Inside Defense
Dec. 18, 2009 -- The Defense Department is preparing a $163.1 billion war-cost spending request for fiscal year 2011, a previously unreported figure that would finance the continuing drawdown of U.S. units from Iraq and sustain the surge of American forces in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon officials.
If approved by Congress, the FY-11 “overseas contingency operations” spending proposal would bring the price tag for the wars in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, and Iraq, which began in 2003, to more than $1.2 trillion, according to Pentagon budget documents.
The FY-11 war cost spending request -- due to be submitted to Congress in February along with the Pentagon's annual base budget plan -- was prepared as DOD officials continue to work with the White House Office of Management and Budget to hammer out a total price tag for overseas operations in FY-10, which began Oct. 1.
The Obama administration in February requested $130 billion for FY-10 war costs. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said $30 billion to $35 billion more would be required in FY-10 to pay for the 30,000 troops President Obama has ordered to Afghanistan.
“This is still a work in progress,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters Dec. 16. “We're still trying to determine the precise costs associated with surging these additional forces into theater.”
In May, the White House Office of Management and Budget set aside a $50 billion “placeholder” in the FY-11 budget request to allow the military services, the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense more time to refine anticipated costs for operations that will not begin being executed until October 2010.
In August, the military services presented FY-11 war cost spending requests that totaled $137 billion, estimates that did not include contributions to fund the new Afghanistan strategy (DefenseAlert, Oct. 20).
Sources say the war cost request would finance a portion of the $2.5 billion bill associated with temporarily increasing the size of the Army by 22,000 troops that Gates directed this summer.
According to budget documents on the Pentagon comptroller's Web site, the Pentagon in FY-01 requested $13 billion for the war in Afghanistan and $17 billion in FY-02 for the same mission. In FY-03, costs grew to $72 billion to pay for the invasion of Iraq and the first months of the initial occupation. War costs continued to grow in FY-04 to $91 billion, in FY-05 to $76 billion and in FY-06 to $116 billion, according to the DOD budget documents.
In FY-07, President Bush ordered a surge of U.S. forces to Iraq, pushing war costs to $166 billion. In FY-08, a massive industrial effort to field a new fleet of armored trucks resistant to roadside bombs helped propel war cost spending to $187 billion.
In FY-09, the incoming Obama administration applied new scrutiny to the Pentagon's war cost requests, which totaled $145 billion. -- Jason Sherman
12182009_dec18b
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31 December 2009
Pentagon FY-11 Budget Being Squeezed By Revised Economic Assumptions
Inside Defense
Nov. 19, 2009 -- The Defense Department budget is being squeezed by revised economic assumptions that will decrease the purchasing power of the Pentagon's allowance, and the military services are awaiting the latest guidance from the Office of the Secretary of Defense on how these changes will impact modernization and maintenance accounts.
The White House Office of Management and Budget this spring directed the Pentagon to draft a fiscal year 2011 budget – not including war costs --- that was $541.8 billion, a slight increase over the FY-10 budget request of $534 billion.
In June, however, Pentagon sources say OMB issued revised guidance based on the mid-session review directing the Pentagon to adjust inflation rates for all accounts except those dealing with fuel and personnel pay.
This guidance decreased the Pentagon's purchasing power, a point underscored in a briefing yesterday on a draft FY-11 Defense Department spending plan presented by Robert Hale, the DOD comptroller to senior uniformed and civilian resource managers, according to Pentagon officials.
The services are awaiting a a final “issue paper” from the Office of the Secretary of Defense on inflation assumptions between fiscal years 2011 and 2015 that will be used to fine tune allocations across their entire budget.
This spring, Gates told Congress the Pentagon requires at least 2 percent real growth -- a hike that with inflation could be as much as 4 percent.
A formal appeal to the White House, should Gates elect to seek more money for the Defense Department, would likely take place this month, according to Pentagon sources.
After Thanksgiving, the Pentagon expects to receive the “passback” memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget, which lays out exactly how much the Obama administration plans to allocate for defense in FY-11.
Matthew Goldberg, a defense analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, estimated last month that current Pentagon plan requires 6 percent more than its current base budget of $534 billion. -- Jason Sherman
11192009_nov19b
Nov. 19, 2009 -- The Defense Department budget is being squeezed by revised economic assumptions that will decrease the purchasing power of the Pentagon's allowance, and the military services are awaiting the latest guidance from the Office of the Secretary of Defense on how these changes will impact modernization and maintenance accounts.
