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Archive for February, 2009

Defense Budget Released (kind of)

Friday, February 27th, 2009

Here’s the Pentagon spe­cific por­tion of the Obama bud­get, just released. No com­men­tary as of yet, still have to read it.
Update – Reader Bdwilcox had me laugh­ing with this com­ment, down below: Why bother read­ing it? Congress voted on an $800 bil­lion “stim­u­lus pack­age” with­out read­ing it, so why should we hold you to a higher stan­dard? Just com­ment away…
Heh, right on.
–John Noonan

Her Majesty’s Royal Coast Guard

Friday, February 27th, 2009

FSC.jpg
David Axe reports:

Under cur­rent plans, the Royal Navy circa 2020 will be a very strange force. There will be just six high-​​end war­ships to pro­tect two 65,000-ton super-​​carriers, plus a mixed flotilla of old Type 23s and FSCs num­ber­ing just over a dozen. Itll be a top-​​heavy force with too few destroy­ers to escort the car­ri­ers into a shoot­ing war, and too few frigates to per­form day-​​to-​​day patrolling dur­ing peace­time. Its a fleet opti­mized for nothing. 

For the past few decades, Her Majesty’s Armed Forces have steered away from the preser­va­tion of empire and colonies, instead con­fig­ur­ing them­selves in such a way that they can pro­vide a solid bul­wark to the US Armed Forces, while oper­at­ing inde­pen­dently in a sin­gle the­ater, Falklands style sce­nario.
But, the back­bone of any British strat­egy –from the pre-​​Victorian age all the way up until the Labour Party vic­tory in the mid 1990s– has always been a pow­er­ful Royal Navy. The fleet’s demise over the past sev­eral years has been one of the great tragedies in recent mem­ory. There was a time when the Union Jack pro­tected every major sea lane and trade route on the globe — today the British can barely pro­tect their own coast­line. That’s a ter­ri­ble fall for what was once a mighty sea-​​faring empire.
What’s trou­bling about this report, to me at least, is that the Brits are shap­ing their fleet in such a way that it will be largely reliant on American pro­tec­tion. Instead of exist­ing as a pow­er­ful, inde­pen­dent ally that can oper­ate jointly or inde­pen­dently with its US coun­ter­part, the Royal Navy is becom­ing a wel­fare case — where sup­port­ing it with anti-​​sub and anti-​​air pro­tec­tion becomes more of a drain on our own resources than a ben­e­fit.
Watching the British lose con­fi­dence in them­selves, the oft-​​lamented “Suez Syndrome,” is ter­ri­ble. But, as much as it pains me to say so, per­haps it’s time we look for new, stronger allies for our spe­cial defense rela­tion­ship — per­haps in the Aussies or Japanese.
–John Noonan
HT - Goldfarb

To Kill or not to Kill

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

Kim Jong II
Back in 2008, US Pacific Command scored big when they knocked down a decay­ing US satel­lite with a sea-​​launched inter­cep­tor. Now ABC reports that CINCPAC, Adm. Timothy Keating, is ready to break out the fly­swat­ter again — this time under oper­a­tional conditions.

In an exclu­sive inter­view with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, Adm. Timothy Keating, head of the U.S. Pacific Commands, said that the mil­i­tary is pre­pared to shoot down any North Korean bal­lis­tic mis­sile — if President Obama should give the order.
If a mis­sile leaves the launch pad we’ll be pre­pared to respond upon direc­tion of the pres­i­dent,” Keating told ABC News. “I’m not a bet­ting man but I’d go like 60/​40, 70/​30 that it will, they will attempt to launch a satel­lite. There’s equip­ment mov­ing up there that would indi­cate the pre­lim­i­nary stages of prepa­ra­tion for a launch. So I’d say it’s more than less likely.”

