The Insider

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England announced today that he would not be Defense Secretary Robert Gates' No. 2 man in the Obama administration.

"I congratulate President-elect Obama for retaining Bob Gates as secretary, and I salute Bob Gates for his continued commitment," England said in a statement. "However, it's time for me to leave. When I came into government in early 2001, I anticipated serving for two to four years. After almost eight years, it's now time for me to turn over the reins to a successor. Also, it's most appropriate for the new administration to name its own deputy."

Saying it has been "an astonishing time to serve the nation," England also said he was willing, if asked, to stay past Inauguration Day to assure a smooth transition.

Mindful of the current budgetary environment, the industry team developing the Airborne Laser has begun to do some in-house studies to see how system could be re-jiggered to be able to shoot down not just ballistic missiles in their boost phase but also cruise missiles and other enemy flying objects.

"The contractors have begun to do some work in simulation to show that there are capabilities for the weapon system in the future and there are some changes that would need to be made because we're optimized for ballistic missiles, but we believe that there are some capabilities for counter-aircraft and counter-((surface-to-air missiles)), for example, and potentially cruise missiles," Boeing ABL Program Director Mike Rinn told reporters during a conference call earlier today. "So it kind of opens up a whole other area -- that is not our primary mission, I want to state that emphatically, the Missile Defense Agency has designed the system for all classes of ballistic missile in boost phase -- but we believe there's other potential in the multimission arena."

Earlier today, MDA and its industry partners announced that the ABL program has successfully test-fired the megawatt-class laser through the Boeing 747 aircraft's turret mount in a ground test last week.

During the conference call with reporters, Boeing's Rinn said the program was still on track for a late summer, early fall 2009 attempt to intercept a live target ballistic missile.

The ABL program has encountered increasing congressional scrutiny. House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee Chairwoman Ellen Tauscher earlier this month promised hearings on programs like ABL when Congress comes back in session next year. Not only that, InsideDefense.com reported earlier this month that the incoming Obama administration was mulling cuts to a small handful of named high-profile weapon systems, among them national missile defense and ABL.

Even if next summer's intercept attempt is successful, such a demonstration will not by itself be enough to prove the weapon meets requirements, the program office's commander said this past summer. Follow-on tests of the platform must occur before the laser is ready to go into production, he added. As Inside Missile Defense reported:

Unless the program office discovers something considered anywhere between "concerning" and "hideous" between now and August 2009, ABL’s in-flight shoot-down demonstration will take place as scheduled, Col. Robert McMurry, commander of the Airborne Laser program office at Kirtland Air Force Base, NM, said during a June 27 National Press Club briefing on the directed-energy weapon's progress.

Still, though the test will be at a range that is "significant" -- the exact range is classified, but retired Lt. Gen. Michael Dunn, CEO of the Air Force Association, at the same briefing put it at hundreds of kilometers -- the program follows a "crawl-walk-run" process, and an "envelope expansion" of the laser's capabilities will be needed to prove its concept of operations, McMurry said.

“I don’t think you’re going to satisfy all of the government’s requirements that you need to say, ‘That thing’s ready to procure’ by . . . a single shoot-down; it’s just not going to happen,” McMurry said. “So what we need to do is show the operational utility. Part of that plan is things like taking the system now and shoot((ing)) something down, but, instead of shooting it down here, fly it to Hawaii and shoot it there and prove you can move it and then use it. There are a number of those variations on the theme that kind of start to pin down the modeling that you’ve done to support the concept of operations and do it beyond just computer modeling that really anchor that in real-life, purposeful execution of the . . . top-end requirements.”

In the conference report accompanying the Fiscal Year 2009 Defense Authorization Act, House and Senate lawmakers called for a Defense Department-sponsored independent study of boost-phase missile defenses, including ABL, the Kinetic Energy Interceptor and other potential systems.

“The study would assess a variety of relevant factors and compare the results to non-boost-phase missile defense systems,” the report states.

The conferees also prohibit spending money to buy a second ABL aircraft until the defense secretary certifies that the system “has demonstrated, through successful testing and operational and cost analysis, a high probability of being operationally effective, suitable, survivable and affordable.”

Money also cannot be allocated to a second aircraft until 60 days after the boost-phase missile defense study is submitted, according to the bill text.

The Missile Defense Agency is calling on the Von Braun Conference Center in Huntsville, AL, to host an industry day next month for its MDA Engineering and Support Services (MiDAESS) program, according to a Federal Business Opportunities notice posted yesterday.

MiDAESS is MDA's effort to restructure and consolidate the way it procures contractor support services.

The event, scheduled for Dec. 17-19, would require a venue with a capacity of 1,000 people, the notice states:

The intended source for the requirement is the Von Braun Center located in Huntsville, Alabama, as they are the only responsible source who can satisfy the agency's need for this requirement. However, all responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency.

MDA spends approximately $900 million annually on contractor support services for functional areas like quality, safety and mission assurance; business and financial management; administrative and professional support; engineering; acquisition management; and warfighter support, among others, Inside Missile Defense reported in February when the MiDAESS draft request for proposals was first released.

