The Insider

Speedy Design, Big Savings
By Jason Sherman
June 27, 2011 at 3:45 PM

During a visit to the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University on Friday, President Obama touted the promise of big savings to the national pocketbook from designing defense systems faster and for less money. Exhibit A, he said: Local Motors, a small Arizona company that under a DAPRA contract procured the Experimental Crowd-derived Combat Support Vehicle (XC2V), the first ever crowd-sourced, militarily relevant vehicle design. After checking out the vehicle prototype, which was in Pittsburgh, the president said:

We just took a look at it.  Not only could this change the way the government uses your tax dollars -- because think about it, instead of having a 10-year lead time to develop a piece of equipment with all kinds of changing specs and a moving target, if we were able to collapse the pace at which that manufacturing takes place, that could save taxpayers billions of dollars.  But it also could get products out to theater faster, which could save lives more quickly, and could then be used to transfer into the private sector more rapidly, which means we could get better products and services that we can sell and export around the world.  So it’s good for American companies.  It’s good for American jobs.  It’s good for taxpayers.  And it may save some lives in places like Afghanistan for our soldiers.

Through this program, DARPA looked beyond the traditional domestic defense industry for “innovative ideas for a vehicle body designed to accomplish the critical mission tasks of combat resupply and medical evacuation,” according to the agency. Local Motors was one of more than 150 bidders with designs deemed credible, and delivered its concept vehicle -- which includes a vehicle body and shell -- in less than 14 weeks.

Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, in remarks earlier in the day at the same event, said the design approach of the DARPA program could break the prevailing -- and unsustainable -- paradigm of military acquisition efforts, which have considerably less nimble development phases.

Before Eli Whitney had success in with the Cotton Gin, he went to Congress with a proposal to build muskets with interchangeable parts. It was 1801.  He was fairly dramatic in his presentation. Congress, then as now, is pretty skeptical of new ideas.  But Eli had a fairly dramatic way of demonstrating his. He took 10 muskets to Congress.  He disassembled them.  He threw all the parts in a pile.  And then he reassembled them, with different parts constituting each new musket-something that had never before been done. Congress was impressed.  Eventually, the Department of the Army issued a contract for 10,000 new muskets to be built using this method.  It was one of the first widespread uses standardized parts, and it contributed enormously to the advance of in manufacturing in the United States.

Fast-forward a couple hundred years to Norm Augustine, the former CEO of Lockheed Martin.  Norm wrote a book that is well known in defense circles called "Augustine's Laws." One of his laws was that he charted the increase in cost in high-performance jets and tactical aircraft against the increase in the defense budget.  When he plotted these two lines -- and it would not be that different now -- they crossed in 2054.  And what that meant was that in 2054 we would have to spend the entire defense budget to buy one airplane. He observed that that we could work this out.  The Navy would get it for three days a week, the Air Force for three says, and the Marines would have it on Sundays.

Obviously, this kind of rise in manufacturing costs is not sustainable.  But costs have continued to rise at roughly the rate Augustine predicted.  The cost increase in high-performance jets and other advanced equipment has been going up in a linear faction.  And part of the reason, a strong part of it, is the length of time it takes to design and approve them.  The time horizon of design and development is increasing at a similar pace. . . .

DARPA has focused on an advanced manufacturing effort that uses integrated circuits manufacturing as a model for open design and configurable foundries.  And that will lead you to the ability to crowd-source your design, greatly diversifying the sources of your design and the east with which it can be manufactured.  Altogether, we think this can significantly speed up the manufacturing timeline-on the order of dividing it by a factor of five.  That is to say we could do it five times as fast, which could yield enormous cost savings. . . .

This pilot [the XC2V] has the ability to undo Augustine's law and yield advances in manufacturing equivalent to what Eli Whitney ushered in during the early 19th century.  This is indeed the prize for us, for warfighters, and for taxpayers.

Innovation Initiative
By John Liang
June 24, 2011 at 3:31 PM

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years to help foster manufacturing innovation among defense contractors. According to a DARPA statement released today:

During an event today at the National Robotics Engineering Center, President Barack Obama addressed the key roles that advanced research in collaboration with government and industry can play in enhancing the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing, jumpstarting job creation and the process of bringing ideas to market.

DARPA's Experimental Crowd-derived Combat Support Vehicle (XC2V) was highlighted as an example of the power of collaboration and the democratization of innovation at the event. The XC2V is the first crowd-sourced, militarily relevant vehicle design. The DARPA XC2V effort, asked non-traditional DoD performers, small businesses, universities and the general public to contribute innovative ideas for a vehicle body designed to accomplish the critical mission tasks of combat resupply and medical evacuation. More than 150 credible designs were submitted, with the winning design taking less than fourteen-weeks to build.