With plenty of Aegis assets float­ing around the ring of fire, ground-​​based inter­cep­tors at Vandenberg AFB, CA and Alaska, and a whole mess of radars that put Superman’s x-​​ray vision to shame.… there’s no doubt we could pull this off. But, like with all things defense, the ques­tion is whether or not we should.
Sure, the idea might appeal to those of us whose respon­si­bil­ity for national secu­rity and state­craft stop at the “pub­lish” but­ton on our blogs — watch­ing the Norks hopes for both a space pro­gram and a cred­i­ble nuclear deter­rent dis­si­pate in a cloud of inter­cep­tor smoke sure to hell appeals to me– but what about the State depart­ment wonks who are respon­si­ble for turn­ing off the North Korean nuclear pro­gram? What hap­pens if the North Koreans step up raids along their bor­ders, seize an American ship, or send nuclear sci­en­tists and sup­plies to Iran — or Syria?
The North Koreans are, by nature, aggres­sive crea­tures. But that doesn’t mean they’re stu­pid. In the fifty plus years since the cease­fire, they’ve fre­quently pushed us right up to our absolute, no shit limit, then quickly backed down. It’s a strange amal­ga­ma­tion of diplo­macy, pol­i­tics, and war­fare –a harsh cal­cu­lus of slaps and hand­shakes– that the Norks have mas­tered in their half-​​century of deal­ing with the West.
In other words, Kim Jong Il is damned good at being a gigan­tic pain in the ass.
So do we pro­voke him? Is it nec­es­sary? Does the ben­e­fit out­weigh poten­tial cost? I ven­ture a cau­tious yes (let our new CiC play a lit­tle hard­ball), but what say you?
–John Noonan

Which to Kill: Raptor or Lightning Deus?

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

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Okay, folks, something’s gotta give, money-​​wise. As we dicussed in a recent post and pod­cast, the VH-​​71 is in the crosshairs for severe reduc­tions if not out­right can­cel­la­tion. These are bad times to be a pro­gram 100 per­cent over bud­get and a cou­ple of years behind schedule.

Moreover, these are bad times PERIOD. Now I under­stand that the JSF and F-​​22 are designed to meet sep­a­rate Air Force require­ments. The JSF meets the LOW require­ment and replaces the F-​​16; the F-​​22 meets the HIGH require­ment and replaces the F-​​15. But the fis­cal situ­ta­tion now and in the FYDP might not sup­port both.

We had a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion back in the day when car­rier avi­a­tion, due to bud­get con­cerns pri­mar­ily, was forced to choose between the A-​​6 and the F-​​14. Long story short, the Intruder went away and the Navy enhanced the Tomcat’s res­i­dent bomb­ing capa­bil­ity. (The rest is OEF and OIF his­tory, of course.)

JSF.jpg

So with Christian on the road for the next few days and me mind­ing the store, I wanted to open up the dis­cus­sion to you guys, the awe­some and eru­dite in defense mat­ters DT read­ers. What do you think? If the USAF decison-​​makers are made to choose one or the other, which should they pick?

Wikipedia (the source of all mod­ern knowl­edge) “apples-​​to-​​apples” unit fly­away price com­par­i­son: F-​​22 - $137.5 mil­lion; JSF - $83 mil­lion. And I know the Raptor does things the JSF doesn’t, but does that capa­bil­ity val­i­date the addi­tional cost con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent (and pro­jected) threat and bud­getary situation?

The com­ments board is now open.

Ward

The Russians are ‘Pushing’ Again

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

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Russian manip­u­la­tion has led to the gov­ern­ment of the cen­tral Asian repub­lic of Kyrgyzstan telling the United States that it must cease using its Manas air base. The base is of major impor­tance to U.S. oper­a­tions and sup­port of the con­flict in Afghanistan. 

Until 1991, Kyrgyzstan had been a part of the Soviet Union. And, like Afghanistan, it is a land-​​locked state. 

