The Insider

Adm. Robert Willard, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, is appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning to provide an update on his corner of the world. China's military modernization is a main part of every PACOM commander's report to Congress.

The following assessment of China is taken from Willard's written testimony to the committee:

Beginning in the mid-1990s, China’s peacetime military modernization program has progressed at a rapid rate. While force modernization is understandable in light of China’s growing regional and global roles and accompanying requirements, the scope and pace of its modernization without clarity on China’s ultimate goals remains troubling. For example, China continues to accelerate its offensive air and missile developments without corresponding public clarification about how these forces will be utilized. Of particular concern is the expanding inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles (which include anti-ship capability) and the development of modern, fourth- and fifth-generation stealthy combat aircraft. In conjunction, China is pursuing counter-space and -cyber capabilities that can be used to not only disrupt U.S. military operations, but also to threaten the space- and cyber-based information infrastructure that enables international communications and commerce.

Absent clarification from China, its military modernization efforts hold significant implications for regional stability. The region is developing its own conclusions about why the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to expand its ability to project power outside China’s borders, and to range both U.S. forces and U.S. Allies and partners in the region with new anti-access and area-denial weaponry. Of growing concern is China’s maritime behavior. China’s recent official statements and actions in what Beijing calls its ―near seas represent a direct challenge to accepted interpretations of international law and established international norms. While China does not make legal claims to this entire body of water, it does seek to restrict or exclude foreign, in particular, U.S., military maritime and air activities in the ―near seas - an area that roughly corresponds to the maritime area from the Chinese mainland out to the ―first island chain (described, generally, as a line through Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, and Indonesia) and including the Bohai Gulf, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. Chinese naval and maritime law enforcement vessels have been assertive in recent years in trying to advance China’s territorial claims in the South China and East China Seas which has resulted U.S. partners and allies in East Asia seeking additional support and reassurance to balance and curb the Chinese behavior. Many of China's maritime policy statements and claims stand in contrast to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The U.S. has consistently sought the appropriate balance between the interests of countries in controlling activities off their coasts with the interests of all countries in protecting freedom of navigation. China has questioned whether a non-party may assert such rights under UNCLOS, a baseless argument but one that would be removed if the U.S. was a party to UNCLOS.

The Pentagon has changed its plans to withdraw two brigade combat teams from Europe. Here's the explanation in a Defense Department statement:

Based on the administration's review, consultations with allies and the findings of NATO's new Strategic Concept, the department will retain three BCTs in Europe to maintain a flexible and rapidly deployable ground force to fulfill the United States' commitments to NATO, to engage effectively with allies and partners, and to meet the broad range of 21st century challenges.  This decision will be implemented in 2015, when we project a reduced demand on our ground forces.

The three BCTs remaining in Europe after 2015 -- the Heavy, Stryker and Airborne BCTs -- offer capabilities that enable U.S. European Command to build partner capacity and to meet interoperability objectives while supporting the full range of military operations, including collective defense of our NATO allies under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.

This BCT mix will be complemented by other capability enhancements, including the forward deployment of Aegis ships, land-based missile defense systems in Poland and Romania as part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, forward-stationing of special operations aircraft, and a permanent aviation detachment in Poland.  Taken together, these measures will enhance and rebalance the U.S. force posture in Europe to make it more capable, more effective, and better aligned with current and future security challenges.

InsideDefense.com reported last month that with almost 10 years of irregular warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan under their belts, Army intelligence leaders have been reassessing what kinds of capabilities and force makeup the service should have to fight similar wars in the future. Specifically:

One key question is what the Army should do with its 42 quick-reaction capabilities amassed outside the regular acquisition process to plug shortfalls that programs of record were unable to fill. To Lt. Gen. Richard Zahner, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, the number represents the mismatch the ground service found itself in after initial operations began in Afghanistan in late 2001.

"Nine or 10 years of war told us that the programs that walked into this set were probably well-designed for the framework that we started with; they certainly didn't reflect the full range of requirements," Zahner said in a March 22 interview with Inside the Army.

A key yardstick in absorbing QRCs created since then into the Army inventory is the new concept of a "LandISRNet." Its central tenet is that all aspects of Army intelligence -- processing, communications, sensors and personnel structure -- must be seen as interdependent. Without this kind of treatment, "You wind up with a thousand points of light, but no consistent spotlight against those networks," Zahner said, referring to the way terrorist and insurgent formations are organized.