The White House Office of Management and Budget this spring directed the Pentagon to draft a fiscal year 2011 budget – not including war costs --- that was $541.8 billion, a slight increase over the FY-10 budget request of $534 billion.
In June, however, Pentagon sources say OMB issued revised guidance based on the mid-session review directing the Pentagon to adjust inflation rates for all accounts except those dealing with fuel and personnel pay.
This guidance decreased the Pentagon's purchasing power, a point underscored in a briefing yesterday on a draft FY-11 Defense Department spending plan presented by Robert Hale, the DOD comptroller to senior uniformed and civilian resource managers, according to Pentagon officials.
The services are awaiting a a final “issue paper” from the Office of the Secretary of Defense on inflation assumptions between fiscal years 2011 and 2015 that will be used to fine tune allocations across their entire budget.
This spring, Gates told Congress the Pentagon requires at least 2 percent real growth -- a hike that with inflation could be as much as 4 percent.
A formal appeal to the White House, should Gates elect to seek more money for the Defense Department, would likely take place this month, according to Pentagon sources.
After Thanksgiving, the Pentagon expects to receive the “passback” memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget, which lays out exactly how much the Obama administration plans to allocate for defense in FY-11.
Matthew Goldberg, a defense analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, estimated last month that current Pentagon plan requires 6 percent more than its current base budget of $534 billion. -- Jason Sherman
11192009_nov19b
OMB Grants Pentagon Nearly $60 Billion More Over Five Years (Updated)
Inside Defense
(Correction: The original version of this story said President Obama approved the $60 billion increase to the Pentagon's budget. After the story was published OMB spokesman Tom Gavin said "no decisions have yet to be made by the president." InsideDefense.com regrets the error; the story has been updated.)
Dec. 3, 2009 -- The White House Office of Management and Budget has approved a nearly $60 billion increase in the Pentagon's base budget between fiscal years 2011 and 2015, a previously unreported hike that gives the Defense Department what Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this year said was necessary to sustain the U.S. military's five-year investment plan -- 2 percent real growth.
OMB this week notified DOD of a nearly $15 billion topline increase to its FY-11 budget plan, a sum that translates to a 2.7 percent increase after inflation, Pentagon sources said. This boost, according to an analysis by InsideDefense.com, would bring non-war related military spending in FY-11 to $556.4 billion.
This so-called “pass back” guidance -- one of the final steps in crafting the Pentagon's annual spending proposal -- also allocates approximately $11 billion extra annually between FY-12 and FY-15, a sum that amounts to 2 percent real growth each year, sources said.
“This is substantial topline relief,” said one Pentagon official.
A defense analyst privy to figures in the OMB guidance said the budget boost amounts “to a major victory for Gates.”
Sources say a sizable portion of the additional funds would pay for unforeseen DOD health care bills.
OMB spokesman Tom Gavin declined to comment on the pass back guidance.
“We're in the process of working with agencies on their budgets. But details are all predecisional and the president has not made any final decision,” Gavin told InsideDefense.com.
Gavin said the pass back process “is an internal deliberative process and is likely to change several times in several ways between now and February first,” when the Obama administration formally submits its FY-11 budget proposal to Congress.
However, Pentagon officials are moving quickly to lock in changes to the FY-11 budget proposal that include the 2 percent increases.
Robert Hale, the Pentagon comptroller, and Christine Fox, director of the office of cost assessment and program evaluation, have not yet circulated details of the fiscal guidance, Pentagon officials said.
Their respective offices are preparing a trio of resource management decisions (RMDs) -- classified budget and program guidance from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to the services -- that will direct a raft of changes to the Pentagon's budget.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense has advised the services that these RMDs will be issued in draft form as soon as next Monday, sources said. The military services will then have three days to comment on them and return them to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Senior Pentagon officials expect to tweak budget decisions until the week before Christmas, sources said.
The Pentagon is slated to formally turn over control of the FY-11 budget in early January, sources said.
In May, OMB published a five-year Pentagon budget forecast that set the base budget at $541.8 billion in FY-11, $550.7 billion in FY-12, $561.1 billion in FY-13 and $574 billion in FY-14.
Testifying May 14 to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the FY-10 budget request, Gates warned that the Pentagon's five-year investment plan required a 2 percent annual increase above inflation.
“Based on the briefings that I've gotten,” the defense secretary said, “for us to hold steady the program that we have in front of you for FY-10, to hold that steady in the outyears, we will need at least two percent real growth in the defense budget.”
Providing 2.7 percent growth after inflation in FY-11 translates to a $14.6 percent increase, which would bring the Pentagon FY-11 budget to $556.4 billion.
