The Insider

The Missile Defense Agency has a new director. Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly took the reins today from retiring Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering in a ceremony at the Air Force Memorial in Arlington, VA.

O'Reilly has his work cut out for him, what with two wars and a faltering economy and promises from senior lawmakers of a "severe scrubbing" of MDA's budget next year.

Obering last week reiterated his agency's argument that MDA is "a very small part of the defense budget," somewhere around "less than 2 percent."

I believe that we have gone to great pains to outline a balanced program, with obviously the emphasis being on the near-term fielding and the development to support the near-term fielding, testing and sustainment, and that accounts for about 75 percent of our budget today. The 25 percent left over goes for programs like the Airborne Laser, Kinetic Energy Interceptor, . . . ((and)) our Space Tracking and Surveillance System.

Obering told reporters in a Nov. 12 teleconference call that Congress' "propensity" for cutting funding for future missile defense programs "would be a very bad mistake."

We're going to have to develop these capabilities to stay up with the threat and make sure that the interceptors and the sensors that we're fielding today remain effective in the future. If you cut those future programs, that's going to mean that basically we're going to be fielding systems today that are going to be obsolete in the mid-term of the future.

The Washington Post is reporting on its Web site this afternoon that President-Elect Obama is "close" to naming his national security adviser -- retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones.

The Jones appointment would put the one-time Marine Corps commandant and NATO commander in charge of managing an interagency process that many Democratic foreign policy experts contend has been broken under the Bush administration. . . .

In picking Jones to coordinate his team, Obama would be sending a powerful sign of a desire to conduct a non-partisan national security policy. Jones is also close to Sen. John McCain, his colleague as a military liaison to Capitol Hill in the 1970s, and stayed publicly neutral during the campaign, but quietly provided advice to Obama in telephone conversations, according to someone who knows both men. He is one of the few individuals in public life who likely would have been courted for government service regardless of the election's outcome.

"He would bring a lot of the military dimension to the job," said Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general who was one of Jones' predecessors as NATO commander. "And his non- partisanship at this juncture is really important. He provides a nonpartisan standard for the national interest--that would be the presumption given his previous experience."

Jones currently heads the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy. His name circulated briefly as a possible vice-president pick, and he and Obama have discussed possible roles for Jones in an Obama administration since before the election.

Jones has not been silent of late, and we've been able to glean some of his latest thinking:

JONES WORRIES ABOUT UNDERFUNDING MILITARY ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES
Inside the Pentagon - November 20, 2008

The new administration must ensure U.S. combatant commanders receive adequate resources to support essential, global engagement activities that have faced budget challenges in wartime, retired Marine Gen. James Jones tells Inside the Pentagon.

JONES: NEW TEAM MUST BUILD ON ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PROGRESS IN JENIN
Inside the Pentagon - November 13, 2008

Retired Marine Gen. James Jones, who served as the Bush administration’s special envoy for Middle East regional security, is urging President-elect Barack Obama's team to continue to foster improvements on the Israeli-occupied West Bank that could lay the foundation for a peaceful two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

JONES MUM AS OBAMA TEAM MULLS POSSIBLE ROLE FOR RETIRED GENERAL
Inside the Pentagon - November 6, 2008

Retired Marine Gen. James Jones, who is reportedly being eyed for the job of national security adviser in the Obama White House, is not ruling out the possibility of joining the new administration.

Former Pentagon weapons tester Philip Coyle told Inside Missile Defense this week that he does not think the Obama administration “can avoid cutting missile defense,” noting the likely need for cash to pay for “higher priorities, and there are not many places where you can so easily find $10 billion year after year for the foreseeable future that could be better spent on important national needs, such as energy independence.” Coyle is a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information.

And James Clay Moltz, an associate professor on the National Security Affairs faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School, said downward pressure on the Obama administration’s overall defense budget is likely to be significant.

“Missile defense spending will almost certainly be affected, but the Obama administration will also be leery of appearing weak on defense or hurting programs with significant prior investment, capabilities, or perceived deterrent value,” he told IMD in an e-mail. “For these reasons, I think we can expect a continuation of Aegis, ((Patriot Advanced Capability))-3, and domestic GMD spending (with some slippage in planned numbers and deployment dates for new hardware), a slowdown of funding for proposed European defenses, and cuts for less-proven technologies (like the Airborne Laser, the ((Multiple Kill Vehicle)), the ((Kinetic Energy Interceptor)), and ((Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense))).”

Lawmakers long skeptical of the outgoing Bush administration's missile defense policies are sure to get in on the action, with House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee Chairwoman Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) promising a "severe scrubbing" of the Missile Defense Agency's budget by the next Congress, IMD reported:

“We're going to finally get to a place I think where we have had a number of programs that have been moderately extended -- you know, not-full-funding, a-little-funding, you know, resuscitation funding, as we call it, resuscitating funding, just keeping them going, and make decisions on where we're going to go,” Tauscher told reporters following a Nov. 12 speech at a Center for Nonproliferation Studies event. “And that's going to be part of the hearing process that we start in January ((or)) February when we begin to build toward the ((fiscal year 2010 defense authorization)) bill.”