Arctic Action
By John Liang
June 23, 2011 at 4:19 PM

Earlier this month, Inside the Pentagon reported on a Defense Department study about the Arctic. That assessment identified gaps in the military's Arctic capabilities that could be costly to fix, but stopped short of urging significant investment in high-tech solutions amid a major effort by the White House and the Defense Department to slash security spending over the next decade. Further:

"What we did do was look across the mission sets and identify where we think there are gaps," a defense official said, noting the gaps have to do with "not-very-glamorous" but "really foundational" capabilities like "awareness and communication" that can be "quite costly to invest in, in a really robust kind of way."

DOD will "need to make investments" in these areas "in the coming decade," the official said. But the study's executive summary avoids making investment recommendations to fix DOD's capability gaps and the Coast Guard's shortfall in icebreaking capability.

"Given the many competing demands on DOD's resources in the current fiscal environment, the department believes that further evaluation of operating environment is required before entertaining significant investments in infrastructure or capabilities," the summary states.

The Pentagon is in the midst of developing a strategy for implementing President Obama's call to cut security spending by $400 billion by fiscal year 2023. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said this effort must determine which military missions can be cut without incurring too much risk.

"The Arctic is warming on average twice as fast as the rest of the planet, resulting in increased human activity in the region," the report summary states.

The Arctic is not a "military-lead arena," the defense official said when noting the State Department helped the Pentagon's policy shop prepare the DOD report to Congress on Arctic operations and the Northwest Passage. But the official balked at the notion of eliminating DOD Arctic missions, arguing the capability to operate in the region is vital for defending U.S. territory.

At the time, all we had to share was the report's executive summary.

Now, however, we have the full report.

Tanker Team
By Gabe Starosta
June 22, 2011 at 7:06 PM

Boeing today announced its major suppliers for construction of the KC-46A refueling tanker, of which the company plans to deliver 18 combat-ready aircraft by 2017. Those suppliers, and the parts they will provide include:

• Pratt & Whitney: Engines

• GE Aviation: Mission control system

• Goodrich Corp.: Landing gear and interiors

• Parker Aerospace: Several refueling components, plus primary flight controls

• Raytheon: Digital radar warning receiver and anti-jam GPS

• Rockwell Collins: Integrated display and communications system

• Honeywell: Cabin pressure control system, lighting and other parts

• Northrop Grumman: Large Aircraft Countermeasures (LAIRCM)

Nominations Next Week
By John Liang
June 22, 2011 at 6:01 PM

The Senate Armed Services Committee will meet next Tuesday to consider three senior command nominations, a panel spokeswoman announced this afternoon in a statement.

The nominations include:

General James D. Thurman, USA for reappointment to the grade of general and to be Commander, United Nations Command/Combined Forces Command/United States Forces Korea;

Vice Admiral William H. McRaven, USN to be admiral and Commander, United States Special Operations Command; and

Lieutenant General John R. Allen, USMC to be general and Commander, International Security Assistance Force/Commander, United States Forces, Afghanistan.

Trash Talk
By Sebastian Sprenger
June 22, 2011 at 4:34 PM

U.S. military forces operating in the war zone in and around Afghanistan generate an estimated 750 metric tons of hazardous trash every year, and the Pentagon is considering a new approach to getting rid of it, according to notice posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website last month.

The amount of hazardous trash is just one little nugget of news buried in the May 18 request for information issued by the Defense Logistics Agency. Another is exactly where the prospective trash collectors would have to pick up the DOD waste: Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and, yes, Pakistan.

Of course, there aren't officially any bases in Pakistan. But the FBO notice says quite explicitly that the place of performance for any contract would be “U.S. military installations” located in the four countries.

American bases in the countries north of Afghanistan are somewhat well-documented. The Pentagon relies on the governments there, many of them oppressive, to allow for the shipment of war supplies through their countries. But the FBO notices mention of Pakistan led us to ask DLA for more information.

“The wording of the FedBizOpps notice incorrectly infers that Pakistan may be a location where wastes are generated,” spokeswoman Michelle McCaskill wrote in an emailed response. “The notice itself is not an acquisition action but is part of an effort to gain a broad understanding of regional commercial disposal or recycling opportunities. The mention of Pakistan was because it is one of the nations in the region which potentially might be a site for compliant disposal of wastes if a contract was let and if the contractor obtained the necessary clearances and permits and met customs requirements.”