Large-​​scale U.S. mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Afghanistan began shortly after the September 11, 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks on the United States. Because no coun­tries in the region — includ­ing Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which the United States had defended in 1991 — would per­mit U.S. forces to fly com­bat mis­sions from their air­fields, ini­tial U.S. air sup­port came from air­craft car­ri­ers oper­at­ing in the Persian Gulf. These included the car­rier Kitty Hawk (CV 63) serv­ing as an afloat base for spe­cial forces and their heli­copters. Other flights to Afghanistan had to fly lengthy routes, with over­flight per­mis­sion need from sev­eral countries. 

Thus the Kyrgyzstan base of Manas has been of great impor­tance. About 500 tons of mate­r­ial and 15,000 U.S. troops move through the base every month. The United States has been pay­ing the coun­try just over $17 mil­lion per year for use of the facility. 

Talks between the U.S. and Kyrgyzstan gov­ern­ments are con­tin­u­ing as this is writ­ten, but the point has been made: The pres­i­dent of Kyrgyzstan announced the end of American use of the base at a joint press con­fer­ence with Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev. This was another demon­stra­tion of the “new” Russia being a major player in world events. 

Other recent exam­ples of this atti­tude include the Russian inva­sion of Georgia last year, the dif­fi­cult nego­ti­a­tions over energy pipelines to Europe through the Ukraine, the recent visit of a naval task force — includ­ing a nuclear-​​propelled cruiser — to Venezuela to boost the pres­tige of U.S. antag­o­nist Hugo Chavez, the oper­a­tion of a Soviet car­rier task force in the Mediterranean, planted rumors that Russia is seek­ing to reestab­lish a naval base in Syria, and the peri­odic long-​​range flights toward NATO coun­tries by Russian bombers. 

These activ­i­ties are not meant to pro­voke a con­flict — but per­haps crises. The “new” Russia is in no con­di­tion for a con­flict beyond bor­der incur­sions into neigh­bor­ing coun­tries (as the Georgia episode). But while the slow and expen­sive attempts to rebuild the coun­try to be a sig­nif­i­cant mil­i­tary force, the political-​​military activ­i­ties enu­mer­ated above will, in Russian eyes, con­tribute to the coun­try again hav­ing a major role in world affairs.

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An Alternative Future for the US Mil…

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

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Our boy Greg Grant has a great piece on a pre­sen­ta­tion given by Steven Biddle and T.X. Hammes on the future of war­fare over at DoD Buzz.

I think it’s a good com­pan­ion piece to the inter­view we just did with Dakota Wood at CSBA and also dove­tails nicely with Greg’s pre­vi­ous piece on pro­pos­als from Mattis on how to bet­ter orga­nize the Marine Corps.

Gates is head­ing in the right direc­tion with a return to threat-​​based plan­ning ver­sus the capabilities-​​based port­fo­lio plan­ning of his pre­de­ces­sor that pro­duced unaf­ford­able pro­cure­ment plans, Hammes said at the Washington gath­er­ing. Trying to guess the exact type or nature of future war the U.S. is likely to fight is the wrong way to go as more often than not youre going to end up with the wrong force. Instead, develop a force that can fight well enough across the spec­trum of con­flict to buy time to work your way up the learn­ing curve. No mat­ter what type of war, youll be forced into a game of adap­ta­tion, as that is wars true nature, and the out­come usu­ally comes down to who can adapt the fastest. 

I agree 100 per­cent with this and am frus­trated when ana­lysts use China and Russia as exam­ples of “near-​​peer” com­peti­tors that we need to equip our­selves to fight. In fact, for all their excel­lent analy­sis, the CSBA tends to default to that con­tention — but I don’t think it’s out of some xeno­pho­bic reac­tion, just a way to com­pare apples to apples.