Department officials say that during the budget and program review this fall, Gates advised senior officials not to count on a top-line increase.
Still, the Office of the Secretary of Defense in October proposed a series of ways the Pentagon could spend additional funds, if OMB approved a top line increase. Among those proposals were substantial increases in spending to shipbuilding accounts and helicopter procurement, according to DOD sources (DefenseAlert, Oct. 13).
The White House decision to boost the military's base budget comes a year after the Defense Department, without an endorsement from OMB during the final months of the Bush administration, drew up an alternative spending plan that tacked $57 billion onto the base budget.
The Obama administration rejected that spending plan, but nonetheless allocated the Pentagon a 4 percent hike in FY-10 above the spending target officially set by the Bush administration in its final year.
On Oct. 29, Inside the Pentagon reported that OMB would likely boost DOD's FY-11 budget by several billion dollars. -- Jason Sherman
1232009_dec3c
(Correction: The original version of this story said President Obama approved the $60 billion increase to the Pentagon's budget. After the story was published OMB spokesman Tom Gavin said "no decisions have yet to be made by the president." InsideDefense.com regrets the error; the story has been updated.)
Dec. 3, 2009 -- The White House Office of Management and Budget has approved a nearly $60 billion increase in the Pentagon's base budget between fiscal years 2011 and 2015, a previously unreported hike that gives the Defense Department what Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this year said was necessary to sustain the U.S. military's five-year investment plan -- 2 percent real growth.
OMB this week notified DOD of a nearly $15 billion topline increase to its FY-11 budget plan, a sum that translates to a 2.7 percent increase after inflation, Pentagon sources said. This boost, according to an analysis by InsideDefense.com, would bring non-war related military spending in FY-11 to $556.4 billion.
This so-called “pass back” guidance -- one of the final steps in crafting the Pentagon's annual spending proposal -- also allocates approximately $11 billion extra annually between FY-12 and FY-15, a sum that amounts to 2 percent real growth each year, sources said.
“This is substantial topline relief,” said one Pentagon official.
A defense analyst privy to figures in the OMB guidance said the budget boost amounts “to a major victory for Gates.”
Sources say a sizable portion of the additional funds would pay for unforeseen DOD health care bills.
OMB spokesman Tom Gavin declined to comment on the pass back guidance.
“We're in the process of working with agencies on their budgets. But details are all predecisional and the president has not made any final decision,” Gavin told InsideDefense.com.
Gavin said the pass back process “is an internal deliberative process and is likely to change several times in several ways between now and February first,” when the Obama administration formally submits its FY-11 budget proposal to Congress.
However, Pentagon officials are moving quickly to lock in changes to the FY-11 budget proposal that include the 2 percent increases.
Robert Hale, the Pentagon comptroller, and Christine Fox, director of the office of cost assessment and program evaluation, have not yet circulated details of the fiscal guidance, Pentagon officials said.
Their respective offices are preparing a trio of resource management decisions (RMDs) -- classified budget and program guidance from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to the services -- that will direct a raft of changes to the Pentagon's budget.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense has advised the services that these RMDs will be issued in draft form as soon as next Monday, sources said. The military services will then have three days to comment on them and return them to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Senior Pentagon officials expect to tweak budget decisions until the week before Christmas, sources said.
The Pentagon is slated to formally turn over control of the FY-11 budget in early January, sources said.
In May, OMB published a five-year Pentagon budget forecast that set the base budget at $541.8 billion in FY-11, $550.7 billion in FY-12, $561.1 billion in FY-13 and $574 billion in FY-14.
Testifying May 14 to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the FY-10 budget request, Gates warned that the Pentagon's five-year investment plan required a 2 percent annual increase above inflation.
“Based on the briefings that I've gotten,” the defense secretary said, “for us to hold steady the program that we have in front of you for FY-10, to hold that steady in the outyears, we will need at least two percent real growth in the defense budget.”
Providing 2.7 percent growth after inflation in FY-11 translates to a $14.6 percent increase, which would bring the Pentagon FY-11 budget to $556.4 billion.
Department officials say that during the budget and program review this fall, Gates advised senior officials not to count on a top-line increase.
Still, the Office of the Secretary of Defense in October proposed a series of ways the Pentagon could spend additional funds, if OMB approved a top line increase. Among those proposals were substantial increases in spending to shipbuilding accounts and helicopter procurement, according to DOD sources (DefenseAlert, Oct. 13).
The White House decision to boost the military's base budget comes a year after the Defense Department, without an endorsement from OMB during the final months of the Bush administration, drew up an alternative spending plan that tacked $57 billion onto the base budget.