DLA officials are pretty clear about the unique circumstances of their new disposal idea. The RFI simply served to identify the feasibility of an actual contract, “given the potential concerns and difficulties expected to be encountered by contractors when performing such a project in this area of operations,” the document reads.
Nomination Confirmed
By John Liang
June 21, 2011 at 9:00 PM

The full Senate just unanimously approved President Obama's nomination of CIA Director Leon Panetta to succeed Robert Gates as defense secretary.

Click here to view Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin's floor statement on Panetta's nomination.

Willing and Able
By Sebastian Sprenger
June 21, 2011 at 6:15 PM

Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) is open to examining deeper defense cuts as the fiscal year 2012 defense policy bill makes its way through Congress, his spokeswoman tells us.

Levin used a telephone press conference with reporters last week to air frustration about the Obama administration, lamenting what he said was a lack of fiscal guidance for implementing the $400-billion savings target announced by the president in April.

In the end, the Senate Armed Services Committee's bill authorizes an FY-12 defense budget $6 billion below what the Obama administration requested in February.

Left unasked in the telephonic frenzy among reporters was the question whether Levin's bill would have advocated deeper cuts had the White House issued guidance to that effect.

Levin spokeswoman Tara Andringa sent us this response when we asked the question: “He is prepared to look for more cuts if they are required.”

Vice Blog
By Tony Bertuca
June 21, 2011 at 4:58 PM

The commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq is being discussed as a possible nominee to become the next vice chief of staff of the Army, according to a service source.

Gen. Lloyd James Austin III replaced Gen. Raymond Odierno in Iraq last June. Odierno has been nominated to replace Army Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, who has been nominated to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“That is the only name that has come across right now,” the source said.

News of discussions surrounding Austin's possible nomination were first reported today in a Lexington Institute blog.

If confirmed, Dempsey will begin as JCS in the fall when Adm. Michael Mullen steps down. Some in the Army are reportedly worried about the chaos associated with the change in that Dempsey has been chief only since April.

If Austin becomes the nominee, he would be in line to replace Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who the source said might stay on past his tour of duty to ensure a smoother transition.

“They want to avoid turbulence during the changeover of chiefs and [Chiarelli] made a passing reference to it in a meeting,” the source said. “They really don't want to switch out both within 30 days of each other. That's not particularly useful.”

Austin's previous jobs include director of the joint staff and commanding general of 18th Airborne Corps at Ft. Bragg, NC.

Japan Ministerial
By Christopher J. Castelli
June 20, 2011 at 9:49 PM

On June 21, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will host Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto and Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa for a Security Consultative Committee (SCC) meeting, at the State Department, said Pentagon spokesman Col. David Lapan.

"As part of the SCC meeting, informally known as the 2+2 Ministerial, the ministers will release a comprehensive joint statement articulating common strategic objectives and efforts to enhance the U.S.-Japan alliance. Demonstrating the breadth and depth of the alliance, the officials will discuss a wide range of bilateral, regional, and global issues, including the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, Afghanistan, missile defense technology transfer, and realignment of our forces in Okinawa," Lapan said. "This is the first such meeting in four years, and builds upon the progress that the U.S.-Japan alliance has made over the past half-century."

JSF Drum Beating
By Gabe Starosta
June 20, 2011 at 3:27 PM

Lockheed Martin today announced the launch of a snazzy new website for the Joint Strike Fighter, www.F35.com. The website features a musical intro, a description of the aircraft's history and production facilities, and a handful of book-jacket-style quotes from military and civilian leaders praising the F-35.

The site also includes a section titled “Public Support,” where visitors can sign a Statement of Support for the JSF program. The statement reads:

"I agree:

• The F-35 will provide the U.S. military and allied forces with the next generation capabilities they must have in today’s complex global security environment, including cutting-edge stealth, unparalleled awareness, and superior technology to support the men and women keeping us safe.

• The F-35 provides well-paying, skilled jobs for workers across nine nations, and safety for citizens of friendly nations across the world.

• We should support all efforts to improve our military’s abilities to meet today’s and tomorrow’s challenges."

The website then asks for some limited personal information, and signees and their state of residence are listed on a scrolling ticker on the right side of the page. As of this morning, most supporters come from Texas, Georgia and Alabama -- three states in which Lockheed Martin has a major presence.

Unphased
By John Liang
June 17, 2011 at 8:06 PM

During a teleconference call today on the Senate Armed Services Committee's mark-up of the fiscal year 2012 defense authorization bill, panel Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) was asked whether the conclusions of an as-yet-unpublished Defense Science Board report critical of the phased adaptive approach to European missile defense was reflected in the legislation.

His answer, in a word: "No."

Levin added that "there was nothing that -- as far as I know -- was explicitly reflective of it."