In 2004, MDA began a re-engineering effort "to better align the agency to achieve an overall goal of developing a single integrated ((ballistic missile defense)) system," according to the RFP's executive summary. "A foundational premise of the re-engineering was to centralize control in the agency headquarters and de-centralize execution in the field."

"We are constantly looking for ways that we can be more efficient and more effective," then-MDA Director Lt. Gen. Trey Obering told reporters at a Feb. 12 conference sponsored by Aviation Week, "and this ((draft RFP)) is part of that."

One of the major changes brought about by the re-engineering was a transition from a "project" organization to a "matrix" organization, the draft RFP states. That resulted in government personnel working in a "functional alignment," with each person in a program office being responsible to a functional manager for their particular skill "and responsible to the program leadership for day-to-day direction," the draft RFP reads.

In related news, MDA this week also released a MiDAESS "organizational conflict of interest policy" via FedBizOpps to encourage the contractor community "to resolve al OCI issues prior to submitting proposals or teaming in connection with the MiDAESS effort." Stay tuned to next week's issue of IMD for more info on this.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has reportedly agreed to continue to lead the Pentagon when President-elect Barack Obama comes to power next year, will be taking to the skies Monday and might just make a stop in Obama's hometown of Chicago, IL.

John Podesta, who co-chairs Obama's transition team, has said the Illinois Democrat generally plans to personally announce his senior cabinet-level appointments in Chicago.

For now, the Defense Department is not officially commenting on Gates' future or whether he will visit Chicago next week to appear with Obama. But a senior defense official coyly said today that Gates will likely have an opportunity to talk to reporters next week.

DOD also acknowledged that Gates is scheduled to speak in the early afternoon on Monday (Dec. 1) at the Air Force Base in Minot, ND. It is a sure bet nuclear weapons will come up in his speech there. In August 2007, the Air Force accidentally flew six live nuclear cruise missiles on a B-52 bomber from Minot AFB, ND, to Barksdale AFB, LA, touching off investigations that ultimately led Gates to sack the service's leadership.

Visiting Minot will put Gates a mere 900 miles or so from Obama's hometown at a time when the president-elect is reportedly poised to unveil a national security team that also includes Sen. Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and retired Marine Gen. James Jones as White House national security adviser.

Politico reports Defense Secretary Robert Gates has agreed to stick at the Pentagon, where he will be part of an Obama national security team that includes Sen. Hillary Clinton at State and retired Gen. James Jones as national security adviser.

More:

Democrats familiar with the national-security event early next week said they also expect James B. Steinberg, who was deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, to be named deputy secretary of State; Susan Rice, Obama’s senior foreign policy adviser on the campaign, to be named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and retired Navy Admiral Dennis C. Blair, the former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command and a veteran of the NSC, Central Intelligence Agency and Joint Chiefs of Staff, to be named the director of national intelligence.

Tom Donilon, an assistant secretary of state for public affairs and chief of staff at the U.S. Department of State during the Clinton administration, is a leading candidate to be Jones’ deputy at the NSC, officials said.

Norway yesterday announced the Joint Strike Fighter will replace its F-16s, passing over the Saab Gripen fighter, a procurement that could net JSF prime contractor Lockheed Martin orders for up to 48 aircraft, which Myles Walton, an investment research analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., estimates could be worth $8.5 billion.

In a statement, the Norwegian Ministry of Defence said:

The JSF is the only candidate which fulfills all the operational requirements specified by the Norwegian Government and is furthermore offered at a lower price than the Gripen NG. The selection of the Joint Strike Fighter rests upon a clear recommendation from Project Future Combat Aircraft Capability. External auditors have concluded that the evaluation has been carried out in a professional and ethically sound manor.

Anne-Grete Strøm-Erichsen, the defence minister, said in the statement that she expects Norwegian industry to play a key part in JSF production.

An investment of this magnitude offers substantial opportunities for Norwegian industry. Throughout the process, the Government has communicated clearly to the candidates the significance of securing industrial opportunities, and the results of that focus is clearly evident today.

Some visitors at this year's AUSA exhibit last month may have walked away from the contractor booths with USB memory sticks filled with digitized promotional material. For their size, these tiny things hold an awful lot of data, and with the warfighting gear advertisements purged from them, they come in handy for, say, a quick file transport between computers that aren't directly connected. And they are handed out like candy at some military trade shows.

As we reported yesterday, though, a recent STRATCOM message prohibits the use of all such removable media on unclassified networks for security reasons. A closer look at the message seems to confirm DOD's fears that attackers are successfully targeting low-level functions of electronic devices to emplace code capable of doing anything from stealing data to spying out passwords.

“Malicious software (malware) programmed to embed itself in memory devices has entered our systems,” the STRATCOM message reads, announcing further direction for sanitizing and “recertifying” the military's networks.

Malware happened to be one of the topics at the Army Combined Arms Center's Information and Cyberspace Symposium in September. In one of the presentations, titled “Advanced Malware Trends,” a Sandia National Labs expert predicted that the focus of attackers is “moving from ((operating systems)) and system software to application logic, software below the OS (virtual machine manager and firmware), and hardware.” In response, the official's presentation reads, military information assurance professionals must pick up additional skills -- in the areas of VMM programming, firmware programming, and hardware architecture and design -- to keep Defense Department networks safe.