The Obama administration rejected that spending plan, but nonetheless allocated the Pentagon a 4 percent hike in FY-10 above the spending target officially set by the Bush administration in its final year.
On Oct. 29, Inside the Pentagon reported that OMB would likely boost DOD's FY-11 budget by several billion dollars. -- Jason Sherman
1232009_dec3c
28 December 2009
Gates Drafts Ambitious New Approach For Security, Stability Operations
Inside Pentagon
Dec. 23, 2009 -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates is advocating an ambitious new plan to revamp how the Pentagon and the State Department coordinate and execute security and stability operations worldwide.
Dubbed the “Shared Responsibility, Pooled Resources” (SRPR) plan, it would replace the current section 1206 and 1207 authorities shared by the Defense Department and State Department for security and stability programs, according to a Dec. 15 memo from Gates to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
InsideDefense.com reviewed a copy of the 15-page proposal, labeled “for official use only,” which was also sent to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and National Security Adviser James Jones.
Section 1206 grants DOD authority to finance train and equip programs for foreign militaries, while Section 1207 funds the department’s security and stability operations. Individual projects executed under each authority must get the blessing of the secretaries of state and defense, according to law.
Pentagon programs executed under both sections have had “some notable successes over the past several years,” Gates writes. However, the authorities granted DOD under sections 1206 and 1207 have “stirred debate over [U.S. government] roles and missions,” regarding security and stability operations, specifically between DOD and the State Department, he adds.
In order to “transcend these recurrent debates” on how such authorities should be divvied up between DOD and State, Gates’ SRPR plan calls for the creation of three “pooled funding mechanisms” focused on three areas: security capacity building, stabilization and conflict prevention, the memo states.
Based on a similar plan already in use by the United Kingdom, all of the shared authorities outlined in sections 1206 and 1207 will be incorporated and broken down into these three areas, with matching funds from Pentagon and State Department coffers going into all three pools, the memo states.
“The ability of each department to secure appropriations will be critical for long-term success, and will likely require burden-sharing negotiations between State . . . DOD and their respective communities,” the memo states.
The “security capacity building pool” would replace the current section 1206 authorities, according to the document. The stabilization and conflict prevention funding pools would replace the authorities outlined in section 1207.
“Each pool would operate with joint formulation requirements in the field and dual-key concurrence from Washington,” the memo states. “Each department would be able to add funds to the pool to meet a departmental imperative, although the use of these funds would be subject to the dual-key requirements.”
Each funding pool under the SRPR plan would be governed by a senior steering group headed by a “deputy assistant secretary-level representative” from DOD and the State Department, Gates writes. That interagency group will be the key decision-making authority for all programs seeking funding from any one of the three pools, the memo adds. But final approval for all proposed programs will come from Gates and Clinton.
A single pool approach was mulled and later rejected, according to the memo. “Creating [a] separate pool for each activity is key,” Gates writes. A single funding pool “with too many purposes can create a structure that is ‘transaction heavy’ resulting in a stovepiped coordination and execution process for security and stability programs.
“All three pools would be targeted to fund programs with a clear security nexus,” according to the memo. That said, “assistance that primarily supports traditional defense policy, foreign policy or developmental objectives would still be funded separately” out of State Department and Pentagon accounts and under existing authorities.
To support this plan, Gates is calling on the White House and Congress to provide “flexible oversight arrangements,” that would include reducing the number of informal consultations with Congress, “while allowing sufficient time for Congress to raise objections to programs” prior to implementation.
Further, Gates recommends the creation of new House and Senate select oversight committees tasked with reviewing the programs and associated expenditures executed under all three funding pools, the memo states. The defense secretary also raised the possibility of creating a new “Title 51” authority in the U.S. code that would straddle the Title 10 authorities of DOD and the Title 22 mandates the State Department adheres to.
A new Title 51 “would codify this [SRPR] approach in law and demonstrate that these programs are cross-cutting and not appropriately captured within any single committee’s jurisdiction,” Gates writes.
“It is pretty ambitious,” said Gordon Adams, a professor of U.S. foreign policy at American University. “A three-part, $3 billion-dollar set of contingency funds for near-term crises is way beyond anything Congress has been willing to support.”
While the new SRPR plan has been pitched as a way to bridge DOD and State Department efforts on security and stability operations, the plan would also draw the Pentagon deeper into civilian-heavy stabilization and even conflict prevention missions, according to Adams.
“Sounds like a lot more than the political system is going to want to swallow,” he added. “And it sounds a lot like the military missions and requirements might end up driving the train of national security policy, when it ought to be the other way around."
