The Insider

With Gen. Stanley McChrystal's report to President Obama on Afghanistan dominating the news today, an Army solicitation for an Afghanistan marketing plan -- also issued today -- has caught our eye. The Army is looking for an Afghan company to carry out a media and advertising campaign “to influence the Afghanistan people at all levels (strategic, operational and tactical) and which will directly translate in the reduction of the number of ((improvised explosive devices)) used against the Afghanistan people and coalition forces," the solicitation states.

According to the notice, here's the situation the Afghan people and McChrystal's forces face:

Foreign terrorists, religious extremists, and militant militia continue to use increasingly sophisticated Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) as a weapon of choice against the Afghanistan populace, Afghanistan Security Forces and Coalition Forces – causing casualties among both the civilian and military populaces. As a result, the Coalition Forces are collaborating to produce a comprehensive marketing and information campaign for Regional Commander East RC(E) which will be designed and produced by the contractor chosen for award under this solicitation, and will be in coordination with the strategic information goals of the RC(E).

The Army wants the company chosen to produce 12 conceptual campaigns during a given year. These campaigns -- covering security, nation development and governance issues -- are to use television and radio advertising, billboards or other outside media, and newspaper ads.

The Afghan company will be signed to a one-year contract. At the end of that year, if the marketing campaign is successful, the Afghan people will recognize an atmosphere of security and one in which the Afghan security forces can transition into the lead, the solicitation asserts.

A group of activists led by the Union of Concerned Scientists is seeking to get out ahead of President Obama's speech to the United Nations General Assembly and subsequent chairing of the U.N. Security Council this week by beginning an advertising campaign calling for steep reductions to the world's nuclear-weapons arsenal.

Obama will speak to the General Assembly on Sept. 23 and chair a meeting of the Security Council the next day, according to a UCS statement issued today:

Both the president's address and the Security Council session are expected to focus on nuclear weapons policy. The campaign also coincides with an ongoing administration assessment of U.S. nuclear weapons policy, called the Nuclear Posture Review, which will determine U.S. plans for the next several years.

The campaign will feature an advertisement signed by retired Army Brig. Gen. John Adams, former deputy U.S. military representative to NATO; Bishop Howard Hubbard, chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; Joel Hunter, senior pastor at Northland: A Church Distributed; Leon Lederman, a Nobel laureate in physics and a professor at Illinois Institute of Technology; Barry Levy, former president of the American Public Health Association and an adjunct professor of public health at Tufts University's School of Medicine; and Charleta Tavares, Columbus, OH, City Council member and board chair of the Women's Action for New Directions Education Fund.

The ad is scheduled to appear this week in publications like Congress Daily, The Hill, National Journal, Politico, Roll Call and The Washington Times, according to UCS.

In addition to the print ad, the signatories will send a letter to President Obama and UCS will simultaneously deliver letters from some 11,000 citizens from across the country to the president and other officials involved in the Nuclear Posture Review, according to the statement.

China's interest in developing a land-mobile, maneuverable anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) has been gaining increased attention in the open literature in recent months.

"Nobody has ever been able to hit a moving target with a ballistic missile yet," retired Navy Cmdr. Paul Diarra, head of the consulting firm Global Strategies & Transformation, said at a Defense Forum Foundation luncheon on Capitol Hill today.

Diarra wrote a brief article in the May issue of the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine (which also had a longer article written by two other authors on the same subject) where he noted that if China does indeed develop such a capability, "((t))he numbers are going to be in China's favor. In a wartime situation, even if every U.S. ((Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense)) interceptor hit and destroyed an inbound-ASBM, naval missile magazines are very limited and cannot be reloaded at sea.

"This is a glaring deficiency for us," Diarra's article continued. "It severely limits our defense and turns high-tech, network warfare into a simple battle of attrition favoring the offense," he warned.

To illustrate his point during his Capitol Hill presentation today, Diarra showed a photo of actor Slim Pickens from the movie "Dr. Strangelove" riding the nuclear bomb at the end of the film. The next picture Diarra showed was what he called a "Slim Pickens" overhead view of anti-ship ballistic missiles bearing down on a U.S. carrier battle group.

