The Insider

Gates says he is disbanding intelligence organizations that have grown up around COCOMs since 9/11 and will consolidate such intel capability at Defense Intelligence Agency; bump military service four-star regional commands around the world down to three-star commands; eliminate100 general officer positions, and spike the requirement for 400 annual reports.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates just opened his big announcements with a real big one -- his pick for Army chief of staff. That would be Gen. Martin Dempsey.

Dempsey, of course, is head of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command.

Biography here.

More to come.

The Missile Defense Agency has extended the due date for industry responses to a request for information on "new concepts to support the potential development of an airborne advanced sensor to improve acquisition, tracking, and discrimination in large raid scenarios," according to an updated Federal Business Opportunities notice released this morning. Specifically:

This concept notionally consists of a pod configuration that is mountable on multiple unmanned airborne platforms. The MDA is interested in obtaining information on concepts, subsystems, and components that might comprise an advanced sensor to support a potential 2-3 year development program that culminates in a rigorous test campaign to support a production decision in late FY-16.

The original Dec. 23 notice said responses were due "no later than 30 calendar days after the original posting of this request." Responses are now due Feb. 10.

A Lockheed Martin official this morning gave more details on the reasons why a pair of Airborne Laser Test Bed intercept attempts of a boosting ballistic missile target went awry last year.

During one attempt, the problem "involved a software issue in our beam control, fire control system that has since been corrected and the other one involved an issue with a valve on a laser subsystem," Doug Graham, vice president of advanced programs at Lockheed's Strategic and Missile Defense Systems business unit, said, adding: "Both of those have been corrected. We've got missions planned for this year, in which we'll be able to validate the corrective actions we've implemented to fix those anomalies."

When asked about the software glitch, Graham said:

We basically had an error in a single frame of software that occurred at a critical time that could have happened literally like a millisecond earlier or a millisecond later and it would have had no impact on our ability to engage and destroy the target. And so that required us to make a relatively straightforward software fix. It hadn't manifested itself in any of the previous flights that we'd done, and we have since done a whole bunch of testing in our software development lab here and on the aircraft down at Edwards [Air Force Base, CA] to convince ourselves that that's not gonna happen again.

As Inside Missile Defense reported in November:

Despite the fact that ALTB did manage to shoot down a boosting missile target last February, under its current form the Airborne Laser does not reflect a weapon the military could realistically use, according to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz.

While the intercept "was a magnificent technological achievement . . . the reality . . . is that this does not reflect something that is operationally viable," Schwartz said at a Feb. 23 House Armed Services Committee hearing. The general added that the future of military laser technology is in solid-state lasers and not the chemical-based one that was carried aboard the ABL.

"The real innovation there is essentially to use that platform as a way to test high-powered laser concepts," Zachary Lemnios, director of the Pentagon's Defense Research and Engineering office, said in a Feb. 23 interview. "And we have a joint technology office that's looking at the technical strategy for how we might use that: What's the right technical thread? We went out to see the ABL about a month ago at Edwards [Air Force Base, CA]. It's a remarkable platform. You sort of have to look at it like a nuclear submarine. It is high-power optics. This enormous power supply with an enormous laser in the back end, but it's also a chemical plant."

Lemnios called ABL "a very complex intersection of a combination of high-power laser optics, control systems -- much of which could be used for other than just high-power lasing. It could be used for alternate test beds for other concepts that we're looking at. So we have the joint technology office that's actually looking at that jointly with [the Missile Defense Agency] and the services to try to map that path forward."

Defense analysts at the Lexington Institute have been tough on the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle lately -- one official even went as far as to call the vehicle program "doomed" -- but the service hasn't been shy about defending its strategy. This back-and-forth has been playing out online as industry prepares to respond to the GCV technology-development phase request for proposals on Jan. 21.

The latest volley comes from Lt. Col. Mark B. Elfendahl, chief of Training and Doctrine Command's joint and Army concepts division, who wrote a response to criticism leveled by Daniel Goure, a Lexington Institute analyst who questioned the Army's need to invest in the GCV, expected to cost $10 million per vehicle.

"Ground combat soldiers bear the brunt of war today and will do so tomorrow. America's adversaries have made the conscious decision not to fight the U.S. in the air, or at sea, and with good reason," Elfendahl wrote in comments that were posted on the Lexington Institute's website. "The GCV will be a well-used, highly challenged, effective and efficient means to employ U.S. soldiers around the world. It will field the latest technology to provide growth potential, enhanced survivability, and operational adaptability. Developing the GCV is an essential step toward providing the necessary capabilities for U.S. forces to engage and to respond to the wide variety of threats in our future."

But Lexington's Goure argued in a Dec. 8 blog entry that the Army faced greater challenges that trumped the need for a new ground vehicle such as networking the force or improving precision strike capabilities.