Additional guidelines for key intelligence capabilities in irregular wars have come from Defense Department studies that identified what Zahner called "driving capability sets." They include full-motion video, precision, geolocation, the exploitation of people and documents, source operations and "the internals of communications," he told ITA.

Additionally, ITA reports:

According to the three-star, a more flexible, rotational force pool would free intelligence personnel for missions at lower echelons -- a requirement also considered during an ongoing review of the Army's brigade combat team design. Possible organizational constructs include company intelligence support teams and so-called "multifunction teams."

The multifunction teams consist of 8 to 10 soldiers specializing in signals and human intelligence, according to briefing slides presented by Zahner at an industry conference in Washington last month. According to the slides, the construct envisions each team would have two Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicles tricked out with communications technology, equipment for "exploiting" documents or cell phones, and biometrics capabilities. The teams also would have a "Portable Aerial Imagery Exploitation Supercomputer" and a see-through-walls radar capability, among others, according to the slides.

The goal is to "provide multi-disciplined intelligence collection, exploitation and limited analysis to generate actionable intelligence; time-sensitive detection, tracking and locating of key targets," the briefing states.

While the White House and Congress try to avert a government shutdown at midnight tonight and somehow pass a spending bill for the rest of fiscal year 2011, the Pentagon has been quietly lobbying lawmakers to include language for the FY-12 defense bill for a variety of programs. To wit:

On Tuesday, InsideDefense.com reported the following:

The Defense Department last week asked Congress to establish a fund to finance the development and fielding of new technologies and weapons requested by commanders to meet urgent wartime needs, according to Pentagon documents.

The fund would be backed by a $100 million account in the Pentagon's base budget that could be supplemented by another $100 million annually in war-cost appropriations bills.

On April 1, the Pentagon sent Congress a third package of legislative proposals for consideration along with the Defense Department's fiscal year 2012 spending request. The package calls for the creation of a Joint Urgent Operational Needs Fund within the defense-wide procurement account.

The fund would be “used to resolve immediate warfighter needs of the combatant commanders within the year of execution,” states the request.

The request seeks a total of $200 million for the fund in FY-12. Should Congress agree to establish it, the Pentagon would assume $100 million annually across its future years defense plan for the new fund in its base budget, according to the DOD proposal, which would add a new section to title 10 of the U.S. code.

Then on Thursday, Inside the Pentagon reported:

The Pentagon wants Congress to eliminate statutory language that pushes the Defense Department to acquire unmanned drones over manned systems in new programs and directs DOD to provide an explanation when that does not occur.

In a recent legislative proposal obtained by Inside the Pentagon, DOD states that this requirement in the Fiscal Year 2007 National Defense Authorization Act "potentially imposes cost and schedule burdens." The department wants to excise the preference for drones from the law.

"Because it does not allow for consideration of development and ownership costs, it forces the DOD to procure a system that may be more expensive to develop and operate than a manned system, which is equally or more effective and provides the same or more protection to service members," DOD writes in its request. The department notes that although the law's intent is "desirable," it creates a "burden."

But a congressional source said the current law does not bar the Pentagon from considering costs.

The intent of the legislation "was to make the default position unmanned," the source said.

DOD similarly sought last year to have Congress change the law, arguing the requirement is expensive, but Capitol Hill was not persuaded, the source said.

The Pentagon's proposal also notes that the current requirement could hinder DOD's ability to quickly fill a capability gap "because of the time required to mature unmanned technologies." The required certification that an unmanned system is incapable of meeting program requirements can also bump up the price and time needed to initiate new acquisitions, the department complains.

And this morning, Inside the Air Force reported:

The Defense Department has made the most sweeping changes to its Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) program in 15 years, according to a senior Air Force official.

DOD will realign the incentives for commercial industry partners who participate in the service's peacetime missions in a bid to make the partnership "stronger" and "more viable," according to Gen. Duncan McNabb, commander of U.S. Transportation Command. It is also looking to make some legislative changes to facilitate its relationship with those partners, according to a proposal released by the Pentagon on April 1. Through the long-standing CRAF program, the military's organic air fleet and its commercial partners have airlifted more than 2 million passengers and 848,000 tons of cargo.

