The Insider

When asked during their confirmation hearings whether the top Pentagon weapons buyer should have a seat on the pivotal Joint Requirements Oversight Council, both the new acquisition under secretary, Ashton Carter, and his predecessor, John Young, answered “maybe.” But for Young, who was formally replaced by Carter yesterday, the answer these days is more akin to “maybe not.”

Lawmakers and defense experts have previously floated the idea of full JROC membership for the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics to ensure closer collaboration between the military's requirements definition folks and the civilian-run acquisition bureaucracy. The perpetual ramping-up of requirements in weapon systems, known as “requirements creep” in Pentagon jargon, is blamed for continued cost overruns and schedule slips in Defense Department programs.

Full JROC membership currently is limited to senior officers from the military branches. The acquisition executive has an advisory role in the process.

In a final briefing with reporters yesterday, Young said acquisition and requirements officials must collaborate more closely and quickly. But in his view, a formal separation between the acquisition realm and the JROC should remain to guarantee a system of “checks and balances.”

“I respect the military community's ability to state the requirements, and I think you have to respect the acquisition community's ability to challenge requirements if we have reason to,” Young said. Acquisition officials' objections could come as a result of budget concerns or technical feasibility of proposed requirements, he said.

“Putting people on both sides and giving them veto votes on the other ((side's proposals)) is probably not the perfect ((solution)),” Young said.

In his written responses to advance questions for his Oct. 4, 2007, confirmation hearing, then-acting acquisition chief Young supported the idea of participating in the JROC process as an adviser. Beyond that, full membership on the panel “may be appropriate,” he wrote.

During the hearing, Sen. Claire McCaskill lamented what she perceived to be “a lot of back-scratching by the various branches -- you know, 'I won't mess with your program if you don't mess with mine'” on the council at the time. She asked Young to answer in writing whether he believed a full seat on the panel would have a “cleansing effect.”

Ashton Carter, who was sworn in as the new Pentagon acquisition chief yesterday, offered a noncommittal answer to the JROC membership question last month. In advance questions for his nomination hearing, Senators asked if he saw the “need for any changes in the structure or operations” of the JROC.

Carter stressed the importance of “close coordination” between requirements and acquisition officials. As for a membership on the JROC, such a move “may be appropriate,” he wrote.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) concluded a confirmation hearing today for Defense Department posts by noting the committee will move “quickly” to advance the nominations of the candidates who testified:

• Raymond Mabus, to be Navy Secretary;
• Robert Work, to be Navy Under Secretary;
• Elizabeth King, to be assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs;
• Donald Remy, to be the Army’s general counsel;
• Michael Nacht, to be assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs;
• Retired Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, to be assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs;
• Jo-Ellen Darcy, to be assistant secretary of the Army for civil works; and
• Inés Triay to be assistant secretary of energy for environmental management.

Much of the hearing was devoted to discussing naval issues. In fact, Levin and Ranking Republican John McCain (AZ) had to step in to get Sens. Jim Webb (D-VA) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) to wrap up their dueling statements about the Navy’s plan to base a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in Mayport, FL. It was only then that the committee received testimony from Nacht, Gregson, Darcy and Triay, who comprised the second panel of nominees.

The Pentagon today released the details behind $835 million worth of improvement projects for 850 defense facilities across the country funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The $835 million "represents the balance of the ARRA funds provided to the DOD for construction and repair projects," according to a Defense Department statement, which adds:

All of the new projects will be conducted at Army and Army National Guard facilities in 37 states and the District of Columbia. More than half of the $835 million will be spent in five states: Texas ($155 million), Kentucky ($83 million), North Carolina ($83 million), Oklahoma ($66 million) and Hawaii ($59 million). In addition to making much-needed improvements to military installations, an additional $346 million will be spent on energy-related projects enabling the DOD to lead the way in the national effort to achieve greater energy independence.

Representing less than 1 percent of the entire $787 billion ARRA package, the overall $7.4 billion investment in defense-related projects will further the legislation’s stated goal of stimulating the American economy through job creation, while improving the quality of life for service members, their families, and DOD civilian workers.

In March, the Pentagon issued details on $5.9 billion in funding for nearly 3,000 military construction projects funded by ARRA, out of which $300 million would go "to develop energy-efficient technologies."

