The new commander-​​in-​​chief made some sweep­ing pro­nounce­ments ear­lier this week regard­ing pro­cure­ment and acqui­si­tion reform. He specif­i­cally called out the defense indus­try and the ser­vices, two of the three legs of the “iron tri­an­gle” of the defense busi­ness. But what’s key is the leg he basi­cally left out: lawmakers.

Without chang­ing the way Congress pro­tects jobs back home no real change will hap­pen. The Washington Post framed the nature of the beast nicely today:

It was Democrats who stuffed an esti­mated $524 mil­lion in defense ear­marks that the Pentagon did not request into the 2008 appro­pri­a­tions bill, about $220 mil­lion more than Republicans did, accord­ing to an inde­pen­dent esti­mate. Of the 44 sen­a­tors who implored Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in January to build more F-​​22 Raptors — a fighter con­ceived dur­ing the Cold War that senior Pentagon offi­cials say is not suited to prob­a­ble 21st-​​century con­flicts — most were Democrats.

And last July, when the Navy’s top brass decided to end pro­duc­tion of their newest class of destroy­ers — in response to 15 clas­si­fied intel­li­gence reports high­light­ing their vul­ner­a­bil­ity to a range of for­eign mis­siles — seven Democratic sen­a­tors quickly joined four Republicans to demand a rever­sal. They threat­ened to cut all fund­ing for sur­face com­bat ships in 2009.

Within a month, Gates and the Navy reversed course and endorsed pro­duc­tion of a third DDG-​​1000 destroyer, at a cost of $2.7 billion.

So with this kind of chasm between word and deed is pro­cure­ment reform a wave President Obama can surf?

I’m pre­dict­ing a wipe­out. And Kerry and Kennedy don’t surf.

Read the entire Post artice here. (Registration required.)

–Ward

This time of year is always tough because — as we wait for next Sunday’s Super Bowl — we’ve had foot­ball sum­mar­ily yanked away from us. What are we sup­posed to watch as we attempt to get a few more moments of men­tal peace before we hit the work week again? Antique car auc­tions? “The Real Housewives of Orange County” marathons?

Well, Defense Tech is here to help. Tonight at 8 PM east­ern the National Geographic Channel is run­ning “Air Force One,” which gives an in-​​depth look at how the President’s one-​​of-​​a-​​kind 747 does busi­ness. We got an advanced look at the show (that’s how we roll) and it gets two thumbs up from us.

Among the inter­est­ing scenes is one that doc­u­ments Barack Obama’s first ride on Air Force One. Although he’s as cool as ever, you can also sense in his man­ner that the big jet and asso­ci­ated mil­i­tary crew are man­i­fes­ta­tions of the respon­si­bil­i­ties of the office that hadn’t hit him to that point. (Can you say “mod­er­at­ing influence”?)

Oh, and don’t touch that dial because after “Air Force One” NGC is run­ning “Marine One,” which goes behind the scenes at HMX-​​1. See how much goes into get­ting the VH-​​3s where they need to be and ride along with a Marine major as he attempts to land on the South Lawn for the first time.

And next week we’ll get back to foot­ball one last time this sea­son. Go Cardinals. (I’m old school St. Louis Cardinals, too. I have my Larry Wilson trad­ing card under glass.)

– Ward

DT’s good friend and SpouseBUZZ founder Andi for­warded an “oppor­tu­nity” cur­rently posted at DoD Tech Match with the fol­low­ing objective:

“To develop a highly inter­ac­tive PC or web-​​based appli­ca­tion to allow fam­ily mem­bers to ver­bally inter­act with vir­tual ren­di­tions of deployed Service Members.”

The oppor­tu­nity frames the chal­lenge to killer app design­ers with the notion that “the stresses of deploy­ment might be soft­ened if spouses and espe­cially chil­dren could con­duct sim­ple con­ver­sa­tions with their loved ones in imme­di­ate times of stress or pro­longed absence.” It goes on to sug­gest that tra­di­tion­ally “fam­i­lies have derived com­fort and sup­port from pho­tographs or memen­tos, but cur­rent tech­nol­ogy should allow for more per­sonal inter­ac­tive mes­sages of sup­port” and that “computer-​​based appli­ca­tions would res­onate with chil­dren and cap­ture their inter­est and imagination.”

Cool idea, no doubt. But … and maybe this is the nov­el­ist in me com­ing out … right away I start think­ing about the unin­tended con­se­quences of this tech­nol­ogy. What hap­pens, for instance, dur­ing the rein­te­gra­tion process (the period imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the servicemember’s return from deploy­ment) when the child real­izes that the vitual ser­vice­mem­ber was a lot nicer that the real deal?

Paging Dr. Freud …

(Star Wars image cour­tesy of 20th Century Fox)

– Ward

Military.com’s founder Chris Michel for­warded a New York Times op-​​ed titled “How to Pay for a 21st Century Military” that ran in today’s paper. The piece rec­om­mends the fol­low­ing steps to get defense spend­ing under control:

End pro­duc­tion of the Air Forces F-​​22. (Recommends the use of “upgraded” F-​​16s until the F-​​35 comes into production.)