As InsideDefense.com reported on June 15:

The Pentagon's two-year-old plan to establish by 2020 the ability to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles flying toward Europe or the U.S. eastern seaboard is "not credible," a lawmaker said today, citing the conclusion of an unpublished report from an influential Pentagon advisory board.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee today that findings of a Defense Science Board task force on the feasibility of early intercept ballistic missile defense raise question about a key element of the Obama administration's plan to defend Europe against medium- and short-range ballistic missiles.

"The report's unclassified conclusion is that the Missile Defense Agency's plans to achieve an early intercept capability as part of the Phased Adaptive Approach are simply not credible," Shelby said during a hearing on the Pentagon's fiscal year 2012 budget request. "Now it looks like the nation may be left with an inadequate defense in Europe and no boost-phase intercept capability."

During today's conference call, though, Levin said:

NATO made a decision. I think most people think it was the right decision -- it gives us much greater capability against the Iranian threat, which is really maybe the main purpose of it. We view that as the main threat. That's what that phased adaptive approach gives us much greater capability against, and there was no . . . indication that I've heard of any move away from that.

No Reply
By Jordana Mishory
June 17, 2011 at 5:29 PM

Senate defense authorizers have not received any details on the executive branch's plan to cut security spending by $400 billion over the next decade despite two requests for information from the administration, according to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI).

During a conference call with reporters today, Levin said the administration is “losing an opportunity” to provide lawmakers information that could help guide the formation of the fiscal year 2012 defense authorization bill. The committee unanimously approved the bill Thursday.

The Pentagon submitted its FY-12 budget to lawmakers in February. But in April, President Obama announced his plans to reduce security spending by $400 billion through FY-23, with the bulk of those reductions expected to be borne by the Pentagon.

Defense authorizers would have found the administration's plans on the proposed cuts “useful and helpful,” although not binding, Levin said.

Levin noted that the committee found $6 billion in savings for FY-12.

New CNO
By John Liang
June 16, 2011 at 6:04 PM

In what is likely his last press conference, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates just announced that he would nominate Navy Adm. Jonathan Greenert to succeed the retiring Adm. Gary Roughead as the next chief of naval operations. According to Greenert's bio:

Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert is a native of Butler, Pa. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1975 and completed studies in nuclear power for service as a submarine officer.

His career as a submariner includes assignments aboard USS Flying Fish (SSN 673), USS Tautog (SSN 639), Submarine NR-1 and USS Michigan (SSBN 727 - Gold Crew), culminating in command of USS Honolulu (SSN 718) from March 1991 to July 1993.

Subsequent fleet command assignments include Commander, Submarine Squadron 11, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Marianas, Commander, U.S. 7th Fleet (August 2004 to September 2006) and Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command (September 2007 to July 2009).

Greenert has served in various fleet support and financial management positions, including deputy chief of naval operations for integration of capabilities and resources (N8); deputy commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet; chief of staff, U.S. 7th Fleet; head, Navy Programming Branch and director, Operations Division Navy Comptroller.

He is a recipient of various personal, and campaign awards including the Distinguished Service Medal (5 awards), Defense Superior Service Medal and Legion of Merit (4 awards). In 1992 he was awarded the Vice Admiral Stockdale Award for inspirational leadership. He considers those awards earned throughout his career associated with unit performance to be most satisfying and representative of naval service.

Not Enough
By John Liang
June 16, 2011 at 5:59 PM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today said the White House's legal justification for continuing military operations in Libya under the War Powers Act -- sent to Congress yesterday -- is not enough. According to a statement highlighting remarks the congressman made earlier today at a press conference:

BOEHNER ON THE FAILURE OF THE WHITE HOUSE TO ANSWER A KEY QUESTION ON LIBYA:

"Well, the administration gave its opinion on the war powers resolution, but it didn't answer the question in my letter as whether the Office of Legal Counsel agrees with them. So I'm looking forward to an answer on this by tomorrow."

BOEHNER ON WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS THAT THE U.S. MISSION REGARDING LIBYA DOES NOT INVOLVE "HOSTILITIES":

"The White House says there are no hostilities taking place, yet we have got drone attacks under way, we're spending $10 million a day. We're part of an effort to drop bombs on Qadhafi's compounds. It doesn't pass the straight face test, in my view, that we're not in the midst of hostilities. It's been four weeks since the President has talked to the American people about this mission, and I think it's time for the President to outline to the American people why we are there, what the mission is, and what our goals are, and how do we exit this."

BOEHNER ON FUTURE LEGISLATIVE ACTION BY THE HOUSE:

"The House has options. We're looking at those options, and my guess is that next week we may be prepared to move on those options based on the answers to the questions that we get."