The Insider

An Air Force CV-22 Osprey, assigned to the 1st Special Operations Wing, crashed at about 6:45 p.m. Wednesday evening during a routine training mission at Hulrburt Field’s Eglin Range, north of Navarre, FL, according to a statement released by the Air Force last night. The accident is under investigation. Five crew members aboard were taken to local area hospitals, according to the statement. Two crew members were taken by ambulance, while the other three were taken via air. An Air Force spokeswoman said the site of the crash is a pretty remote area. A Pentagon source told InsideDefense.com that the wreckage burned until midnight.

A fatal CV-22 mishap occurred in April 2010 when an Osprey crashed in Afghanistan. An investigation board could not pinpoint the crash's cause, but concluded that engine trouble, crew errors and weather were contributing factors. More recently, the Marine Corps has been investigating a fatal MV-22 Osprey crash that occurred in Morocco on April 11. The Marine Corps has ruled out mechanical failure as a cause of that crash. But the Associated Press reported Tuesday that concerns about the safety of the Osprey have prompted Japanese officials to put on hold plans to temporarily deploy the aircraft to the city of Iwakuni.

Defense officials are preparing an omnibus reprogramming request for fiscal year 2012 to cover unexpected costs, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee this morning. Among the bills that must be paid are almost $3 billion for fuel and extra funds for the U.S.-Israeli "Iron Dome" missile-defense program, the cost of which Panetta didn't specify.

Also driving up cost is the continuing closure of supply lines through Pakistan. Panetta, for the first time, put a price tag on having to use longer land transportation routes across Asia: $100 million per month.

Officials have been hesitant to disclose the financial fallout of the spat with Islamabad thus far, perhaps out of fear that disclosing a figure might weaken the U.S. negotiating position to reopen the Pakistani routes.

View Panetta's prepared testimony.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is getting a $123 million funding boost. The money was shifted over from the Military Intelligence Transfer Fund.

The details are classified, but the Pentagon released a reprogramming memo signed by Comptroller Robert Hale and dated June 8 announcing the funding switch.

In related news, Inside the Pentagon reported in April that the Defense Department had asked Congress for new authority to permit NGA to provide imagery intelligence and geospatial information support to regional organizations with defense or security components and security alliances of which the United States is a member. ITP further reported:

The initiative, one of several Defense Department legislative proposals submitted to Congress this month, would be an expansion of existing authority that lets the agency, called NGA for short, share mapping, charting and geodetic data support.

"Under current law, the NGA may only provide mapping, charting and geodetic data to security alliances and regional organizations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU)," the proposal states. "As a result of the War on Terrorism, piracy and other recent national security issues, there are increasing requests for NGA to support these alliances and organizations and their forces with a broad range of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT)."

The proposal states the agency "has been able to find alternative legal basis for the requests to date but requires statutory changes to address the full range of anticipated requirements from these alliances and organizations." The agency can now provide foreign countries with imagery intelligence and geospatial information support. But increasingly the agency has been asked to provide "certain GEOINT support to military operations conducted by NATO in Afghanistan and security and peacekeeping operations conducted by the EU in the Balkans and Africa," DOD writes.

The agency has handled these requests by providing support to the individual countries involved or to a coalition of countries; by supporting the GEOINT needs of the State Department and other U.S. departments; by heeding a pact with NATO that permits the purchase of limited-distribution maps as foreign military sales; and by using other specific, limited and mostly temporary authorities.

The White House will likely not be able to complete its export-control reform initiative by the end of the year, Inside U.S. Trade reported on Friday. According to Commerce Under Secretary for Industry and Security Eric Hirschhorn, the Obama administration still plans to make as much progress as possible in finalizing category revisions of the U.S. Munitions List (USML) and beginning to formally notify Congress of its intent to move items to the less stringent controls of the Commerce Control List (CCL). Inside U.S. Trade further reported:

"I don't think we can complete the whole thing in this calendar year, but I think we can get a lot more done in terms of Section 38(f) notices [required to move items off the USML], putting some regs into final form, and publishing them," Hirschhorn told the President's Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration (PECSEA) on June 4. "Certainly if the president is re-elected, we're going to see it through."

His statement was the most definitive one so far that the administration will not meet its goal of completing the category revisions and congressional notifications by the end of the year (Inside U.S. Trade, Dec. 9, 2011 & March 2).

Assistant Secretary for Export Administration Kevin Wolf told the group that the earliest a congressional notification could take place under Section 38(f) of the Arms Export Control Act would be August or September of this year.

Once formally notified, Congress has 30 days to pass a resolution of disapproval through both chambers to stop a USML transfer. That timeline has been expanded considerably in the past through an informal process of consultations prior to submitting formal notifications.

But Hirschhorn and Wolf said at a PECSEA lunch meeting they did not see much more need for such an informal process in advance of a formal notification for the export control reform initiative transfers because of the extensive consultations the administration has already held with Congress over more than a year.

"We have done a great deal [of consultation]; it is getting to be time to get moving," Hirschhorn said. Asked if he sees the next step for the administration in the fall as a formal notification, Hirschhorn said "correct."

He said that the administration is trying very hard not to "jam anybody" in Congress, and has done dozens of meetings and briefings for Congress, and invited further consultations at any time. "But at some point, we are going to have to go forward," he said.

