The Insider

The director of national intelligence is required to submit a biennial report to lawmakers this week on the "nuclear aspirations of non-state entities, nuclear weapons and related programs in non-nuclear-weapons states and countries not parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and certain foreign persons," according to congressional statute.

That report, due Sept. 1, should include:

(1) A statement of the number of nuclear weapons possessed by such country or non-state entity.

(2) An estimate of the total number of nuclear weapons that such country or non-state entity seeks to obtain and, in the case of such non-state entity, an assessment of the extent to which such non-state entity is seeking to develop a nuclear weapon or device or radiological dispersion device.

(3) A description of the technical characteristics of any nuclear weapons possessed by such country or non-state entity.

(4) A description of nuclear weapons designs available to such country or non-state entity.

(5) A description of any sources of assistance with respect to nuclear weapons design provided to or by such country or non-state entity and, in the case of assistance provided by such country or non-state entity, a description of to whom such assistance was provided.

(6) An assessment of the annual capability of such country and non-state entity to produce new or newly designed nuclear weapons.

(7) A description of the type of fissile materials used in any nuclear weapons possessed by such country or non-state entity.

(8) A) description of the location and production capability of any fissile materials production facilities in such country or controlled by such non-state entity, the current status of any such facilities, and any plans by such country or non-state entity to develop such facilities.

(9) An identification of the source of any fissile materials used by such country or non-state entity, if such materials are not produced in facilities referred to in paragraph (8).

(10) An assessment of the intentions of such country or non-state entity to leverage civilian nuclear capabilities for a nuclear weapons program.

(11) A description of any delivery systems available to such country or non-state entity and an assessment of whether nuclear warheads have been mated, or there are plans for such warheads to be mated, to any such delivery system.

(12) An assessment of the physical security of the storage facilities for nuclear weapons in such country or controlled by such non-state entity.

(13) An assessment of whether such country is modernizing or otherwise improving the safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile of such country.

(14) An assessment of the industrial capability and capacity of such country or non-state entity to produce nuclear weapons.

(15) In the case of a country, an assessment of the policy of such country on the employment and use of nuclear weapons.

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments this morning held a briefing on sequestration, with senior fellow Todd Harrison presenting "a comprehensive account-by-account and outlays analysis of its potential impact on" the Pentagon budget, according to the organization's website.

CSBA also released a "backgrounder" document that "discusses the overall direction of the budget request, its alignment with the new strategic guidance, and the details on how sequestration would be implemented.  It also evaluates the impact sequestration would have on different types of accounts and highlights some of the major budgetary issues facing the Department even if sequestration is avoided," the website states.

To view the CSBA backgrounder, click here.

And to be kept abreast of InsideDefense.com's coverage of Pentagon spending, check out our Defense Budget Alert email notification service.

On Friday, InsideDefense.com reported on the results of an investigation into the causes of a crash of an MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft in Morocco this past April:

A fatal MV-22 Osprey crash in Morocco this past spring was due largely to pilots' mistakes, but wind was also a key factor, according to a Marine Corps investigation report, which recommends no disciplinary action against the pilots and concludes the aircraft's flight manual had inadequate guidance for the circumstances involved.

On April 11, the pilots "made a decision to turn and take off with a tail wind so that they wouldn't endanger any of the folks that were in the rest of the landing zone," Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle, the Marine Corps' top aviation official, told reporters today. With the wind at his tail, the pilot began to rotate the nacelles forward from helicopter mode to airplane mode, which moved the Osprey's center of gravity forward.

"So what happens now is that the aircraft turns; the nacelles roll forward; it begins to pitch forward; the wind catches the tail here, exacerbates the motion and pitches the nose down," Schmidle said. "While all that is happening, the control stick doesn't have enough movement at this point to move . . . the horizontal stabilizer on that tail up enough to get the nose positioned to come up. So what happens then is the aircraft now is committed, and it flies into the ground." Two Marines in the rear of the aircraft were killed. The pilot and copilot were seriously injured.

A significant factor in the crash was the pilots' failure to follow the flight manual's procedures for hovering in helicopter-mode and conducting low-speed flight, the report states, citing the 180-degree hover turn that placed the aircraft directly into a tail wind. The failure to correct for a nose-down attitude during the hover-turn made the situation more severe, the report states. Investigators also found the aircraft's nacelles were moved too far forward.

"The mishap aircraft co-pilot failed to adjust stick control margin during the pedal turn, preventing him from having enough aft cyclic stick control margin to overcome the effects of a nose-down attitude and transitioning to aircraft mode with a significant tail wind," the investigating officer wrote. The commanding general of the 2nd Marine Air Wing later recommended revising that wording to say the co-pilot "failed to adjust nacelles aft during the pedal turn."