"This is what the Chinese are trying to do with their ballistic missiles, which is target our carriers and other capital ships from thousands of miles away," Diarra said.

Such a Chinese capability has "profound consequences" for U.S. Naval and global strategy, he added, especially since the United States is so dependent on unfettered global access and unimpeded naval power.

"We've become so used to this that we take it for granted," Diarra said. "The Chinese are not taking it for granted."

One analyst is predicting the Government Accountability Office will soon overturn the recent award of the Army's Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles contract to Oshkosh.

FMTV competitors Navistar and BAE Systems earlier this month filed protests with the GAO of an August award to Oshkosh worth $280.9 million for 2,568 FMTVs. According to Oshkosh, the order is expected to total 23,000 trucks and trailers. BAE Systems was the incumbent in the competition.

In a Sept. 17 "issue brief," Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute (who also runs a consulting shop) writes that the Army made "fundamental mistakes" by accepting a "wildly unrealistic cost estimate from Oshkosh without making any serious attempt to determine whether it was valid" and by rating the three offerors "equal in terms of risk and capability," even though BAE Systems was the incumbent.

And, Thompson writes, the service rated the offerors equal with regard to past performance, ignoring BAE's relevant past experience.

In combination, these missteps nearly guarantee that the protests lodged by the losing teams will be sustained when the Government Accountability Office rules on them later this year. But the truck award raises more far-reaching questions about the competence of Army source selections, because the errors were so egregious. Consider the issue of cost realism, a central concern in acquisition reform. Despite lack of facilities, workforce and relevant experience, Oshkosh bid 30 percent below what BAE is charging for building the same trucks today. BAE bid below its current asking price too, and but not that low -- even though it already has a production process in place. Army personnel accepted the bids at face value without any effort to independently verify them, and in fact made cost the sole determinant of the award.

Additionally, Thompson writes that capabilities and past performance were supposed to outweigh cost as factors in the competition, and rating Oshkosh as equal in production capability "seems preposterous on its face." In past performance, the Army "ignored a host of factors" in assuming Oshkosh could match BAE, including Oshkosh's high-priority contract to build Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicles.

"What this all adds up to is a procurement disaster in the making, a conclusion GAO analysts should have little difficulty reaching," Thompson concludes.

According to his biography, Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute, also runs Source Associates, a "for-profit consultancy."

Not all the missile defense news out today has to do with Europe. The Pentagon just announced that Navy Capt. Randall Hendrickson has been selected for rear admiral (lower half) and would be assigned as deputy director of the Missile Defense Agency.

Hendrickson commanded the Aegis cruiser Lake Erie (CG-70) from 2006 to 2008. In 2007, the Lake Erie shot down an errant U.S. intelligence satellite. He also commanded the destroyer Ramage (DDG-61) from March 2002 to November 2003.

Hendrickson replaces Navy Rear Adm. Joseph Horn, who in July was reassigned as MDA's program director for Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense.

According to the Pentagon statement, Hendrickson is serving as head of theater missile defense (N865) in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

The American Civil Liberties Union has cautioned a newly formed Defense Department advisory panel against making recommendations that would concentrate too much disaster response responsibilities in the hands of the military.

"(W)e ask the panel to refrain from assuming at the outset that choosing to use military forces to respond to domestic emergencies is automatically the best course of action," ACLU officials wrote in a Sept. 10 letter to DOD.

Pentagon officials recently published the missive as a public comment for the Sept. 15 inaugural meeting of the Advisory Panel on Department of Defense Capabilities for Support of Civil Authorities After Certain Incidents.

The congressionally mandated group is charged with assessing DOD's ability to help civil authorities cope with a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive (CBRNE) incident on American soil.

Rather than DOD, the Department of Homeland Security would be the "natural agency" to house a dedicated CBRNE response capability, the ACLU letter states.

Panel members should consider "alternatives for emergency CBRNE response that maintain the traditional dominance of civilian agencies in domestic operations and thereby leaving the military to focus on its own mission of fighting foreign enemies," ACLU officials argue in the letter.