The Insider

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January 6, 2011 at 7:01 PM

Defense Secretary Robert Gates just opened his big announcements with a real big one -- his pick for Army chief of staff. That would be Gen. Martin Dempsey.

Dempsey, of course, is head of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command.

Biography here.

More to come.

By Amanda Palleschi
January 6, 2011 at 6:36 PM

Defense Secretary Robert Gates takes to the podium in just a few minutes. We'll be watching and updating the blog as he speaks.

You can also watch live here:

http://www.pentagonchannel.mil/

While you're waiting, check out this story, just filed:

McKeon Concerned About $78 Billion in DOD Budget Cuts

The Pentagon faces $78 billion in cuts to its topline over the next five years, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told lawmakers today, according to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA).

After the meeting with Gates, McKeon told reporters he has “big concerns” about the $78 billion in cuts, which would come on the heels of a $100 billion efficiencies initiative that Gates launched last year. While the efficiencies effort aims to shift funds within the Defense Department's topline, the $78 billion “goes back to the treasury,” McKeon said.

“We went in there worried about $100 billion and now I'm worried about $178 billion,” McKeon said. “We're fighting two wars, we have things going on in China, in Russia, in North Korea . . . is this the time to make these kinds of cuts?”

McKeon added that he had only “skimmed the surface” of Gates' fiscal year 2012 spending plan, but he cautioned against cutting DOD's budget to reduce the federal deficit.

“There's a whole lot we really need to look at and I'm really concerned about the depth of some of these cuts.”

By John Liang
January 6, 2011 at 4:37 PM

The Missile Defense Agency has extended the due date for industry responses to a request for information on "new concepts to support the potential development of an airborne advanced sensor to improve acquisition, tracking, and discrimination in large raid scenarios," according to an updated Federal Business Opportunities notice released this morning. Specifically:

This concept notionally consists of a pod configuration that is mountable on multiple unmanned airborne platforms. The MDA is interested in obtaining information on concepts, subsystems, and components that might comprise an advanced sensor to support a potential 2-3 year development program that culminates in a rigorous test campaign to support a production decision in late FY-16.

The original Dec. 23 notice said responses were due "no later than 30 calendar days after the original posting of this request." Responses are now due Feb. 10.

By Jason Sherman
January 5, 2011 at 8:38 PM

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is heading to Congress tomorrow to preview key elements of the Pentagon's fiscal year 2012 spending proposal for select lawmakers, according to sources on Capitol Hill.

The briefing is expected to clarify DOD's position on a number of programs that Pentagon leaders decided months ago to terminate but technically are still alive, such as the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. Gates is also expected to unveil the results of his effort to find more than $100 billion over five years in efficiencies, redirecting some Pentagon spending from bloated overhead operations to the weapons investment accounts.

Bloomberg yesterday reported the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Pentagon have agreed to a $554 billion FY-12 base budget request, a sum the news service called “modest growth.”

But Gordon Adams, American University professor and a senior OMB official during the Clinton administration, argues that Bloomberg “has been spun” and that a $554 billion topline reflects not an increase but a cut:

A DOD base budget of $554 billion would only be growth over FY 2011′s budget if the defense budget for FY 2011 were frozen at the FY 2010 level of $531 billion.  But this would be a significant cut of more than 3% this year from the $549 billion the Pentagon asked for and zero growth over FY 2010.  Figure there will be inflation; that’s a budget cut.

Adams notes that $549 billion is the FY-12 target that DOD planners used last year to develop their investment plans:

Now the FY 2012 number looks different – $554 billion is less than one percent growth over DOD’s budget request for FY 2011.  Less than one percent doesn’t even keep up with inflation, which OMB projects at over 1.5% and DOD projects (for defense) at over 2%.  That’s a cut from the planned and programmed baseline, which is exactly what Gates did not want when he announced his efficiencies initiative last summer.

By John Liang
January 5, 2011 at 6:41 PM

A Lockheed Martin official this morning gave more details on the reasons why a pair of Airborne Laser Test Bed intercept attempts of a boosting ballistic missile target went awry last year.

During one attempt, the problem "involved a software issue in our beam control, fire control system that has since been corrected and the other one involved an issue with a valve on a laser subsystem," Doug Graham, vice president of advanced programs at Lockheed's Strategic and Missile Defense Systems business unit, said, adding: "Both of those have been corrected. We've got missions planned for this year, in which we'll be able to validate the corrective actions we've implemented to fix those anomalies."