We originally only had a 27-page version of the redacted report, but have since obtained a much more detailed analysis -- more than 400 pages -- that includes many enclosures.

Click here to view the more-detailed, 20-megabyte report.

The Army and Marine Corps are expected to award up to three $65 million contracts Friday for the next developmental phase of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, though the award date is subject to change, according to government and industry sources.

As reported by Inside the Army in June, industry teams competing for the program expect the winners to be announced on Aug. 24, though the awards were initially expected earlier this summer.

So far, six industry teams have emerged as bidders for the JLTV's 27-month engineering and manufacturing development phase: BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Navistar Defense, Oshkosh Defense, AM General in a solo bid, and AM General partnering with General Dynamics.

Officials from several companies involved consider the JLTV a must-win proposition given that armored vehicle spending is set to decrease well below levels seen at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The JLTV is intended to be a phased replacement of the humvee, which has been deemed unsafe to operate in environments with improvised explosive devices.

The services expect to procure a total of more than 55,000 vehicles.

This morning's issue of Inside the Navy notes that the service has formally established the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System in Romania as part of the Obama administration's Phased Adaptive Approach to ballistic missile defense in Europe, according to an Aug. 14 memo from the office of the chief of naval operations.

The memo, which stems from the Romanian Ballistic Missile Defense Agreement signed last September, establishes a subject shore command effective Oct. 1, complete with a commanding officer. The Navy hopes to install an Aegis Ashore site in Romania by 2015 and a site in Poland by 2018.

The memo itself is now available on InsideDefense.com.

Some other recent Aegis Ashore news:

MDA Looking To Industry For Information On Future Aegis Ashore Site (Inside the Navy, July 16)

The Missile Defense Agency is looking to industry to determine interest and capability to deliver an Aegis Ashore site in Poland in 2018 as part of the third phase of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, the Obama administration's plan for defending the continent from ballistic missiles, according to a Federal Business Opportunities notice.

The research will help MDA identify potential sources and experience to fulfill requirements, develop an acquisition strategy, identify barriers to competition and determine documentation needed to support the program and proposal preparations, according to a July 11 request for information.

Aegis Ashore builds upon the already-fielded Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System assets and adapts a sea-based weapon system for use on land. This will be accomplished by adapting the Aegis Weapons System and Vertical Launching System to the land-based concept.

The White House is racing against time to implement the first elements of its export control reform initiative before the presidential election this year, which will require the administration to notify Congress of the intended changes, Inside U.S. Trade reports this morning. Further:

Standing in the way is the lack of an agreement with the committees of jurisdiction on how detailed the notifications should be and the considerable substantive work that remains to be done on the required regulations, which also need to be cleared interagency, according to informed sources.

The administration is targeting September for the first notification of changes to export control rules for aircraft and engines, but in light of the current obstacles, that could slip to the lame-duck session of Congress, sources said. This may raise additional obstacles for any notification, particularly if President Obama is not reelected, according to these sources. The administration has been working on the export control reform initiative for about two years after it was announced by then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in April 2010.

Under the best of circumstances, sources said the administration would be able to notify the transfer of items in the aircraft and engine categories from the U.S. Munitions List (USML) to the Commerce Control List (CCL) before the election.

Traditionally, such notifications under Section 38(f) of the Arms Export Control Act have been made while Congress is in session, though it is not required by law, sources said. That puts the administration on a tight schedule because there are eight legislative days in September and five in October.

Notification of the aircraft and engine category revisions would only represent a fraction of the technical work that has been done on the overall USML rewrite. A number of categories, such as Category VII covering military vehicles, have been published in proposed form. But seven of the 21 USML categories are still to be published as proposed rules and are still moving through the interagency review process, administration officials have said.

Given that it is unlikely the administration and Congress will reach agreement in the next few weeks on how to present the notifications, the administration will likely face a political decision on whether to force the issue by making them formally without such a consensus, sources said. At this point, the administration has not made any final decisions internally on how to proceed beyond working intensively on the final rules that need to be part of the notification, a senior administration official said this week.

Previously, Undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Eric Hirschhorn implied that the administration would proceed to formal notifications quickly instead of engaging in a long pre-notification dialogue.

But proceeding with a formal notification without at least congressional acquiescence will require the administration to weigh the potential political fallout from such a step. Congressional staff has hinted that this could involve legislation stopping the export control initiative, or denying the administration the funds in the appropriations process to implement the initiative.