Click here to view the full DOD report to Congress issued this week.

James Clapper, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, wants everything in the field of measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to be considered a top priority.

"MASINT operations and activities shall be treated as high-priority efforts and receive full and proactive support in all resourcing and programmatic actions," he wrote in an April 22 Defense Department instruction.

The previous version of the document, which dates from 1993, contains no such language.

According to Clapper's instruction, MASINT is defined as:

Information produced by quantitative and qualitative analysis of physical attributes of targets and events to characterize, locate, and identify them. MASINT exploits a variety of phenomenologies to support signature development and analysis, to perform technical analysis, and to detect, characterize, locate, and identify targets and events. MASINT is derived from specialized, technically-derived measurements of physical phenomenon intrinsic to an object or event and it includes the use of quantitative signatures to interpret the data.

The high-priority designation for MASINT comes amid a growing interest from defense leaders in anything capable of providing improved intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data.

The Pentagon's ISR requests have soared since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Operations there have shown a critical need for information about violent extremists' operations -- a markedly different intelligence challenge from the Cold War era, when U.S. spy satellites were often tasked to simply photograph large Soviet formations.

In today's security environment, a few potential MASINT applications come to mind: Separating friends from foes in urban warfare, identifying buried targets, or finding improvised explosive devices.

On the latter issue, Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization chief Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz last year said his office is working on ways to make the characteristic copper plates of armor-piercing roadside bombs, or explosively formed penetrators, visible to nearby ground forces through the use of radar and other sensors.

It's official: John Young is out as Pentagon acquisition executive, and Ashton Carter is in, sworn in this morning.

Young took a good deal of time to talk to reporters this morning, and we're going to bring you a lot of news from that session.

We've already begun with these:

Young Slams Air Force's UAV Acquisition Strategy as Illogical

Young: Price Should be Ultimate Factor in KC-X Tanker Competition

Young Criticizes 'Flawed Contract Strategy' Behind Future Combat Systems Program

Stay tuned for more.

The Joint Strike Fighter ultimately will succeed, outgoing Pentagon acquisition chief John Young predicted today, even though program officials inadequately funded the prototype flyoff during the competition to build the fifth-generation fighter.

“I think we didn't fully understand all the risks of achieving weight on the Joint Strike Fighter and other such things, but Joint Strike Fighter is, in the end, going to be successful, and I think fairly successful for what we're asking for three airplanes to do in terms of capability,” Young said.

In February, InsideDefense.com reported that Young had written a memo to Defense Secretary Robert Gates stating that “JSF technology demonstrators were not adequately robust, leading to optimistic estimates of the structural weight of the aircraft."

At least the F-35 program didn't go the way of the A-12 Avenger II, Young noted. The A-12 was intended to be a carrier-based stealth fighter replacement for the A-6 Intruder used by the Navy and Marine Corps, but the program was canceled in 1991 due to high costs. The cancellation led to years of litigation between the design team -- McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics -- and DOD, which is still ongoing, according to Young.

“People clearly didn't understand the risk ((of the A-12 program)) -- they signed up for a price that was totally unrealistic and kind of said, 'Industry, you got to go do it,' and we took them to court for not doing it,” he said.

The Pentagon today awarded Lockheed Martin Aeronautics a $100 million increment of a nearly $400 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract for phase three of an effort to develop a stratospheric airship that can simultaneously track airborne and ground targets in flights lasting upward of 10 years, according to a Defense Department announcement.

The program is dubbed Integrated Sensor is Structure, or ISIS for short. Work on the contract is expected to be completed in March 2013, according to the DOD statement. "This contract was procured under a limited source competition with two bids solicited and two bids received," the statement reads.

As Inside the Air Force reported last month:

In the second phase, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman worked on the systems design, and several sectors of Lockheed, Northrop and Raytheon were contracted for “critical technology” development, which included low areal density hull materials, lightweight low-power-density radar arrays, extremely low-power transmit-receive modules and regenerative power systems.

In Phase III, the agency will design, develop and fabricate a subscale demonstration system and conduct flight tests, Walker said.

Flight demonstration is scheduled for fiscal year 2013; it will be up to the Air Force following the flights to determine future acquisition and operations of a production asset, Walker added in a March 17 e-mail.