When asked about the software glitch, Graham said:

We basically had an error in a single frame of software that occurred at a critical time that could have happened literally like a millisecond earlier or a millisecond later and it would have had no impact on our ability to engage and destroy the target. And so that required us to make a relatively straightforward software fix. It hadn't manifested itself in any of the previous flights that we'd done, and we have since done a whole bunch of testing in our software development lab here and on the aircraft down at Edwards [Air Force Base, CA] to convince ourselves that that's not gonna happen again.

As Inside Missile Defense reported in November:

Despite the fact that ALTB did manage to shoot down a boosting missile target last February, under its current form the Airborne Laser does not reflect a weapon the military could realistically use, according to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz.

While the intercept "was a magnificent technological achievement . . . the reality . . . is that this does not reflect something that is operationally viable," Schwartz said at a Feb. 23 House Armed Services Committee hearing. The general added that the future of military laser technology is in solid-state lasers and not the chemical-based one that was carried aboard the ABL.

"The real innovation there is essentially to use that platform as a way to test high-powered laser concepts," Zachary Lemnios, director of the Pentagon's Defense Research and Engineering office, said in a Feb. 23 interview. "And we have a joint technology office that's looking at the technical strategy for how we might use that: What's the right technical thread? We went out to see the ABL about a month ago at Edwards [Air Force Base, CA]. It's a remarkable platform. You sort of have to look at it like a nuclear submarine. It is high-power optics. This enormous power supply with an enormous laser in the back end, but it's also a chemical plant."

Lemnios called ABL "a very complex intersection of a combination of high-power laser optics, control systems -- much of which could be used for other than just high-power lasing. It could be used for alternate test beds for other concepts that we're looking at. So we have the joint technology office that's actually looking at that jointly with [the Missile Defense Agency] and the services to try to map that path forward."

By Cid Standifer
January 4, 2011 at 7:15 PM

The end for the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program may be nigh, but program officials don't think its long-anticipated demise has anything to do with the vehicle's recent performance in testing.

Program spokesman Manny Pacheco told Inside the Navy today that the vehicle is on track to surpass its threshold for mean time between mission failures. The low-end goal is 16.4 hours between failures; Pacheco said he thinks they'll hit the low 20s.

According to Pacheco, the vehicle has so far completed about 300 hours of the 500 hours of testing planned. He estimated the testing itself will be finished in less than three weeks, after which the results will go to a scoring conference. Pacheco said the program is on track to have its final results ready by early February.

“We're chugging along,” he added. “We don't have any indications that there would be anything in testing right now that would lead people to believe that we're not doing what we need to do.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates sounded what some saw as an early death knell for EFV at the Sea-Air-Space conference last year, where he questioned whether the Marines would ever again need to launch a full-out amphibious assault. Former Marine Corps Commandant James Conway told Inside the Navy in October that if the program is canceled, the service will have to go back to the drawing board because the need for an EFV-like platform would remain, though requirements might be toned down.

By Tony Bertuca
January 4, 2011 at 4:52 PM

Defense analysts at the Lexington Institute have been tough on the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle lately -- one official even went as far as to call the vehicle program "doomed" -- but the service hasn't been shy about defending its strategy. This back-and-forth has been playing out online as industry prepares to respond to the GCV technology-development phase request for proposals on Jan. 21.

The latest volley comes from Lt. Col. Mark B. Elfendahl, chief of Training and Doctrine Command's joint and Army concepts division, who wrote a response to criticism leveled by Daniel Goure, a Lexington Institute analyst who questioned the Army's need to invest in the GCV, expected to cost $10 million per vehicle.

"Ground combat soldiers bear the brunt of war today and will do so tomorrow. America's adversaries have made the conscious decision not to fight the U.S. in the air, or at sea, and with good reason," Elfendahl wrote in comments that were posted on the Lexington Institute's website. "The GCV will be a well-used, highly challenged, effective and efficient means to employ U.S. soldiers around the world. It will field the latest technology to provide growth potential, enhanced survivability, and operational adaptability. Developing the GCV is an essential step toward providing the necessary capabilities for U.S. forces to engage and to respond to the wide variety of threats in our future."