The chal­lenge is pre­vent­ing the ser­vices from default­ing to plan­ning for another Cold War by sub­sti­tut­ing China for the Soviet Union. Setting aside for a moment the absur­dity of going to war with your de-​​facto banker, Hammes said there is the lit­tle dis­cussed issue of Chinas nuclear arse­nal. A U.S. air and naval cam­paign against China would tar­get the coun­trys com­mand and con­trol. How do you do that with­out threat­en­ing their nukes and national com­mand author­ity? The Chinese lack a reli­able sec­ond strike capa­bil­ity, attacks on their com­mand and con­trol could be per­ceived as an effort to take out their nuclear capa­bil­ity, pos­si­bly trig­ger­ing a use-​​it or lose-​​it sce­nario. The Chinese know they cant stop indi­vid­ual air­craft attack­ing the main­land, instead, theyre build­ing bal­lis­tic mis­siles to tar­get airstrips and car­ri­ers to force the U.S. to fight at the extreme lim­its of range, tak­ing short range fight­ers out of the equa­tion. As for the Russians: in Georgia, the Russians drove a sin­gle divi­sion 60 miles after three months prepa­ra­tion. Not a threat. 

Thank good­ness there are at least some sober minds to help advance the debate in a more “mid­dle ground” approach. Rather than swing­ing all the way to the left and say China isn’t a threat because they’ve just adopted a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal struc­ture, or to go all the way to the right and say they are a threat because of it, misses the point. It’s about capa­bil­i­ties. When more than 3/​4 of your pop­u­la­tion doesn’t have run­ning water, I’m sorry but that’s not “near peer.” By the same token, we get all freaked out about Russian bombers fly­ing close to Alaska or some such, but don’t real­ize that the pilots are so happy to just get the flight hours they don’t give a crap where they’re flying.

However, I do remem­ber an arti­cle in the Atlantic about a year ago pos­tu­lat­ing how we’d fight China (it was part of Robert Kaplan’s series) and it made me think about some­thing: How com­fort­able would I feel look­ing off the shore of my mother’s house in coastal North Carolina and see­ing a Chinese air­craft car­rier steam­ing nearby as apposed to a British or a French or a Japanese one? I’ll let you answer that one for yourselves.

Lethality in hybrid war­fare is cer­tainly increas­ing, as the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of even the most heav­ily armored vehi­cles will attest. Biddle ques­tions the notion that sit­u­a­tional aware­ness will prove ade­quate: In a hybrid form of war­fare, the ubiq­uity of cover and con­ceal­ment makes it pos­si­ble for rea­son­ably skilled oppo­nents to stay out of our infor­ma­tion grid. If we cant find them then we cant include them in a net­worked form of sit­u­a­tional aware­ness. Instead of adding armor to vehi­cles or look­ing to infor­ma­tion supe­ri­or­ity to pro­vide a bat­tle­field edge, Biddle said the U.S. will be forced to adopt more hybrid war like tac­tics: dis­per­sion, cover and con­ceal­ment, com­bined arms, fire and maneuver. 

A clear swipe at FCS…And this great line:

The U.S. mil­i­tary may be forced to under­take two trans­for­ma­tions. If win­ning today means the mil­i­tary must trans­form for low inten­sity con­flict, with larger ground forces and less empha­sis on high-​​tech mod­ern­iza­tion, and then trans­form once again, after these wars are con­cluded, for a dif­fer­ent kind of war, then thats prob­a­bly the right path to take, as incon­ve­nient and expen­sive as that may prove. 

It’s a bit­ter pill to swal­low, but I think Biddle’s right.

Be sure to check out the entire story on DoD Buzz.

– Christian

European Contractors Worry About Slowdown

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

This arti­cle first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.

Concerns are mount­ing at European defense com­pa­nies that the global eco­nomic down­turn will drive down mil­i­tary spend­ing.

Although such cuts by major European nations have not yet emerged, there are signs among smaller states that bud­gets will be affected. Croatia has deferred its fighter com­pe­ti­tion, Romania may do the same, and Estonia already has slashed its allo­ca­tions for defense.

