The Insider

With the Airborne Laser's next shoot-down attempt of a boosting ballistic missile target due to take place by the end of next month, the system recently went through a "continuing series of calibration and targeting tests," Missile Defense Agency spokesman Rick Lehner tells Inside Missile Defense.

According to the FAA Notice to Airmen posted late last month:

FDC 0/3348 ZDC SPECIAL NOTICE.. EFFECTIVE FROM 1007230400 UTC UNTIL 1008010400 UTC, AIRBORNE LASER OPERATIONS WILL BE INTERMITTENTLY CONDUCTED ABOVE FL400 WITHIN 50NM MILES ON EITHER SIDE OF THE LINE FROM KLFI TO KBKT TO KSDF TO KLRF TO KEFD. THE NON-VISIBLE, DOWNWARD SCANNING LASER BEAM MAY BE INJURIOUS TO PILOTS'/AIRCREWS' AND PASSENGERS' EYES TO A DISTANCE OF 4,500 FEET BELOW THE AIRCRAFT. TO PREVENT INJURY THE AIRCRAFT WILL BE OPERATING AT THE TOP OF AN ATC ASSIGNED 5,000 FOOT ALTITUDE BLOCK DURING ACTIVE LASING OPERATIONS. THIS AREA WILL BE MONITORED BY OBSERVERS AND OPERATION OF THE LASER WILL BE TERMINATED IF NON PARTICIPATING AIRCRAFT ARE DETECTED ENTERING THE AFFECTED AREA. THE CONTROLLING CENTER WILL BE NOTIFIED PRIOR TO THE START OF LASER OPERATIONS AND AGAIN WHEN LASER OPERATIONS ARE TERMINATED.

The above notice refers to the time frame between July 23 and Aug. 1 in an area "out over the Pacific off Point Mugu and vicinity," Lehner said. No missile intercepts were attempted during the tests, he added.

The House Armed Services Committee in May approved a $50 million increase for directed-energy research and the Airborne Laser Test Bed program "to facilitate the testing and development of technologies that are most likely to yield operational capabilities in the future," strategic forces subcommittee Chairman James Langevin (D-RI) said.

Subcommittee Ranking Member Michael Turner (R-OH) said at the time that he was "particularly pleased" with the ALTB funding increase. "It was clear that the budget request was not sufficient to support further flight testing using the Airborne Laser Test Bed as well as mature innovative directed energy technologies," he added.

The Pentagon recently updated its doctrine on helping other countries' counterinsurgency efforts. According to the preface to "Joint Publication 3-22 on Foreign Internal Defense":

This publication has been prepared under the direction of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It sets forth joint doctrine to govern the joint activities and performance of the Armed Forces of the United States in operations and provides the doctrinal basis for interagency coordination and for US military involvement in multinational operations while conducting or supporting FID. It provides military guidance for the exercise of authority by combatant commanders and other joint force commanders (JFCs) and prescribes joint doctrine for operations, education, and training. It provides military guidance for use by the Armed Forces in preparing their appropriate plans. It is not the intent of this publication to restrict the authority of the JFC from organizing the force and executing the mission in a manner the JFC deems most appropriate to ensure unity of effort in the accomplishment of the overall objectives.

Last month, Inside the Army reported that officials at Joint Forces Command's Joint Irregular Warfare Center plan to offer a still-classified metrics scheme as their answer to the question of how the U.S. military would know whether its irregular-warfare missions are succeeding or failing. Specifically:

Work on the metrics program, conducted in concert with the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, began in response to a March 11, 2009, irregular warfare vision statement from JFCOM chief Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis. The document gave JIWC and JWAC 18 months to craft "measures of effectiveness that will facilitate and guide the joint force in the planning and execution" of irregular warfare, the document said. Mattis last week was nominated to take over U.S. Central Command.

As a starting point, officials picked a classified program used by a combatant command, JIWC Director James O'Connell told Inside the Army in a June 16 interview. The plan now is to "expand . . . the aperture of that program" and get other COCOMs and services to also adopt it, O'Connell said. A common set of metrics for irregular warfare outcomes would serve to help DOD officials gauge "where we are" as they plan and execute missions, he added.