Cancel the DDG-​​1000 Zumwalt class destroyer. (Advises the pro­duc­tion of the Littoral Combat Ship instead.)

Halt pro­duc­tion of the Virginia class sub. (Recommends extend­ing the life of exist­ing Los Angeles class sub­marines instead.)

Pull the plug on the Marine Corpss V-​​22 Osprey. (Recommends buy­ing more H-​​92s and CH-​​53s instead.)

Halt pre­ma­ture deploy­ment of mis­sile defense.

Negotiate deep cuts in nuclear weapons.

Trim the active-​​duty Navy and Air Force.

It cracks me up when those who know lit­tle to noth­ing about the mil­i­tary require­ments process and defense pro­cure­ment sud­denly deign to give a damn about it. Talk about the Bush admin­is­tra­tion hand­ing the Pentagon a “blank check” is ridicu­lously cliche and sim­plis­tic. Further it is igno­rant. Tell the bud­geteers who spend lit­er­ally days doing drills that attempt to squeeze every dime out of a pro­gram that they’ve been handed a blank check.

And among the ele­ments miss­ing here are the other cru­cial mis­sions the mil­i­tary does besides fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and what it takes in man­power and equip­ment to do those things) and how much it actu­ally costs to extend the life of an out­dated sys­tem. Further, the “we need more Army and Marines, less Navy and Air Force” logic smacks of folks who have done noth­ing but watch MSNBC to come up with their under­stand­ing of who does what and who’s needed in today’s mil­i­tary. Did you want the sea lanes open? Did you feel like sup­ply­ing those Soldiers and Marines at war?

It would be nice if “The Grey Lady” took the time to actu­ally flesh out what’s wrong. In accu­rately iden­ti­fy­ing prob­lems they might have actu­ally assisted the Obama White House as it attempts to get the five-​​sided beast under con­trol. As it is, fram­ing things poorly is worse than not fram­ing them at all.

– Ward

Okay, I’m going to use this edi­tion of The Sunday Paper to make two predictions:

1. Robert Gates will not stay on as SecDef and will be replaced by Richard Danzig a few weeks into the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, if not imme­di­ately.
2. Once the new admin­is­tra­tion gets into office, F-​​22 will be the first major pro­gram to be cut sig­nif­i­cantly or can­celled alto­gether fol­lowed shortly by Presidential Helo (VH-​​71). (JSF is also a tar­get, espe­cially if any more for­eign part­ners balk.)

So what do you think, dear erudite-​​in-​​DoD-​​matters-​​type DT read­ers? Who’s going to be SecDef? What pro­grams are toast?

– Ward

So I’m read­ing The Washington Post this morn­ing and chan­nel surf­ing between ESPN, MSNBC, and CNN and as a result (not because of ESPN, of course) I’m made to believe that the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is already over and Barack Obama will be our pres­i­dent come January.

Now I’m not say­ing this main­stream media pre­sag­ing is a good thing or a bad thing … I’m just say­ing it’s a thing. And I’m ask­ing you, wise DT read­ers, as your Sunday Paper tasker, to tell us what you think about it. Is the MSM cre­at­ing a self-​​fufilling prophecy? Or will the elec­torate rise up and show the experts they’re not as smart as they thought?

And remem­ber, this is the Sunday Paper. We go out­side the lines of things didac­ti­cally defense tech-​​y with these (infre­quent) posts. Plus we’re elect­ing the next commander-​​in-​​chief. Hello? Talk about defense-​​related …

So what do you think?

– Ward

No doubt, this flick rocks:

But there’s some­thing as cool about this ver­sion too:

– Ward

In the days before cable TV and on-​​demand every­thing, folks were at the mercy of the big three net­works. And, what’s even more amaz­ing, tele­vi­sion wasn’t a 24-​​hour propo­si­tion. Networks used to actu­ally “sign off” at the end of the day. And since these sign offs were like a com­pan­ion going away for the night, they evoked a lot of emo­tion. Chris Michel, the man who founded Military​.com and brought DT to the masses, recently found some clas­sic sign off footage very ger­mane to our audi­ence. Reading the com­ments you can see that some attribute mil­i­tary careers to these scenes of an F-​​104 soar­ing across the sky. And, of course, “High Flight” remains one of the great­est poems ever writ­ten about the art of flying.

Speaking of the Starfighter, I had the oppor­tu­nity to do exer­cises against Turkish F-​​104s back in the day. As you might guess from the stubby wings, the F-​​104 isn’t much of a dog­fighter. (It was designed as a straight-​​line “inter­cep­tor.”) An ele­gant machine, nonetheless.

(Gouge: CM)

– Ward

Sure, the fran­chise has come a long way. Sure, “The Dark Knight” is awe­some. But at the end of the day, it gets no bet­ter than this:

Gives you goose­bumps, don’t it?

– Ward

This from Gizmodo. Somebody needs to get his slide rule adjusted, it appears.

(Gouge: CM)

– Ward