Kongsberg CEO Walter Qwam says there is “a lot of fear that defense spend­ing will be cut.” Moreover, the cur­rent eco­nomic cli­mate could drive pro­tec­tion­ist pro­cure­ment prac­tices, he notes.

Estonia, with its econ­omy in sharp decline, has already moved to trim annual mil­i­tary spend­ing by around 14%. The defense min­istry has to give back approx­i­mately $54 mil­lion and bring the top line down to roughly $345 mil­lion.

The bud­get action will mean Estonia will fall short of its tar­get of rais­ing defense spend­ing to 2% of gross domes­tic prod­uct by 2010, says Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo. This is also under­min­ing plan­ners’ efforts to bring more sta­bil­ity to the defense arena. Several pro­cure­ment pro­grams are being put on hold as a result of the bud­get adjust­ment.

In Sweden, finan­cial uncer­tainty sur­rounds the bud­get and its poten­tial impact on indus­try. Saab — the country’s largest defense and aero­space con­trac­tor — is wor­ried about the government’s spend­ing plans. Company offi­cials also are pon­der­ing how Saab’s bot­tom line may be affected as a result of its sup­plier role to Airbus and Boeing.

The Swedish gov­ern­ment is expected to put for­ward a new spend­ing bill next month, although dis­cus­sions about long-​​term defense allo­ca­tions could drag on for much of the year, says Saab CEO Ake Svensson. The gov­ern­ment is try­ing to align fund­ing pri­or­i­ties with the need to pro­tect cer­tain defense indus­trial capa­bil­i­ties, he adds.

In par­al­lel with its bud­get review, Stockholm is look­ing at other reforms that could be imple­mented to sup­port indus­try. Changes in the acqui­si­tion orga­ni­za­tion and pro­cure­ment processes may result, as well as greater sup­port for Swedish man­u­fac­tur­ers in defense exports. Local indus­try often grum­bles about receiv­ing less back­ing from its gov­ern­ment than some of its rivals.

Because of ambi­gu­i­ties in both its defense busi­ness and com­mer­cial activ­i­ties, Saab man­age­ment hes­i­tates to give an out­look for the year, beyond not­ing that sales are likely to be flat. The civil air­craft busi­ness pum­meled last year’s earn­ings, with a fourth-​​quarter write­down of 953 mil­lion Swedish kro­nor ($108.6 mil­lion) related to delays Airbus and Boeing expe­ri­enced on some of their pro­grams. Saab also took a 232-​​million-​​kronor pro­vi­sion for fur­ther antic­i­pated losses. That does not yet reflect the poten­tial fall­out from the can­cel­la­tions and defer­rals that Airbus and Boeing are expe­ri­enc­ing.

Compounding the finan­cial charges on the com­mer­cial front were ongo­ing prob­lems in the defense sec­tor. The com­bined effect was 1.8 bil­lion kro­nor in non­re­cur­ring finan­cial items in 2008 that drove Saab’s full year results to a 242-​​million-​​kronor loss. Saab is mak­ing adjust­ments as a result of repeated write­downs because of prob­lems in devel­op­ment pro­grams. The com­pany intends to be more judi­cious in how it accounts for such projects, which will have the near-​​term effect of depress­ing the 2009 profit mar­gin by four per­cent­age points.

Read the rest of this story, hear a great pod­cast, see vid from a French drone and check out oper­a­tion DIESEL from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military​.com.

– Christian

Speaking with Dakota Wood

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Here’s the inter­view with Dakota Wood, senior fel­low with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments on VH-​​71, EFV, MV-​​22, JSF, Seabasing and dis­trib­uted operations.

Enjoy…

– Christian

Boots on the Ground — Inside the Marine One Program and Other Corps Initiatives

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

You all know by now that Sen. John McCain raised the issue of the VH-​​71 Kestrel heli­copter pro­gram — the so-​​called “Marine One” buy — at the “fis­cal sum­mit” yes­ter­day at the White House.