The details of the Section 38(f) process remain shrouded in controversy because the House is demanding more detailed information on the items to be transferred than the administration considers appropriate or possible to provide. The House approved these demands as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and Hirschhorn blasted that legislation as at a minimum substantially delaying the export control reform drive or potentially crippling it altogether.

The House-passed bill would require the administration to include in its Section 38(f) notice an "enumeration" of the items to be transferred "to the extent practicable." According to critics, the term "enumeration" can be read as requiring an item-by-item list for transfers, which the administration argues would be impossible to provide.

Hirschhorn said Commerce was working with Congress to find language for the final version of the bill that would be more acceptable to the administration. He noted that the administration has been "kicking around" a long list of words as alternatives to "enumeration" that it hopes might end up in the legislation and "could work a lot better."

Naval Sea Systems Command announced this morning that it "intends to award FY13-14 STANDARD Missile-6 (SM-6) Block I and STANDARD Missile-2 (SM-2) Block IIIA/IIIB requirements on a sole source basis to Raytheon," according to a Federal Business Opportunities notice. The SM-6 is seen as the cornerstone to the land-based portion of the Obama administration's proposed phased adaptive approach to regional missile defense. The announcement further states:

The requirement consists of SM-6 Block I and SM-2 Block IIIA/IIIB missiles, spare components and sections, telemeters/installation kits, replenishment spares, and shipping containers, as well as SM-6 Block I instrumentation kits. Foreign Military Sale (FMS) items include SM-2 Block IIIA/IIIB missiles, shipping containers, and spare components and sections. The Government intends to procure the missiles as AURs, which include all major SM-6 Block I components (guidance section, power control and telemetry section, steering control section, rocket motor, fuze booster, fin set, target detecting device, and thrust vector assembly) and SM-2 Block IIIA/IIIB components (safe and arm device, warhead, rocket motor, fuze booster, and target detecting device) required for AUR missile configuration.

Additionally, this procurement will include level-of-effort (LOE) design agent engineering and technical services. Raytheon is the only company with the requisite expertise, knowledge, experience and facilities necessary to meet requirements for the STANDARD Missile program. Companies interested in subcontracting opportunities should contact Raytheon Company directly.

The proposed contract action is for supplies or services for which the Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under authority of FAR 6.302. Interested persons may identify their interest and capability to respond to the requirement or submit proposals. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive proposals.

However, all proposals received within forty-five days (thirty days if award is issued under an existing basic ordering agreement) after date of publication of this synopsis will be considered by the government. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the government. Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.

House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) is calling on President Obama to follow through on the promises the president made to the Senate during the ratification of the follow-on Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 2010.

"Without the [nuclear weapons] modernization program and the President's promises to fund and implement it, concerns in the Senate about the treaty would have prevented it from being modified," according to a statement accompanying a June 5 letter Turner released today.

"For the first time, the U.S. has signed a treaty that required it to undertake unilateral reductions," Turner's letter states, adding: "There is a growing concern, including by your former Secretary of Defense, about the safety, security, reliability, and credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent."

The congressman's letter notes that Obama in December 2012 had stated about the nuclear weapons modernization plan "[t]hat is my commitment to the Congress-that my administration will pursue these programs and capabilities for as long as I am President."

In his letter, Turner complains that the administration's fiscal year 2013 nuclear weapons modernization budget request "was significantly below what you promised in November 2010 and as much as $4 billion below what is projected for just the next five years in the section 1251 plan."

Additionally, the lawmaker cites a May 18 Office of Management and Budget memo which states that "overall agency request for 2014 should be five percent below . . . the 2013 budget."

InsideDefense.com reported yesterday that OMB is exempting the Pentagon from that guidance, according to a government spokesman. Further:

"All agencies are being asked to identify efficiencies and ways to get the most from taxpayer dollars," OMB spokesman Kenneth Baer said in a statement to InsideDefense.com today. "The Department of Defense, however, is in a unique situation as it already has put together a detailed spending plan -- consistent with the Budget Control Act -- for the next five, and even 10, years.

"So, while DOD will have to identify areas of savings and efficiency, they are not being asked to submit a 5-percent-cut scenario," he added.

Specifically, the Pentagon is relieved from budget guidance issued by OMB acting director Jeffrey Zients on May 18, in a three-page memo to department and agency heads instructing them to assume smaller FY-14 budgets than those laid out by the administration in its FY-13 budget proposal sent to Congress in February.

The government "will need to make hard choices," Zients wrote. Discretionary spending levels -- enacted last summer as part of a deal between the White House and House Republican leaders to raise the debt ceiling -- will "continue to sharply constrain discretionary spending," his memo adds. "Unless your agency has received different guidance from OMB, your overall agency request for 2014 should be 5 percent below the net discretionary total provided for your agency for 2014 in the 2013 budget."

Accordingly, the Pentagon is expected to build an FY-14 budget in line with spending levels outlined in February -- a topline of $533.6 billion in the base budget, a sum that allows for no real growth, or increases above the rate of inflation.

Pentagon leaders last fall revised the military's long-term spending plans in accordance with spending levels required by the Budget Control Act, cutting $486.7 billion from planned spending through 2021. DOD's FY-13 base budget proposal, $525.4 billion, marked a $45.3 billion reduction from earlier plans. In total, the Pentagon trimmed $259.4 billion from its five-year spending plan to comply with discretionary spending levels enacted last summer.