The Insider

The Air Force's X-51A Waverider hypersonic vehicle failed yesterday in its attempt to fly at Mach 6 for five minutes, as service officials announced today that the vehicle lasted less than one minute in flight before being lost.

The X-51A was successfully dropped from a B-52 bomber over California's Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center Sea Range yesterday at approximately 11:36 a.m. Pacific time, according to a statement issued today by an Air Force Research Laboratory spokesman. The vehicle separated properly from the B-52, but a fault with one of the cruiser control fins was identified 16 seconds after the drop.

“Once the X-51 separated from the rocket booster, approximately 15 seconds later, the cruiser was not able to maintain control due to the faulty control fin and was lost,” the statement reads.

The Air Force has now launched three of its four Boeing-produced X-51A vehicles. No decision has been made on when or even if the fourth will be tested.

“It is unfortunate that a problem with this subsystem caused a termination before we could light the Scramjet engine,” said Charlie Brink, the Air Force Research Laboratory's X-51A program manager. “All our data showed we had created the right conditions for engine ignition and we were very hopeful to meet our test objectives.”

In its statement, AFRL noted that the control subsystem on this X-51A had “proven reliable”in the Air Force's most successful hypersonic flight to date, a May 2010 test during which the Waverider flew for more than three minutes.

Inside the Navy reports this week that a service official is countering reports that the Littoral Combat Ship is failing to meet requirements as it nears its deployment date. Here's an excerpt from the story:

Vice Adm. Tom Copeman, commander of Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet, told reporters in an Aug. 7 phone conference that LCS had been pushed hard in recent tests and studies, but the ship and its mission packages were still meeting all the goals for the program and for Freedom's (LCS-1) spring deployment to Singapore.

War games, exercises and more have been conducted throughout the year "to make sure that we have all things associated with LCS correct, including, do we have the right number of people? Do they have the right skill set? Does the shore training infrastructure support our concept of how we're going to man them and operate them in the future?" Copeman said.

Reports that the ship was not performing up to standards are misleading, he said. "If the ship and the mission packages and the people that are assigned to the mission packages are in the same port at the same time and the port's able to support the movement of them, then we can meet the requirement of shipping a mission package out in 96 hours," he said.

But a war game earlier this year "took some excursions from that" and, for example, looked at what might happen if the ship needed to switch mission packages at a port other than the one to which it is forward-deployed, Copeman said. Not having the new mission module pieces waiting in their shipping containers on land meant that that mission package swap took longer than the 96-hour limit.

"We've been fairly critical because this is an important program for us," he added.

There are also ongoing questions about the size of the ship's core crew, but Copeman said the Navy was sticking with its original plan for now and would monitor performance during the Singapore deployment.

A Congressional Research Service report issued last Friday and obtained by Secrecy News quotes from an Aug. 2 Navy information paper submitted to CRS that provides further details on LCS's deployment readiness:

1. ASSERTION: The Mission Package quick-swap concept is dead.

RESPONSE: Each LCS will deploy with the Mission Package (MP) required to accomplish the Combatant Commander (COCOM)-directed missions. As expected, if COCOMs direct a MP swap, materiel staging and personnel movement will need to be planned and coordinated in advance. The physical swap of MP equipment can occur in less than 96 hours, as the requirement dictates.

2. ASSERTION: Planners originally envisaged LCS as a replacement for Frigates, Minesweepers, and Patrol Boats, but new assessments conclude that the ships are not equal to the legacy ships.

RESPONSE: While LCS will provide the capabilities and conduct the missions currently performed by the FFG, MCM and PC type ships, LCS is not a direct class replacement for any of these. It is a new ship type with distinct capabilities. LCS with its mission packages will provide equal or greater capability than the legacy platforms whose missions it is assuming.

3. ASSERTION: LCS vessels cannot successfully perform three other core missions envisioned for them-forward presence, sea control or power projection.

RESPONSE: LCS will be able to perform all of the missions for which she was built. As the ships transition from research and development assets to operational Fleet units, the ongoing efforts to determine the infrastructure requirements and sustainment processes will be implemented and provide the requisite support to enable the successful execution of these missions.

4. ASSERTION: Key failure is inability to effectively defend against ASCMs.

RESPONSE: LCS, with its 3-D air search radar and highly effective Rolling Airframe Missile, is at least as capable against the cruise missile threat as the CIWS-equipped FFG 7 and significantly more capable that the Avenger class MCM and Cyclone Class PC, which have no self-defense anti-cruise missile capability. LCS capability against ASCMs has been demonstrated with two live firings of RAM from LCS against cruise missile targets, as well as multiple tracking exercises and simulated ASCM engagements within the developmental test window.