But Lexington's Goure argued in a Dec. 8 blog entry that the Army faced greater challenges that trumped the need for a new ground vehicle such as networking the force or improving precision strike capabilities.

"While there is value to be had in a highly survivable vehicle that can transport an entire infantry squad while also carrying 'heavy' weapons, such a capability does not seem to address the Army’s biggest challenges," he wrote. "In fact, building another massive, fifty to seventy ton vehicle does not seem the right solution to the problem of deploying into austere locations and sustaining operations in immature theaters. But even if it were, the dominant problem for the Army is not how to get a nine man squad from a Forward Operating Base to the scene of a tactical engagement but whether it will be able to conduct expeditionary warfare in the future or operate in a high-intensity threat environment."

A focus of the GCV program is to deliver the capacity to transport nine soldiers (a full squad) to combat zones, a capability the Bradley Fighting Vehicle does not have. The Stryker can carry a full squad, but it is less armored and soldiers must deploy further away from the fight.

Ultimately, Goure wrote, the Army should focus on modernizing its current fleet of armored vehicles.

"While the re-released Ground Combat Vehicle RFP could be the start of a revolution in how the Army develops requirements and acquires weapons systems it may not be the right place to invest lots of scarce resources," he wrote. "The Army already has a massive fleet of armored combat systems virtually all of which can or are being modernized. The opportunity costs of investing in another ground combat system seem to be just too high at this point in time."

The exchange between Goure and Elfendahl marks the second time the Army has publicly responded to criticism of its GCV solicitation. The back and forth began when Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, the deputy commanding general of TRADOC and director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, responded to Lexington's chief operating officer, Loren Thompson, who posted a blog entry on Forbes.com on Dec. 2 calling the entire program "doomed" due to high costs and contract changes that will disincentivize industry. The GCV technology-development phase solicitation calls for a "fixed-price incentive-fee" arrangement in which industry has been given a ceiling of $450 million. If winning companies come in below that cost, the government will pay them 20 percent of any money saved. If they come in over budget, however, contractors will be responsible for any additional costs.

Thompson expounded on his reasoning in a Dec. 3 interview with Inside the Army.

"The development schedule is too aggressive and it yields a unit cost that is too expensive," he said at the time. "Yet the contractors are under-incentivized to perform. You have to keep in mind that most of these contractors are conflicted here. They have existing armored vehicle lines that are doing well and generating strong margins. And here comes the Army with a new contract vehicle and a new structure of incentives that does not compare favorably at all. It's expecting these contractors to spend a lot of their own money to get through the technology-development phase and be poised to win. It's also expecting them to keep the program sold on Capitol Hill and it just hasn't given them a good reason for doing those things."

Vane, who helped develop the GCV's requirements, provided the Lexington Institute with a written response on Dec. 6, which the think tank posted on its website.

"Affordability arguments are always related to how much money one has and what the effect is on the operation," he wrote. "It is hard to argue that any force other than the Army (which includes Special Forces) does as much engagement with our friends and enemies and makes as much difference. So, $10 million for nine soldiers that actually engage the enemy directly in this conflict and nearly every conceivable conflict in the future is not a pretty good deal? It think it compares very favorably to a joint strike fighter, a littoral combat ship, or a submarine."

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli recently appeared at a pre-proposal GCV conference in Dearborn, MI, to assure industry officials of the service's commitment to the effort.

"The bottom line is this: the Ground Combat Vehicle [request for proposals] represents a great opportunity,” Chiarelli was quoted as saying in a Dec. 18 statement from the Army. "There is a real need for this capability now and in the future. The challenge we face is providing that needed capability, under an accelerated time line and in a fiscally constrained environment. This can only be achieved by working together. I believe this large gathering -- on a Saturday, a week before Christmas -- clearly demonstrates our shared commitment."

By John Liang
January 4, 2011 at 4:32 PM

The Joint Staff recently promulgated an updated "Joint Training Policy" that "guides joint commanders and senior leaders of joint agencies and programs in developing and coordinating joint training programs for their assigned staffs and organizations, component forces and staffs, and assigned forces to support capabilities-based readiness."

The purpose of the Nov. 19 update was:

To establish the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff policy and guidance for the use of the Joint Training System (JTS) in planning, conducting, and assessing joint training. Training in the context of this instruction aligns with the Department of Defense Strategic Plan for Transforming DOD Training . . . and includes joint training, joint education . . . and job-performance aiding.