At this point, the discussions have largely been with congressional staff, which has demanded more detail in the notifications than the administration has said it can practically provide. Some sources said the staff does not appear to have much political guidance from its principals, but others said the House staff stance reflects the skepticism that House members on both sides of the aisle have displayed to the export control reform initiative.

In response to congressional staff concerns, the administration has scaled back some of the reform provisions in subsequent proposed rules. For example, in a June 19 proposed rule further explaining how items will transition from the USML to the CCL, the administration placed congressional notification requirements on the export of items beyond a certain dollar threshold that are located in a special 600 series of export control classification numbers where former USML items will be placed on the CCL.

Sources said that the administration will ultimately have to develop a strategy for elevating this issue to members of Congress, but they said there has been no decision on such an end game. The administration official said it is premature to talk about how this will be handled "until we've actually come to a final opinion internally on all of this."

Private-sector sources said that legislation to block or hinder the reform effort is highly unlikely given that it would be hard to get an agreement between the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate committees of jurisdiction and secure a legislative vehicle to move it in the limited number of days left in the session.

One source noted that in the Senate, Republican critics of the export control initiative have so far failed to find a member willing to champion language in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would limit the administration's flexibility in how to notify the transfers from the USML to the CCL. Such language is included in the NDAA version approved by the House earlier this year but the Senate has not yet acted on its version of the bill. It is expected to do so before Congress leaves this year, and by that time, it is possible that export control reform critics will have found a member to offer this language as a floor amendment, one source speculated.

If that language passed before the first notification is submitted, it would further complicate the process, one source said. The House language is unacceptable to the administration because it obligates the administration to provide an "enumeration" of the transferred items to the extent practicable. But another source said the administration could simply claim it has met that requirement with what it has submitted.

In addition to spelling out the category changes, the first congressional notification under Section 38(f) will be accompanied by three final rules. One of them governs the transition of items from the USML to CCL, a second defines items that are "specially designed" for military applications and thereby subject to tighter controls than other items, and a third sets the framework rule that will create the categories for the transferred items on the CCL. All these rules spell out the elements of how these transferred items will be controlled once they leave the USML and are therefore required for the notification.

"We're working aggressively in August to do all that and we still hope, expect and plan to be able to sometime in late summer, early fall, to be able to have all of that ready [as final rules] because that is necessary . . . to attach to the [Section] 38(f) notice" made under the Arms Export Control Act, the official said.

"We are hoping to get all this done in August and September and sometime soon thereafter we'll start talking to Hill staff," the official said. The official implied that a draft final version of these rules will be the basis for initial congressional discussions.

The public comment periods for the "specially designed" rule and the transition rule ended in early August and the incoming comments still need to be considered in developing a final rule.

Some sources familiar with the process say it is impossible to develop the required a final rule and get it cleared interagency in the timetable laid out by the administration official, but others said it may still be possible.

The skeptics note that export control work at the State Department has been lagging since Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher left her job for health reasons. They said Tauscher had the export control knowledge and the political stature to advance export control reform issues within State and that the same combination does not exist in her successor, Acting Undersecretary Rose Gottemoeller, nor in the Assistant Secretary for Political and Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro and his deputy Beth McCormick.

If the notification process slips into the lame-duck session and President Obama is not re-elected, it is likely that the new administration would take its time to review the work done up to that point and then decide how to proceed. This could take at least a year since export controls are not likely to be a priority issue for the new administration, a private-sector source speculated.

The Pentagon yesterday issued a report certifying "that the Defense Department's proposed 2013 budget adequately funds the operational energy strategy, highlighting $9 billion in planned investments to improve energy use in military operations between fiscal years 2013-2017," according to a statement, which adds: "This includes $1.6 billion in fiscal 2013."

The press release further states:

"The innovative approach the Defense Department is taking to achieving greater operational efficiency and boosting combat effectiveness is exactly in line with our new defense strategy," Secretary Leon E. Panetta said. "These investments in new energy technologies, more than 90 percent of which are for energy efficiency or energy performance upgrades, will enable our forces to operate longer and at greater distance while enhancing our energy security at home and, in many cases, reducing costs."

The Operational Energy Strategy, released in June 2011, stated three ways DoD will increase energy security in military operations -- by reducing the demand for fuel, diversifying energy supplies and incorporating these considerations into building the future force.

For the report, Sharon E. Burke, assistant secretary of defense for operational energy plans and programs and her team examined the Defense Department budget to see how well energy investment matched these three elements.

"Our first priority with these investments is to improve combat capabilities for our warfighters," said Burke. "From tactical solar technologies to reduce the need to transport and protect fuel in combat to more efficient aircraft, ship, and combat vehicle engines that let our forces fly, sail, and drive further, the Defense Department is tackling energy use to improve military capability."

View the full report.