Defense Tech has been on the story for a while but had a hard time get­ting details on it (sens­ing the polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of the pro­gram and it’s inter­na­tional com­po­nent, the program’s been a bit locked down a la F-​​22).

One thing we did know is that McCain’s defense staff had eyed this pro­gram for can­cel­la­tion months ago. Not sure why they tar­geted this one in par­tic­u­lar, but I have some back­ground on the pro­gram from my report­ing of the pre-​​downselect wran­gling between Sikorsky and LockMart/​Augusta-​​Westland a few years ago.

I’m not really sure of the urgency of the pro­gram — in other words I don’t have a clear sense of how long the VH-​​3 air­craft are going to be “air­wor­thy” or what the cost-​​benefit of keep­ing them in the air vs. buy­ing a new helo really is. My sense was that the award to LockMart/​A-​​W was a bit more risky than the Sikorsky plat­form, since Sikorsky is crank­ing out H-​​60s and was offer­ing an S-​​92 deriv­a­tive for the new Prez chop­per (it’s just a stretched out ver­sion of the 60). How much of the LockMart award was a reach-​​out to Euro allies is unclear, but more than a few sources say it clearly was.

Program allies have been say­ing that the increased costs are a result of increased require­ments — par­tic­u­larly nuclear hard­en­ing and other high-​​tech add ons. And that may be true. But it seems to me this pro­gram was awarded in an envi­ron­ment when these sorts of cost esca­la­tions could be expected and accom­mo­dated with some grumbling…and I won­der how much the pro­gram relied in the idea that “hey, we can’t cut cor­ners with the president’s heli­copter” to give them a pass.

Well, looks like the chick­ens have come to roost.

So, in an effort to give DT read­ers a bit more per­spec­tive, I’m sched­uled a live pod­cast with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments’ Dakota Wood, a for­mer Marine Officer and sub­ject mat­ter expert on Marine pro­grams and orga­ni­za­tion. We’ll use the oppor­tu­nity to talk to him a lit­tle bit about this and other Corps ini­tia­tives at 1430 EST today.

Hope you’ll lis­ten in…

– Christian

Give Peace a Chance — n’t

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

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Our boy Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal has a break­ing piece on a new alliance between insur­gent groups and al Qaeda in Pakistan. 

This occurs of course as the US begins it’s mini-“surge” of forces into Afghanistan (which I guar­an­tee you won’t last more than a year) and the recent “treaty” between Pak gov­ern­ment at the mil­i­tants allow­ing some areas to be gov­erned by Sharia law (yeah, that’ll work). 

So in the spirit of friend­ship, the Pak mil­i­tants say “all hail al Qaeda”…Let’s just give diplo­macy a chance. Mr. Holbrook, you want some more fre­quent flier miles?

The three senior most Taliban lead­ers in North and South Waziristan joined forces to wage jihad against Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the US at the behest of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. The new Taliban alliance said it openly sup­ports Omar and bin Laden in its war against the US, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. 

North Waziristan Taliban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadar and South Waziristan lead­ers Mullah Nazir and Baitullah Mehsud put aside dif­fer­ences last week and cre­ated the Council of United Mujahideen. Nazir and Bahadar had feuded with Baitullah due to tribal dis­putes as well as Baitullahs ris­ing power at the senior leader of the Pakistani Taliban. 

The three lead­ers had pam­phlets dis­trib­uted through­out North and South Waziristan to announce the for­ma­tion of the Council of United Mujahideen. The Taliban leader united accord­ing to the wishes of Mujahideen lead­ers like Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden, The Nation reported. 

The Taliban alliance sup­ported Mullah Muhammad Omar and Osama bin Ladens strug­gle against US President Barack Obama, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administrations. 

The new alliance said it was wag­ing war in an orga­nized man­ner to stop the infi­dels from car­ry­ing out acts of bar­barism against inno­cent peo­ple just as Omar and bin Laden were wag­ing war against Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the US.

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