By Thomas Duffy
January 4, 2011 at 3:25 PM

The Obama White House is asking all federal departments and agencies to wrap up by Jan. 28 an initial assessment of how they safeguard national security information. The internal reviews, which began last November, were spurred by the massive release of internal national security documents by the website WikiLeaks.

In a Jan. 3 memo, Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew said the director of the Information Security Oversight Office and the National Counterintelligence Executive within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will evaluate and assist the departments and agencies in their compliance. "Their support will include periodic on-site reviews of agency compliance where appropriate," Lew said.

Lew's memo lays out what each department and agency should include in its review:

1. Assess what your agency has done or plans to do to address any perceived vulnerabilities, weaknesses, or gaps on automated systems in the post-WikiLeaks environment.

2. Assess weakness or gaps with respect to the attached list of questions, and formulate plans to resolve the issues or to shift or acquire resources to address those weaknesses or gaps.

3. Assess your agency's plans for changes and upgrades to current classified networks, systems, applications, databases, websites, and online collaboration environments as

well as for all new classified networks, systems, applications, databases, websites or online collaboration environments that are in the planning, implementation, or testing phases -in terms of the completeness and projected effectiveness of all types of security controls called for by applicable law and guidance (including but limited to those issued by the National Security Staff, the Committee on National Security Systems, the National Institute for Standards and Technology).

4. Assess all security, counterintelligence, and information assurance policy and regulatory documents that have been established by and for your department or agency.

By John Liang
January 3, 2011 at 4:07 PM

Rolling into the New Year, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn wants Pentagon leaders to maintain their focus on adhering to high ethical standards. According to a Dec. 21 memo, Lynn writes:

As DoD personnel, we occupy special positions of trust with the American people. Ethical conduct and moral responsibility must be a high priority for each of us as we carry out our official duties. Even the slightest lapses in our ethical decision-making can erode the confidence placed in us by the public. This memorandum reiterates my expectation that all DoD personnel will adhere to the highest ethical standards at all times.

To sustain an ethical culture that inspires public confidence, we must strive to faithfully fulfill our financial, civic, and ethical duties. Fundamental values like integrity, impartiality, fairness, and respect must drive our actions, and these values must be reinforced by holding ourselves and each other accountable for mistakes or wrongdoing. Each of us must also adhere to the ethics laws, regulations, and principles that govern participation in official matters where those matters intersect with our personal and financial interests.

Accordingly, all DoD personnel must be familiar with, and observe, all applicable ethics laws and regulations, including, the Federal conflict of interest statutes, the regulatory Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch (5 C.F.R. part 2635), and the DoD supplemental rules in the Joint Ethics Regulation (DoD 5500.7-R). In addition to strict compliance with laws, rules, and regulations, we must also vigilantly avoid any action that gives rise to public concern about the integrity of DoD business processes and decisions. Honorable intentions or personal ethos cannot justify conduct that creates public doubt about the propriety and fairness of our programs and operations.

Ethical decision-making, however, is not solely a function of determining whether a law or regulation permits you to do something. You should also consider the appearance of your actions -whether they set the right example for peers and subordinates, and how they portray the Department in the eyes of the public. This is especially true for supervisors and managers, whom I expect to lead by example and whom I charge with creating an ethical culture in the workplace. We simply cannot tolerate ethical deviations or shortcuts.

Please be mindful of your ethical obligations. If you have questions, do not hesitate to ask your supervisor, commanding officer, ethics counselor, or others in positions of authority.

By Sebastian Sprenger
December 31, 2010 at 4:50 PM

It looks like 2010 will pass without a decision by the U.S. government on the Medium Extended Air Defense System. Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter's staff fired off an e-mail to German and Italian defense officials earlier this week, we're told, telling them Defense Secretary Robert Gates still had not made a final call on whether he was willing to ask Congress for an extra $600 million required for the program.

Gates is putting the finishing touches on the fiscal year 2012 program objective memorandum -- probably his last -- before it gets rolled into the administration's budget submission in early February. The MEADS decision now is expected some time in January, presumably in the earlier part of the month.

