The Insider

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is scheduled to brief the Pentagon press corps today at 1:45 p.m., according to a Defense Department announcement.

Carter's briefing comes one day after Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler became the first U.S. servicemember to die in Iraq since 2011 after taking part in a mission that rescued 70 hostages from a prison controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Wheeler is also the first U.S. servicemember to be killed in action while supporting Operation Inherent Resolve.

The incident has spurred questions in that the Pentagon has avoided stating that Wheeler died in a "combat" mission. Rather, DOD is hewing closely to the message that the operation to free the hostages was part of the military's stated "advise and assist" mission in Iraq.

"I would not suggest you should look at this as some change in tactics on our part," Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said yesterday. "This was a unique circumstance in which very close partners of the United States made a specific request for our assistance."

The Pentagon's top acquisition executive has backed the Navy's plan to install a new tactical afloat network on the majority of its warships.

On Oct. 13, Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall approved a Full Deployment Decision for the Navy's Consolidated Afloat Network and Enterprise Services (CANES), according to an Oct. 22 Navy statement. With Kendall's decision, the service can install CANES on its "full inventory objective of ships, submarines and shore sites," the statement says. The approval also transfers oversight of the program from Kendall's office to the Navy.

CANES has been installed on 25 ships so far, according to the Navy, with 153 vessels left before the installations are complete in 2024.

Between August 2014 and January 2015, the Navy awarded seven companies contracts to compete for CANES production units, Inside the Navy has previously reported:  BAE Systems Technology Solutions & Services, General Dynamics C4 Systems, Global Technical Systems, Northrop Grumman, Serco Inc., CGI Federal and DRS Laurel Technologies. The estimated cumulative value of all seven contracts is $2.5 billion. 

The service has been installing CANES on its aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and amphibious ships, among other platforms. But because CANES uses the Windows XP operating system, the Navy is revisiting whether to install the tactical network on its newer ships, like the Littoral Combat Ship and the Joint High Speed Vessel, ITN reported earlier this year. The Navy is aggressively moving away from Windows XP to the newer Windows 7.0.

Bell Helicopter said today it has named Lisa Atherton executive vice president of military business, succeeding Mitch Snyder, who has been named Bell Helicopter's chief executive.

Atherton joined the company in 2012 and has served as V-22 program manager and vice president of global military business development. Before that, she was vice president of area attack at Textron Defense Systems and spent eight years at Air Combat Command's requirements directorate.

President Obama is scheduled to veto the defense authorization bill today, according to his daily schedule released by the White House.

The veto is planned for 3:45 p.m., the schedule states.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has planned a press briefing for 1:30 p.m.

Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates took Congress to task today for its continued legislative paralysis over the future of the federal budget.

"As the saying used to go, 'It's a hell of a way to run a railroad,'" he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

At present, Congress is operating under a continuing resolution set to expire Dec. 11, at which point the absence of a deal that would lift the 2011 Budget Control Act caps for defense and other areas of government could result in a government shutdown, or an extended CR that locks the Defense Department into BCA-level spending.

"Given the harm of all this politically driven madness inflicts on the U.S. military, the rhetoric coming from members of Congress about looking out for our men and women in uniform rings very hollow to me," Gates said. "All the smart defense reforms you can come up with will be of little use if the military is unable to plan, set priorities and manage its resources in sensible and strategic way."

Gates noted that he submitted five separate budgets to Congress in his time as defense secretary and that not one of them resulted in an appropriation for the beginning of the fiscal year.

"Hardly anybody in this city ever gets fired because they didn't do their job well enough," he said, noting that scandals and gaffes had resulted in far more Washington resignations than had poor performance.

Gates' criticism comes as Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked over a fiscal year 2016 appropriations plan. The GOP has proposed spending bills that circumvent the BCA caps for defense, but honor them for all other areas of government. Democrats have vowed to block a bill that does not equally lift the caps, but anti-spending advocates in the House GOP's Freedom Caucus have pledged to oppose any bill that would do so.

Gates said the current state of congressional gridlock was embarrassing the United States in the eyes of the world.

"Our system of government -- as designed by the founders who wrote and negotiated the provisions of the Constitution -- is dependent on compromise to function," Gates said. "To do so is not selling out -- it's called 'governing.'"

Lockheed Martin confirmed Oct. 21 that it has reached a verbal agreement with the Air Force on a multiyear contract to purchase 83 C-130Js.

"We have reached a verbal agreement on the C-130J multiyear II contract," company spokesman Stephanie Stinn told Inside Defense in an Oct. 21 statement. "Our goal from now until the end of this year is to compete the remaining contract actions and certifications, including the congressional notification process, prior to award."

The contract was expected this summer, but negotiations have continued past that target. Service officials, including acquisition executive William LaPlante, remain concerned that because the contract calls for a quantity increase, a yearlong continuing resolution could disrupt the production plan.

"The C-130J multiyear plans to procure 13 more aircraft in FY-16 than in FY-15," spokesman Maj. Robert Leese told Inside Defense in an Oct. 20 email. "That increase would be prohibited under a yearlong CR without an exemption from Congress permitting an increase in production quantities."

Leese said the service does not need an exemption from the current short-term CR in order to award and begin executing the contract, but if the CR continues into next year, it would begin to disrupt the plan to increase production over FY-15 levels. In that case, the service may be forced to "break" the contract, as LaPlante alluded to in a presentation earlier this month, and renegotiate it. Leese said such a scenario "could lead to a loss of savings from the multiyear contract."

Lockheed officials have said there is a precedent for an exemption for multiyear production increases, particularly in cases where the service has already made significant investments in advanced procurement, which is true in the case of the C-130J.

A U.S. destroyer successfully intercepted a ballistic missile target using a Standard Missile-3 interceptor during a multinational exercise off the coast of Scotland Oct. 20, marking the first intercept of a ballistic missile threat in Europe, according to the Navy.

The intercept occurred as part of the Maritime Theater Missile Defense (MTMD) Forum's At Sea Demonstration (ASD), a month-long exercise involving 10 nations.

As part of the intercept test, the destroyer Ross (DDG-71) fired the SM-3 Block IA at the ballistic missile target after receiving cues from Spanish and Dutch ships, according to an Oct. 20 Navy press release, signifying the first time international ships have transmitted BMD cues to a U.S. destroyer. While the Ross was engaging the ballistic missile, the destroyer The Sullivans (DDG-68) used an SM-2 to destroy an anti-ship cruise missile target.

The Navy stated that the demonstration is also the first time "multinational, beyond-line-of-sight link architecture" has been used for integrated air and missile defense purposes in Europe.

"The execution of the live-fire exercise is a clear demonstration of the forum's ability to safely conduct effective coalition sea-based defense against simultaneous anti-ship and ballistic missile threats within an operational scenario," Adm. Mark Ferguson, commander of naval forces Europe and Africa, said in an Oct. 20 statement on the successful intercept.

Inside the Navy has previously reported on ASD-15, which is ongoing this month. It involves 10 nations: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.