O'Connell declined to describe the program identified by JFCOM or name the combatant command using it, citing the effort's classification. Whether the program would be applied to measure progress in Afghanistan is still undecided, he said.

DOD leaders believe irregular warfare, a term loathed by many civilian development specialists outside the military, will constitute the predominant form of conflict facing the United States in the future. In DOD nomenclature, sub-disciplines of IW are the fields of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense and stability operations.

O'Connell suggested the metrics program's classification currently hinders it from being widely discussed by civilian experts and academics outside the military -- as it is customary with progress measures leaning heavily on development and nation-building. To that end, officials hope to make at least parts of the program unclassified within the next three to four months, according to O'Connell.

House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Buck McKeon (R-CA) doesn't like the fact that $3.3 billion in defense spending will go instead to fund education programs. According to the text of a floor statement he delivered yesterday:

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in opposition to this measure, which will increase domestic spending at the expense of national security. Specifically, the federal government will spend $10 billion for this teacher bailout, paid for in part with a $3.3 billion cut in defense programs. As the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, I can assure you that the Department of Defense has need for these funds, including unfunded requirements related to our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. I say this fully aware of the needs of our educational system, as the former Chairman and Ranking Member of Education and Labor.

Those in favor of this bill will say that this money was previously identified by the Department of Defense as unspent and available for higher priorities. This includes $683.5 million unspent from last year’s economic stimulus package and $325 million for military construction projects. They will use this argument to convince members that these cuts will not harm the Department and to assure you that this next bailout is fully paid for.

But this argument misses two larger points. First, as yesterday’s Military Times observed, ‘…diverting money from the defense budget to education programs would eliminate any opportunity for the Defense Department or Congress to take unobligated money from one defense program to spend on another defense program.’ For example, in the Fiscal Year 2011 National Defense Authorization Act, we used the unobligated balances for military construction projects to fund other more pressing infrastructure needs, such as barracks and armories, and many of the services’ unfunded requirements. Now these funds will no longer be available for these purposes and the services will have outstanding needs go unmet.

Second, rescissions to the DoD budget this late in the fiscal year are problematic and disruptive to operations. As the Department of Defense Comptroller has told the Armed Services Committee, this rescission will require that DoD restructure or postpone programs. I am confident the Department will try to avoid adverse effects on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but when this nation is fighting two wars, Congress should not be pulling the financial rug out from under DoD at the end of the year.

Moreover, while these funds were identified as ‘unspent’ earlier this year, some of these 'unspent' dollars have already been diverted to other defense programs. When we cut the original accounts now, it will mean that some of these accounts no longer have enough money in them. Think about your own checking account—at the beginning of the year, you see that you have $1,000 more than your budget says you’ll need. So you move $800 into another account or give it to one of your children. If the government comes and takes $1,000 from you at the end of the year, your remaining account balance may not be sufficient and you find yourself in an overdraft situation. In the case of government agencies, it is against the law to overdraft an account. We have been told that the Department of Defense may find itself in violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act in some accounts.

Finally, I remain concerned that this is the beginning of a slippery slope. The Secretary of Defense has initiated an ongoing effort to generate $100 billion in savings within the Department of Defense over the next five years. Yesterday he announced a series of spending freezes and closures of organizations within his office and combatant commands. Secretary Gates plans on plowing these savings back into force structure and modernization accounts.

Foreign defense contractors that want to work with the Pentagon while employing people with more than one passport have had no shortage of headaches when trying to comply with the U.S. government's export control policies, as a State Department notice in this morning's Federal Register states:

The current requirement for the provision of additional information within a license to cover dual national and third-country national foreign employees has created a tremendous administrative burden on approved end-users and has evolved into a human rights issue, which has become a focus of contention between the U.S. and allies and friends without a commensurate gain in national security.