Carter had told the two partner nations in the trinational project a few months ago that a U.S. decision on the way ahead with MEADS would be made by the end of the year. All three countries would have to put up extra money to plug a funding shortfall of about $1 billion for the program's development phase. A new round of negotiations likely would be required either way, we're told.

By John Liang
December 30, 2010 at 6:00 PM

The Navy yesterday made its "dual-buy" approach to acquiring Littoral Combat Ships official with the award of contracts to Lockheed Martin and Austal USA. Each company will build 10 ships apiece between fiscal years 2010 and 2015. According to a service statement:

The amount awarded to Lockheed Martin Corp. for fiscal 2010 littoral combat ships is $436,852,639. The amount awarded to Austal USA for the fiscal 2010 littoral combat ships is $432,069,883.

Both contracts also include line items for nine additional ships, subject to Congressional appropriation of each year's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program requirements. When all 10 ships of each block buy are awarded, the value of the ship construction portion of the two contracts would be $3,620,625,192 for Lockheed Martin Corp., and $3,518,156,851 for Austal USA. The average cost of both variants including government-furnished equipment and margin for potential cost growth across the five year period is $440 million per ship. The pricing for these ships falls well below the escalated average Congressional cost cap of $538 million.

"The awards represent a unique and valuable opportunity to lock in the benefits of competition and provide needed ships to our fleet in a timely and extraordinarily cost effective manner," said Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus.

This award is a unique opportunity to maximize the buying power on the LCS Program by leveraging the highly effective competition between the bidders. Each contractor's 10-ship bids reflect mature designs, investments made to improve performance, stable production, and continuous labor learning at their respective shipyards. The award was based on limited competition between teams led by Lockheed Martin and Austal USA. Under these contracts, both shipbuilders will also deliver a technical data package as part of the dual award, allowing the government a wide range of viable alternatives for effective future competition.

This approach, which is self-financed within the program by adding a year to the procurement and utilizing a portion of the greater than $2 billion total savings (throughout the Future Years Defense Program), enables the Navy to efficiently produce these ships at an increased rate and meet operational requirements sooner.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead praised the Navy's plan to add both ship designs to the fleet: "The LCS is uniquely designed to win against 21st century threats in coastal waters posed by increasingly capable submarines, mines and swarming small craft. Both designs provide the capabilities our Navy needs, and each offers unique features that will provide fleet commanders with a high level of flexibility in employing these ships."

The innovation and willingness to seize opportunities displayed in this LCS competition reflect exactly the improvements to 'the way we do business' in order to deliver better value to the taxpayer and greater capability to the warfighter. Moreover, the Navy's LCS acquisition strategy meets the spirit and intent of the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009 and reflects the Navy's commitment to affordability. The benefits of competition, serial production, employment of mature technologies, design stability, fixed-price contracting, commonality, and economies of scale will provide a highly affordable ship construction program.

"The rigor and diligence of the source selection process has resulted in the acquisition of quality, capable ships at fair prices," said Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Sean Stackley. "This dual award strategy exemplifies the Navy's compliance with Secretary Gates' and Under Secretary Carter's direction to improve the buying power of the Defense Department. Both teams have shown cost control on their second ships, and we look forward to the delivery of these capable fleet assets in the future."

The Navy remains committed to a 55-ship program and the LCS is needed to fill critical, urgent warfighting requirements gaps that exist today. The LCS Program is required to establish and maintain U.S. Navy dominance in the littorals and sea lanes of communication choke points around the world. The LCS Program operational requirements have been virtually unchanged since the program's inception in 2002 and the both hull forms will meet the Navy's operational warfighting requirements.

Check out InsideDefense.com's recent LCS coverage:

New Continuing Resolution Authorizes LCS Dual Buy

As LCS Deal Passes House, Navy Says No More Extensions

Lockheed, Austal Push Back LCS Deadline To End Of Year

CBO: Navy Now Estimates LCS Price At $490 Million Each Under Dual Buy

By John Liang
December 23, 2010 at 8:12 PM

The Missile Defense Agency this week issued revised request for proposals documentation for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense development and sustainment contract competition. The original RFP, which was first released on Dec. 2, includes a decision to change the effort's performance period from 10 years to seven.

Among the revised documents included in the Dec. 22 notice posted on Federal Business Opportunities are an updated statement of work, transition strategy, compliance matrix, industry comments and clarifications, and a Ground-Based Interceptor "section tracker."

Click here to view them.

