The Insider

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."

The Obama transition team has issued an expanded list of "team leaders" for its agency reviews. Already announced were Michèle Flournoy and John White; here's the full lineup:

Sarah Sewall
Tom Donilon
Wendy R. Sherman
Michèle A. Flournoy
John P. White
Robert R. Beers
Clark Kent Ervin
Gayle E. Smith
Aaron Williams
John O. Brennan
Judith A. (“Jami”) Miscik

And here's what they'll be doing:

The Agency Review Teams for the Obama-Biden Transition will complete a thorough review of key departments, agencies and commissions of the United States government, as well as the White House, to provide the President-elect, Vice President-elect, and key advisors with information needed to make strategic policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration. The Teams will ensure that senior appointees have the information necessary to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments, and begin implementing signature policy initiatives immediately after they are sworn in.

Lots of transition news today to tell you about. We'll be getting to that shortly.

One highlight to start the day:

Report Lays Out 10 Priorities for Obama's Defense Secretary

Improving the Pentagon’s acquisition performance as well as its processes for strategic guidance, programming and budgeting should be top priorities for the new administration, according to a new report on transition issues from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Inside the Pentagon reviewed an advance copy of the report, which says the study team focused on crafting recommendations that would improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the next defense secretary.

Kathleen Hicks spearheaded the review for CSIS. The think tank is led by John Hamre, who also chairs the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and is reportedly being considered for an Obama administration post.

Michèle Flournoy, who co-chairs the Obama camp’s DOD transition team, was one of the defense experts consulted by CSIS during the review.

The study lays out 10 top priorities in order of what is most important to fix at the Pentagon. Bolstering acquisition performance leads the list. The defense secretary “must focus the acquisition community on institutionalizing recent guidance, restoring a defense acquisition workforce, and providing cost realism in setting program requirements,” the report says.

A new RAND Corp. study is calling for the next administration to approach nation-building with a willingness to hear multiple and opposing views, particularly urging the new president to bring together civilian and military agencies in the effort. The report -- "After the War: Nation-Building from FDR to George W. Bush" -- says post-conflict reconstruction must rely on the entire national security establishment.

“This is not a responsibility that presidents can afford to delegate, nor is it one that any single department of government can handle,” the document says.

Consequently, the report authors write that the Defense Department should work with the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency to discuss options and all involved “should be allowed significant latitude to disagree.”

“Once the president chooses or endorses a particular option, a fully integrated political-military plan should be generated,” the report continues.

An integrated planning effort would give civilian agencies the opportunity to comment on war plans and military agencies to provide diplomacy advice, and it should establish a division of labor.

Additionally, the RAND report suggests that the country look to rebalance civilian and military staff sizes and budgets, noting that the military's end strength and resources have far outweighed those of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of State.

“Whatever approach to decision making presidents may adopt -- formal, competitive, collegial, or some combination thereof -- it is important that they foster debate among their principal advisers and value disciplined dissent as an essential aid to wise decision-making,” the report contends.