McNabb said in his prepared statement for an April 5 hearing with the House Armed Services Committee that the Air Force implemented the "flyer bonus" plan to "address congressional mandates to improve predictability of DOD commercial requirements and incentivize carriers to use modern aircraft." It is the first bonus of its kind, McNabb said during his opening statement.

"Our plan for [fiscal year 2012] FY-12 is to amend the flyer bonus to provide increased reward to those carriers who fly peacetime CRAF missions with modernized aircraft," he said.

McNabb's announcement of a flyer bonus comes after the Pentagon sent a package of legislative proposals to Congress on April 1 along with the Defense Department's FY-12 spending request. In a section-by-section analysis of one proposal on CRAF, DOD says it wants Congress to allow for changes to be made to the current CRAF memorandum of understanding covering the operation of the program.

That legislative proposals package that all the above stories mention? We have it now -- click here to read it.

The White House, ratcheting up the brinksmanship with House Republicans over the FY-11 budget, is threatening to veto the House-proposed spending package -- H.R. 1363 -- that would give the Pentagon a fiscal year 2011 appropriations bill but deeply cut domestic discretionary spending for the balance of FY-11.

The White House Office of Management and Budget just issued this statement:

The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 1363, making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2011, and for other purposes. As the President stated on April 5, 2011, if negotiations are making significant progress, the Administration would support a short-term, clean Continuing Resolution to allow for enactment of a final bill.

For the past several weeks, the Administration has worked diligently and in good faith to find common ground on the shared goal of cutting spending. After giving the Congress more time by signing short-term extensions into law, the President believes that we need to put politics aside and work out our differences for a bill that covers the rest of the fiscal year. This bill is a distraction from the real work that would bring us closer to a reasonable compromise for funding the remainder of Fiscal Year 2011 and avert a disruptive Federal Government shutdown that would put the Nation’s economic recovery in jeopardy. The Administration will continue to work with the Congress to arrive at a compromise that will fund the Government for the remainder of the fiscal year in a way that does not undermine future growth and job creation and that averts a costly Government shutdown. It is critical that the Congress send a final bill to the President’s desk that provides certainty to our men and women in military uniform, their families, small businesses, homeowners, taxpayers, and all Americans. H.R. 1363 simply delays that critical final outcome.

If presented with this bill, the President will veto it.

Inside the Pentagon has a story out this morning about a White House report to Congress that finds that the Defense Department's plan to develop and deploy non-nuclear weapons that can strike a target anywhere in the world within an hour will not be hindered by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia. Further:

The New START Treaty "does not prohibit the deployment" of these conventional prompt global strike systems "and does not in any way limit or constrain research, development, testing and evaluation of such systems," according to the report, which has a Feb. 2 cover letter signed by President Obama. Inside the Pentagon obtained a copy of the report.

The Senate's resolution to ratify the treaty required the submission of the report. The treaty, signed by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last April and ratified by the Senate in December's lame-duck session, limits to 1,550 the number of warheads on deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles -- regardless of whether the warheads are conventional or nuclear -- and nuclear warheads counted for deployed heavy bombers. The treaty also limits the number of deployed ICBMs, SLBMs and heavy bombers, and deployed and non-deployed launchers.

Read the report.

Members of the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee were given a classified briefing about the Air Force's next-generation bomber this afternoon, directly following an open session in which the committee discussed nuclear deterrence and complying with the follow-on Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia.

Sen. Ben Nelsen (D-NE), the subcommittee chairman, announced at the beginning of the hearing that the open session would adjourn at 3:30 p.m. -- after one hour of discussion -- to meet behind closed doors with Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford, the Air Force's military deputy for acquisition. The topic of the closed session concerned the service's newest acquisition project, the development of a nuclear-capable, optionally manned, penetrating bomber. The service expects to procure between 80 and 100 of the aircraft, and the bomber will be fielded in the mid-2020s, service officials announced last month.

Nelsen and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the subcommittee's ranking member, were the only senators present at the open hearing.

Following a House hearing last week on the Obama administration's fiscal year 2012 missile defense budget request, House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee Chairman Michael Turner (R-OH) this morning mapped out the next steps for not just the missile defense investment plan, but also the FY-12 defense authorization bill as a whole.

Turner told attendees of a missile defense event on Capitol Hill that his subcommittee would mark up its portion of the FY-12 bill during the week of May 2. The full committee plans to debate the entire bill the following week, and then bring it to the House floor at the end of May, he added.