Consequently, the State Department has changed the rule:

Based on available intelligence and law enforcement information, and given the current licensing requirements regarding access by dual or third country national employees, most diversions of U.S. Munitions List (USML) items appears to occur outside the scope of approved licenses, not within foreign companies or organizations providing access to properly screened dual national or third country national employees. This amendment will place the affirmative responsibility upon the foreign company, government, or international organization, with the understanding that by accepting the USML defense article, they must comply with the provisions of U.S. laws and regulations to prevent the possible diversion of U.S. defense articles and technology. This change, by no means, reduces the due diligence requirements of the applicant to ensure, to the best of their ability, that the end-use and end-user are consistent with the approved authorization. The Department views due diligence as a requirement for security clearances or other effective screening procedures as a condition for access to ITAR-controlled defense articles and technology.

As National Security Adviser James Jones said in June:

We should be striving for a system that prevents harmful exports while facilitating useful ones. Our current system is not meeting that objective. In fact, our system itself poses a potential national security risk based on the fact that its structure is overly complicated, contains too many redundancies, and tries to protect too much. In short, we are hard to work with. As Secretary Gates has often said, we need to have a "higher fence around a smaller yard."

EADS North America said today its CEO, Sean O’Keefe, was a passenger on a private aircraft that crashed in Alaska last night.

Local authorities are reporting that there are survivors and a rescue operation is under way. "No other details are available at this time," said Guy Hicks, EADS North America spokesman.

CNN is reporting Ted Stevens, the former Republican senator from Alaska, was also a passenger on the plane.

(UPDATE 3 p.m.: CNN is now reporting that Stevens was killed in the crash. Reuters is reporting that O'Keefe survived.)

Reports of U.S. Joint Forces Command's impending demise were all it took for Virginia lawmakers to step into action, calling an "emergency" press conference for today at 4:00:

Washington, D.C. – Governor Bob McDonnell, Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-04), Congressman Glenn Nye (VA-02), Congressman Bobby Scott (VA-03), and Congressman Rob Wittman (VA-01) will hold an urgent press conference today to discuss Secretary Robert Gates’ announcement today of plans to eliminate Joint Forces Command. The press conference will be held at 4:00 p.m. at the Webb University Center at Old Dominion University.

WHO:

Governor Bob McDonnell

Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-04)

Congressman Glenn Nye (VA-02)

Congressman Bobby Scott (VA-03)

Congressman Rob Wittman (VA-01)

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Defense Secretary Robert Gates just told reporters Virginia may stand to gain more than it loses from JFCOM's demise if he is successful in cutting what he hopes to cut in many areas. How? According to Gates, a few billion dollars for more Navy shipbuilding may be in the offing if the cuts are permitted.

At least one analyst is downplaying the notion in the news last week that China's new missile could be a "carrier killer." As the Associate Press reported last week:

U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China -- an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles).

But Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute doesn't seem to think so. In a blog entry posted today, he writes:

I haven't seen the intelligence reports, so maybe all the alarm is warranted. But I doubt it. China has yet to conduct a single realistic test of the conventionally-armed ballistic missile. Even if it performs as feared, there is a glaring omission in all the threat mongering: the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) has no reliable way of actually targeting U.S. carrier task forces when they are at sea. No matter how accurate the new missile's guidance system may be, Chinese military commanders need to know where to aim it -- especially since a near miss with a conventional warhead has pretty much the same military value as missing by a hundred miles. So how exactly is the PLA supposed to find U.S. carriers, when they are constantly moving and actively excluding hostile forces from their immediate vicinity?

The answer is that it can't. "Four and a half acres of sovereign U.S. territory" -- the way carrier proponents often describe flattops -- may sound like a huge target, but in fact it is a mere speck in the vast expanses of the Western Pacific. For example, the modestly-sized South China Sea that Beijing keeps trying to claim for itself contains over a million square miles of water, in which a carrier can easily hide. And that's only a small part of the East Asia littoral. I calculated a decade ago that to acquire continuous target-quality information for the entire South China Sea, the PLA would need over a hundred low-earth-orbit reconnaissance satellites moving in three parallel tracks. At the moment, China only has a handful of such satellites, and as a result most of the time its overhead sensors aren't anywhere near areas of interest. It also has over-the-horizon radars and roaming submarines, plus a fleet of reconnaissance aircraft, but these do not add up to the seamless targeting network the PLA would need to track and attack a U.S. carrier.