By John Liang
December 23, 2010 at 5:10 PM

While the Senate may have ratified the follow-on Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty this week despite the opposition of more than a quarter of its members, don't think for a second that the 26 senators who voted against the pact will be off the hook, at least as far as the Truman National Security Project is concerned.

The organization sent letters to each of those senators stating the group was "extremely disappointed in your decision to sweep aside the strong advice of military and security experts by campaigning against the ratification of the New START treaty in the lame duck session. In light of your efforts to undermine American security for political gain, this is the type of Christmas card you should expect to receive this year."

Dear Senator,

We are thinking of you during this difficult time.

We would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your brave campaign to defeat the New START Treaty. In our continued efforts to get our hands on a nuclear weapon, you have been a real ally, and a true friend. We are disappointed that New START has been passed by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of your peers, but we take comfort in knowing that you did your best, and that you were by our side from the beginning.

Now that the Russo-American relationship will be further strengthened and Russia's stockpile of nuclear weapons will again be monitored by U.S. forces, we will have to come up with new strategies to obtain a nuclear weapon. We hope we can count on you to continue to undermine American security.

With gratitude,

Osama Bin Laden

Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah

And Other World Terrorists

By John Liang
December 22, 2010 at 8:26 PM

The Senate's approval of the follow-on Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty this afternoon by a 71-26 vote is somewhat "bittersweet" for arms control, according to an essay just published by the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies. The pact, according to analysts Nikolai Sokov and Miles Pomper, "will aid strategic stability and international disarmament, bolster President Barack Obama's international and domestic standing, and further contribute to the effort to 'reset' U.S.-Russian relations on a more constructive path."

However:

Nonetheless, the issues raised during its consideration, the concessions granted to win its approval, and the closeness and urgency of the vote, indicate the limits and nature of the arms control and disarmament opportunities that the Obama administration will be able to undertake in the final two years of the president's first term. Indeed, those opportunities will narrow even further next year when Republicans will hold five more seats in the Senate and a few of the minority of Republicans who supported the treaty will have retired. The result is that President Obama's effort to build a world free of nuclear weapons, announced with much fanfare in Prague less than two years ago, is likely to be sidetracked for the time being, if not shelved altogether.

One setback to that effort may have occurred even before senators cast their new vote on the treaty in the weapons complex. In seeking to win Republican support, Obama pledged to devote well over $180 billion over 10 years to the modernization and maintenance of the complex that manufactures US nuclear weapons and the missiles, bombers, and submarines that deliver them a sizable investment that may lead some states to question the sincerity of the administration's pursuit of nuclear disarmament.

The second casualty is likely to be US ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The United States is among a handful of countries that still must ratify this ban on nuclear weapons tests for it to enter into force. In his Prague speech, Obama had pledged to again seek Senate ratification of the treaty. In 1999, the Clinton administration had failed to convince a Republican-controlled Senate to muster the required two-thirds majority for approval. With the Republican minority growing and becoming even more ideological, the Obama administration is unlikely to want to tempt defeat again. Moreover, in agreeing to the modernization pledges as part of the New START ratification process, administration officials have already traded away what was seen as their potential trump card in any CTBT negotiation with Senate Republicans.

Finally , the conditions, understandings, and declarations attached to the treaty's resolution of ratification as well as proposed (if defeated) amendments to the treaty itself, indicate the pressure and limits Obama administration officials would have to operate within should they seek to carry out their desire for a more ambitious series of cuts in the US and Russian nuclear arsenals. New START in many ways merely retains the status quo. The reduction in nuclear weapons it entails is very modest—to 1,550 warheads from 2,200 in the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT, also known as the Moscow Treaty). The new treaty also does not solve any of the truly contentious issues that dominate the US-Russian arms control agenda—missile defense, conventional long-range weapons, uploading capability, nuclear weapons stockpiles, or non-strategic nuclear weapons, which negotiators have expressed a willingness to tackle, but which were postponed until the next stage. Essentially, the main purposes of New START are two: first, to restore the transparency and verification regime that expired with the expiration of START I in December 2009; and, second, to provide a stable and predictable environment for negotiating a new, more ambitious treaty. Given the modest goals of New START, the drama surrounding ratification in the United States is nothing short of perplexing and demonstrates that emotions and politics, rather than impassioned analysis, dominated debates.