When asked if that scrubbing would include funding cuts to missile defense programs, Tauscher said she could “not speculate because we have a new administration coming in . . . we've got the Strategic Posture Commission, we've got a number of different things that are going to inform us, including where exactly our numbers are.

“And until I have that information, I cannot speculate and I won't speculate, but everything I think is on the table,” she continued. “Everything has to be reviewed; we're looking forward to . . . going back to regular order, where we have hearings, where we have comprehensive overview, oversight, and the hearing process will illuminate where we think we need to be going.”

MDA Director Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, fearing some outside the government may be "dated" in their knowledge of U.S. missile defense efforts, said the same day as Tauscher's speech that his agency stands ready to brief incoming Obama administration officials on the status of its programs.

Some related future-of-missile-defense-funding stories from recent weeks:

MEADS Missile Defense Program Undergoes Management Overhaul

Young Establishes Joint Missile Defense Analysis Team

Report Urges 'Renewed Emphasis' on RDT&E at Missile Defense Agency

Report Says MDA Should Play No Role In Cruise Missile Defense

Defense Department Opposes FY-09 Multiple Kill Vehicle Funding Cuts

Campbell: Army Would Need More Money From OSD to Run GMD System

President-elect Obama's transition team announced today that James Steinberg and Susan Rice will lead its national security policy working group.

“The focus of the Policy Working Groups will be to develop the priority policy proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration,” according to the announcement.

Steinberg, dean of the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs since 2006, served as deputy national security advisor to President Clinton from 1996 to 2000.

He also worked as vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution from 2001 to 2005 and recently co-authored with Kurt Campbell a book titled "Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Power."

Rice, who served as a senior foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign, has been on leave from her post as a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution's foreign policy and global economy and development programs.

She is also part of the Obama-Biden Transition Project Advisory Board, the announcement adds.

Previously, Rice was assistant secretary of state for African affairs, from 1997 to 2001, and special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council.

The wave of advice for the incoming Obama administration continues. This time it’s the Center for Strategic and International Studies with a new analysis of defense procurement.

According to the report -- “Defense Procurement by Paralysis” -- the new administration “will face a crisis in U.S. national security planning, programming, and budgeting.”

The assessment, authored by Anthony Cordesman and Hans Ulrich Kaeser, says that the administration now in place will leave behind the job of awarding contracts that could be worth as much as $70 billion -- on top of current procurement and modernization plans.

The Obama administration will inherit a history of mismanagement of appropriations and procurement processes, incoherent force plans and unrealistic budgets, and legal proceedings. It will have to make unpopular cuts, possibly canceling programs that have already absorbed billions of dollars in development expenditures. In a time of economic crisis, heavy competition with other procurement programs and a doctrinal rift inside the Department of Defense, this task will . . . stir political resistance to some of the new administration's policies.

In particular, the document looks at four systems: the Army's Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter and the Air Force's Transformational Communications Satellite, Combat Search and Rescue Helicopter and Aerial Refueling Tanker programs.

“The new defense procurement priorities are still unknown but they will involve trade-offs between major increases in the defense budget and current force plans,” the report finds. “Reshaping an affordable and effective procurement program may well take at least the full term of the next President and involve major program cancellations, and further hardship for the defense industry.”

With recent news reports speculating his tenure as the nation's top intelligence official is all but over once the Obama administration takes power, CIA Director Michael Hayden had one piece of advice for those about to take over at the agency: Leave it alone.

While noting the agency still suffers flaws in its overall operations, Hayden said during his Nov. 13 speech at the Atlantic Council, the organization cannot withstand another massive overhaul like the one in 2006 when former CIA Director Porter Goss took office.

"This community has been inspected, investigated, reviewed and commissioned to death over the last six or seven years," Hayden said. "Is it perfect? God no, nothing is perfect."

However, he added, "another major look, another major restructuring I think would be catastrophic."

The key for the incoming Obama administration would be to plug in its own people into the existing CIA structure and "let them work," he added.

"I would say this: The structure we currently have is fine, good people can make it work. . . . Pick people to head these structures who have the confidence to run these complex organizations and who have the confidence of the political leadership . . . people you can trust, people who you think can do ((the job)), give them a mission and let them work."

While the current intelligence chief was adamant on how the next administration should proceed with current and future intelligence operations, he was less candid on whether he would remain at the agency to oversee that process. Citing senior intelligence officials, The Washington Post reported that Hayden and current National Security Advisor Mike McConnell would not continue in their current posts under an Obama White House.

"We clearly serve at the pleasure of the president," Hayden said of his future at CIA, adding that whoever takes the top spot at Langley, "there has to be a personal relationship between the president and that person."