted the paper was written for the Lexington Institute, and he asserted that the firm's work for BAE played no part in his analysis of the FMTV competition.

The original:

One analyst is predicting the Government Accountability Office will soon overturn the recent award of the Army's Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles contract to Oshkosh.

FMTV competitors Navistar and BAE Systems earlier this month filed protests with the GAO of an August award to Oshkosh worth $280.9 million for 2,568 FMTVs. According to Oshkosh, the order is expected to total 23,000 trucks and trailers. BAE Systems was the incumbent in the competition.

In a Sept. 17 "issue brief," Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute (who also runs a consulting shop) writes that the Army made "fundamental mistakes" by accepting a "wildly unrealistic cost estimate from Oshkosh without making any serious attempt to determine whether it was valid" and by rating the three offerors "equal in terms of risk and capability," even though BAE Systems was the incumbent.

And, Thompson writes, the service rated the offerors equal with regard to past performance, ignoring BAE's relevant past experience.

In combination, these missteps nearly guarantee that the protests lodged by the losing teams will be sustained when the Government Accountability Office rules on them later this year. But the truck award raises more far-reaching questions about the competence of Army source selections, because the errors were so egregious. Consider the issue of cost realism, a central concern in acquisition reform. Despite lack of facilities, workforce and relevant experience, Oshkosh bid 30 percent below what BAE is charging for building the same trucks today. BAE bid below its current asking price too, and but not that low -- even though it already has a production process in place. Army personnel accepted the bids at face value without any effort to independently verify them, and in fact made cost the sole determinant of the award.

Additionally, Thompson writes that capabilities and past performance were supposed to outweigh cost as factors in the competition, and rating Oshkosh as equal in production capability "seems preposterous on its face." In past performance, the Army "ignored a host of factors" in assuming Oshkosh could match BAE, including Oshkosh's high-priority contract to build Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicles.

"What this all adds up to is a procurement disaster in the making, a conclusion GAO analysts should have little difficulty reaching," Thompson concludes.

According to his biography, Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute, also runs Source Associates, a "for-profit consultancy."

John McHugh, the new Army Secretary, was sworn in this morning at a Pentagon ceremony.

The ceremony for the 21st Army secretary just happened to fall on Sept. 21.

Also sworn in was Joseph Westphal, the 30th Army under secretary.

Former FBI Deputy Director Robert Bryant has been selected to be the next National Counterintelligence Executive, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair announced today. In his new job, Bryant will serve as the head of national counterintelligence for the United States government.

In his announcement, Blair said:

The Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (ONCIX) sets the priorities for counterintelligence collection, investigations, and operations, and conducts in-depth espionage damage assessments. To ensure the effectiveness of these programs, ONCIX also performs periodic reviews of all U.S. Counterintelligence programs, evaluates them against strategic and budgetary goals, and makes fiscal recommendations to the DNI.

In the recently published 2009 National Intelligence Strategy, counterintelligence is elevated for the first time as a mission objective. “Integrate Counterintelligence” is one of six mission objectives, and the strategy calls for a counterintelligence capability that is integrated with all aspects of the intelligence process, both offensively and defensively, to protect our secrets, and to better serve the policymaker and the operator.

During his FBI years, Bryant investigated and prosecuted the spies Aldrich Ames, Earl Pitts and Harold Nicholson. He also was in charge of the investigations following the Oklahoma City bombing and the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. He was most recently the president and chief executive officer of the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

The Senate yesterday voted to confirm John McHugh as Army secretary and Joseph Westphal as under secretary, according to press reports.

McHugh, the former ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, and Westphal appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee at a nomination hearing in late July. The committee favorably reported out their nominations days later.

McHugh succeeds Pete Geren, who has served as Army secretary since July 2007.

Westphal is on leave as a political science professor at the University of Maine. He previously served as chancellor of the University of Maine system and as assistant secretary of the Army for civil works beginning in 1998. In 2001, he briefly served as acting Army secretary.