5. ASSERTION: CONOPS dictates ships operate at sea for 21 days but ship can only store food for 14 days.

RESPONSE: The LCS CDD gives a 14-day threshold and a 30-day objective for replenishment, which supports the expected 21-day underway cycles referenced in the CONOPS. The CDD, not the CONOPS, is the governing document for all LCS requirements. And as noted earlier, when operating within its normal speed range profile (<15 knots), LCS has comparable endurance to an FFG 7.

6. ASSERTION: Navy is looking at ways to increase ship’s weaponry and lethality.

RESPONSE: Every Navy weapon, sensor, ship and aircraft system is continually being reviewed and evaluated against current and future operations and threats to determine the best mix of total combat power that can be brought to the fight. LCS is no exception to this ongoing process.

7. ASSERTION: Major gap is the replacement of the Non-Line of Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS).

RESPONSE: While the cancellation of NLOS was indeed a setback in bringing the surface-to-surface missile to LCS, the modular design of LCS allows the Navy to select another missile, without costly redesign. As an interim solution, the Griffin missile has already been selected for incorporation until an extended range missile can be competitively awarded.

Based on that, CRS raises these potential issues for lawmakers:

* The Navy initiated LCS program in November 2001 because the Navy concluded that a ship like the LCS would be the most cost-effective way to fill Navy capability gaps for countering mines, small boats, and diesel-electric submarines in littoral waters. In light of subsequent growth in the cost of the LCS sea frame, the Navy's reported intention to increase the LCS crew size (which will increase LCS life cycle operation and support [O&S] costs), and the Navy's assessments of the LCS in recent exercises and war games, is the Navy still confident that the LCS program represents the most cost-effective way for the Navy to counter mines, small boats, and diesel-electric submarines in littoral waters?

* When does the Navy believe the LCS will be fully capable of performing its originally stated primary missions of countering mines, small boats, and diesel electric submarines in littoral waters?

* How, if at all, will LCS procurement and life-cycle O&S costs be affected by Navy actions to address issues identified in recent Navy assessments of the LCS program?

* What missions other than countering mines, small boats, and diesel-electric submarines in littoral waters does the Navy now envisage as being significant missions for the LCS?

* Taking various factors into account -- including but not limited to LCS sea frame procurement costs as they are now understood, LCS life-cycle O&S costs with an enlarged crew, the LCS's originally stated primary missions, other potentially significant missions for the LCS, recent Navy assessments of the LCS program, and the costs (if any) of addressing issues identified in those assessments -- is the Navy still confident that the LCS program is more cost-effective than potential alternative courses of action?

View the full, 98-page CRS report.

In a ceremony today at Joint Base Andrews, MD, Gen. Mark Welsh became the next Air Force chief of staff, taking the reins of the service's air, space and cyber platforms.

Welsh pledged to strengthen the Air Force by focusing on readiness, training and shaping the future.

"We have to shape the future and that will require innovative thinking . . . and that will require modernization," he said.

Welsh, formerly the commander of U. S. Air Forces in Europe, is the service's 20th chief of staff, succeeding Gen. Norton Schwartz. Schwartz has been chief of staff for the past four years.

Welsh noted that air, space and cyber were the platforms of the future and that, in order to be successful in crafting that future, the service would need to focus on its joint and coalition operations.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who spoke at the ceremony, said Welsh would help the service maintain "unquestioned dominance of the sky, dominance of space and dominance of cyberspace."

"I know the Air Force will be in good hands as Mark Welsh takes the controls from Norty. Mark is a straight-shooter, much like John Wayne, whose life-size cutout he has kept in his office for more than 25 years," Panetta said. "I'm depending on Mark to call it like he sees it."

Schwartz, whom Panetta credited with helping the service prepare for a future rife with new security challenges amid fiscal constraints, said Welsh was known for his ironclad credibility as an operator and trainer and will provide the leadership the service needs.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced yesterday that it had notified Congress of a proposed $18 million sale of nine Evolved Seasparrow Missiles (ESSM) and associated equipment to the Southeast Asian country.

According to the DSCA statement:

This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by increasing the ability of Thailand to contribute to regional security and improving interoperability with the U.S. Military in operational and exercise scenarios. It is consistent with U.S. national interests to assist Thailand in developing and maintaining a strong and ready ship self-defense capability which will contribute to the military balance in the area.

ESSM provides ship self-defense capability. The proposed sale will add to Thailand's capability to meet current and future threats from anti-ship weapons.

The proposed [Foreign Military Sale] case includes support equipment, training and technical assistance required for the [Royal Thai Navy] to effectively incorporate the ESSM into its fleet. With this support, RTN will have no difficulty absorbing the ESSM into its frigates and being fully operational.

The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.

Tucson, AZ-based Raytheon Missile Systems and Aberdeen, SD-based BAE Systems would be the prime contractors, according to DSCA.

The Pentagon recently announced a $90 million funding shift from the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle Fund to pay for the transportation, upgrade and maintenance of the vehicles in Afghanistan.

Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale signed the internal reprogramming on July 23.

Several days later, a pair of economists published an essay in Foreign Affairs arguing that MRAPs were not worth the $40 billion spent to rapidly acquire and field them. Money has been flowing steadily to MRAPs since they were first sent to Iraq in 2006, and DOD's most recent reprogramming from the specially configured MRAP fund is only one in a long line of spending measures.

“For infantry units, one life was saved for every seven medium vehicles purchased, at a total cost of around $1 million to $2 million per life saved,” the authors wrote in the July 26 essay. “However, tactical wheeled vehicles with 'heavy' amounts of protection, such as the MRAP (which has higher quality armor and a V-shaped hull designed to improve resistance to IEDs), did not save more lives than medium armored vehicles did, despite their cost of $600,000 apiece -- roughly three times as much as the medium-protected vehicles.”

As reported this week by Inside the Army, which obtained the authors' original research paper, the assertions made by Chris Rohlfs, an assistant professor at Syracuse University, and Ryan Sullivan, an assistant professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, have drawn sharp reactions from the MRAP joint program office.

“The data cited was neither researched nor developed by the JPO,” Barb Hamby, a spokeswoman for the MRAP program, wrote in an Aug. 2 statement to ITA. "Therefore, it would be inappropriate for us to comment. What we can say is that the authors of that data are not privy to the hundreds of extensive test-event classified data, or that collected in the theater of operations. We developed internal data and analyzed it to ensure we delivered the optimal solution to our warfighters in the form of lifesaving MRAPs and [MRAP All-Terrain Vehicles].”

Dakota Wood, a former fellow for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who has closely studied about MRAP procurement, hopes the economists' research will drive further discussion on the subject, and sources have since disclosed to ITA that the authors' research is being looked into by the Government Accountability Office and Capitol Hill.

Senate appropriators aren't quite ready to quit on the Sea-Based X-Band Radar, even though the Pentagon plans to downgrade SBX's operational status beginning in the third quarter of fiscal year 2013.

As the report accompanying the Senate Appropriations Committee's FY-13 defense spending bill -- approved by the panel last week -- states:

The fiscal year 2013 budget request includes no funds to develop and sustain the software necessary to maintain SBX operational capability for ballistic missile defense. The Committee has been informed by the Missile Defense Agency that while SBX will be placed in a limited test support status in fiscal year 2013, SBX remains a critical element of ballistic missile defense and is intended for recall to active operational status as needed, as was demonstrated when North Korea attempted to launch a satellite earlier this year. Therefore, the Committee does not believe it is prudent to neglect software development sustainment and recommends an additional $20,000,000 in Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide only for SBX software development and sustainment.

Here's some background from a Feb. 14 InsideDefense.com story:

Acting Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall called SBX "a large X-band research development radar, primarily." He told reporters during a press briefing yesterday afternoon that the radar system is "very expensive to keep and operate," and officials thought other systems could get similar results for less money. "It's largely an affordability issue where we have other sensors that can fill in the gap," he added.

Accordingly, MDA has recommended subtracting nearly $163 million from the program for FY-13, budgeting instead $9.7 million, according to the agency's justification document. That reduction "reflects a realignment of Department of Defense priorities," the document reads. Additionally, the agency has renamed the SBX project number from "MD46" to "MX46."

According to the White House Office of Management and Budget, "by maintaining the SBX radar as a test asset rather than terminating it, the administration saves at least $500 million over five years while also retaining the ability to recall it to an active, operational status if and when it is needed."

Late last year, MDA awarded a $15 million sole-source contract modification to Boeing to continue providing operations and maintenance services for SBX, according to a Pentagon statement.

The contract for SBX "operations and sustainment services" will be performed in Huntsville, AL, and the period of performance is for the first six months of calendar year 2012, according to the Dec. 13 Defense Department statement.

The Defense Department today released the roster for the Defense Legal Policy Board, a panel chartered earlier this year to provide advice on an array of complex legal policy matters. Former DOD General Counsel Judith Miller will chair the panel, which is launching a review of military justice in combat zones.

"We know that, over the last 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, bad things have happened involving combat excesses and innocent civilians in deployed areas," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta writes in a July 30 memo to the board. "The abuses have been rare among our professional fighting force, but they became huge flash points that threatened to undermine our entire mission and the foundation of our relationship with the host government and its people." For offenses that take place abroad, where U.S. forces are operating alongside civilians, it is "critical that our system of military justice be efficient, fair, dependable and credible," Panetta writes.

The roster and the memo are together here.

Inside the Pentagon broke the news of the board's creation in April. At the time, the Pentagon had no comment on who would serve on the board or the specific matters the panel might address. Speaking to reporters today, DOD General Counsel Jeh Johnson acknowledged the board would likely begin other reviews in the near future, but he declined to be more specific.