"While there is value to be had in a highly survivable vehicle that can transport an entire infantry squad while also carrying 'heavy' weapons, such a capability does not seem to address the Army’s biggest challenges," he wrote. "In fact, building another massive, fifty to seventy ton vehicle does not seem the right solution to the problem of deploying into austere locations and sustaining operations in immature theaters. But even if it were, the dominant problem for the Army is not how to get a nine man squad from a Forward Operating Base to the scene of a tactical engagement but whether it will be able to conduct expeditionary warfare in the future or operate in a high-intensity threat environment."

A focus of the GCV program is to deliver the capacity to transport nine soldiers (a full squad) to combat zones, a capability the Bradley Fighting Vehicle does not have. The Stryker can carry a full squad, but it is less armored and soldiers must deploy further away from the fight.

Ultimately, Goure wrote, the Army should focus on modernizing its current fleet of armored vehicles.

"While the re-released Ground Combat Vehicle RFP could be the start of a revolution in how the Army develops requirements and acquires weapons systems it may not be the right place to invest lots of scarce resources," he wrote. "The Army already has a massive fleet of armored combat systems virtually all of which can or are being modernized. The opportunity costs of investing in another ground combat system seem to be just too high at this point in time."

The exchange between Goure and Elfendahl marks the second time the Army has publicly responded to criticism of its GCV solicitation. The back and forth began when Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, the deputy commanding general of TRADOC and director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, responded to Lexington's chief operating officer, Loren Thompson, who posted a blog entry on Forbes.com on Dec. 2 calling the entire program "doomed" due to high costs and contract changes that will disincentivize industry. The GCV technology-development phase solicitation calls for a "fixed-price incentive-fee" arrangement in which industry has been given a ceiling of $450 million. If winning companies come in below that cost, the government will pay them 20 percent of any money saved. If they come in over budget, however, contractors will be responsible for any additional costs.

Thompson expounded on his reasoning in a Dec. 3 interview with Inside the Army.

"The development schedule is too aggressive and it yields a unit cost that is too expensive," he said at the time. "Yet the contractors are under-incentivized to perform. You have to keep in mind that most of these contractors are conflicted here. They have existing armored vehicle lines that are doing well and generating strong margins. And here comes the Army with a new contract vehicle and a new structure of incentives that does not compare favorably at all. It's expecting these contractors to spend a lot of their own money to get through the technology-development phase and be poised to win. It's also expecting them to keep the program sold on Capitol Hill and it just hasn't given them a good reason for doing those things."

Vane, who helped develop the GCV's requirements, provided the Lexington Institute with a written response on Dec. 6, which the think tank posted on its website.

"Affordability arguments are always related to how much money one has and what the effect is on the operation," he wrote. "It is hard to argue that any force other than the Army (which includes Special Forces) does as much engagement with our friends and enemies and makes as much difference. So, $10 million for nine soldiers that actually engage the enemy directly in this conflict and nearly every conceivable conflict in the future is not a pretty good deal? It think it compares very favorably to a joint strike fighter, a littoral combat ship, or a submarine."

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli recently appeared at a pre-proposal GCV conference in Dearborn, MI, to assure industry officials of the service's commitment to the effort.

"The bottom line is this: the Ground Combat Vehicle [request for proposals] represents a great opportunity,” Chiarelli was quoted as saying in a Dec. 18 statement from the Army. "There is a real need for this capability now and in the future. The challenge we face is providing that needed capability, under an accelerated time line and in a fiscally constrained environment. This can only be achieved by working together. I believe this large gathering -- on a Saturday, a week before Christmas -- clearly demonstrates our shared commitment."

The Obama White House is asking all federal departments and agencies to wrap up by Jan. 28 an initial assessment of how they safeguard national security information. The internal reviews, which began last November, were spurred by the massive release of internal national security documents by the website WikiLeaks.

In a Jan. 3 memo, Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew said the director of the Information Security Oversight Office and the National Counterintelligence Executive within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will evaluate and assist the departments and agencies in their compliance. "Their support will include periodic on-site reviews of agency compliance where appropriate," Lew said.

Lew's memo lays out what each department and agency should include in its review:

1. Assess what your agency has done or plans to do to address any perceived vulnerabilities, weaknesses, or gaps on automated systems in the post-WikiLeaks environment.

2. Assess weakness or gaps with respect to the attached list of questions, and formulate plans to resolve the issues or to shift or acquire resources to address those weaknesses or gaps.

3. Assess your agency's plans for changes and upgrades to current classified networks, systems, applications, databases, websites, and online collaboration environments as

well as for all new classified networks, systems, applications, databases, websites or online collaboration environments that are in the planning, implementation, or testing phases -in terms of the completeness and projected effectiveness of all types of security controls called for by applicable law and guidance (including but limited to those issued by the National Security Staff, the Committee on National Security Systems, the National Institute for Standards and Technology).

4. Assess all security, counterintelligence, and information assurance policy and regulatory documents that have been established by and for your department or agency.