Adams also questioned the plan’s lack of detail on the White House’s role in setting priorities or guidance on what direction these funding pools will take, or how the administration will ensure they align with larger U.S. foreign policy goals.
“Normally the President determines the national security priorities of the U.S., which State and Defense carry out, including responding to urgent requirements by using draw-down authority,” Adams said. “This sounds like regional commanders, with the concurrence of ambassadors, setting the priorities, with very significant funding to carry them out." -- Carlo Muñoz
12232009_dec23a
Dec. 23, 2009 -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates is advocating an ambitious new plan to revamp how the Pentagon and the State Department coordinate and execute security and stability operations worldwide.
Dubbed the “Shared Responsibility, Pooled Resources” (SRPR) plan, it would replace the current section 1206 and 1207 authorities shared by the Defense Department and State Department for security and stability programs, according to a Dec. 15 memo from Gates to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
InsideDefense.com reviewed a copy of the 15-page proposal, labeled “for official use only,” which was also sent to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and National Security Adviser James Jones.
Section 1206 grants DOD authority to finance train and equip programs for foreign militaries, while Section 1207 funds the department’s security and stability operations. Individual projects executed under each authority must get the blessing of the secretaries of state and defense, according to law.
Pentagon programs executed under both sections have had “some notable successes over the past several years,” Gates writes. However, the authorities granted DOD under sections 1206 and 1207 have “stirred debate over [U.S. government] roles and missions,” regarding security and stability operations, specifically between DOD and the State Department, he adds.
In order to “transcend these recurrent debates” on how such authorities should be divvied up between DOD and State, Gates’ SRPR plan calls for the creation of three “pooled funding mechanisms” focused on three areas: security capacity building, stabilization and conflict prevention, the memo states.
Based on a similar plan already in use by the United Kingdom, all of the shared authorities outlined in sections 1206 and 1207 will be incorporated and broken down into these three areas, with matching funds from Pentagon and State Department coffers going into all three pools, the memo states.
“The ability of each department to secure appropriations will be critical for long-term success, and will likely require burden-sharing negotiations between State . . . DOD and their respective communities,” the memo states.
The “security capacity building pool” would replace the current section 1206 authorities, according to the document. The stabilization and conflict prevention funding pools would replace the authorities outlined in section 1207.
“Each pool would operate with joint formulation requirements in the field and dual-key concurrence from Washington,” the memo states. “Each department would be able to add funds to the pool to meet a departmental imperative, although the use of these funds would be subject to the dual-key requirements.”
Each funding pool under the SRPR plan would be governed by a senior steering group headed by a “deputy assistant secretary-level representative” from DOD and the State Department, Gates writes. That interagency group will be the key decision-making authority for all programs seeking funding from any one of the three pools, the memo adds. But final approval for all proposed programs will come from Gates and Clinton.
A single pool approach was mulled and later rejected, according to the memo. “Creating [a] separate pool for each activity is key,” Gates writes. A single funding pool “with too many purposes can create a structure that is ‘transaction heavy’ resulting in a stovepiped coordination and execution process for security and stability programs.
“All three pools would be targeted to fund programs with a clear security nexus,” according to the memo. That said, “assistance that primarily supports traditional defense policy, foreign policy or developmental objectives would still be funded separately” out of State Department and Pentagon accounts and under existing authorities.
To support this plan, Gates is calling on the White House and Congress to provide “flexible oversight arrangements,” that would include reducing the number of informal consultations with Congress, “while allowing sufficient time for Congress to raise objections to programs” prior to implementation.
Further, Gates recommends the creation of new House and Senate select oversight committees tasked with reviewing the programs and associated expenditures executed under all three funding pools, the memo states. The defense secretary also raised the possibility of creating a new “Title 51” authority in the U.S. code that would straddle the Title 10 authorities of DOD and the Title 22 mandates the State Department adheres to.
A new Title 51 “would codify this [SRPR] approach in law and demonstrate that these programs are cross-cutting and not appropriately captured within any single committee’s jurisdiction,” Gates writes.
“It is pretty ambitious,” said Gordon Adams, a professor of U.S. foreign policy at American University. “A three-part, $3 billion-dollar set of contingency funds for near-term crises is way beyond anything Congress has been willing to support.”
While the new SRPR plan has been pitched as a way to bridge DOD and State Department efforts on security and stability operations, the plan would also draw the Pentagon deeper into civilian-heavy stabilization and even conflict prevention missions, according to Adams.
“Sounds like a lot more than the political system is going to want to swallow,” he added. “And it sounds a lot like the military missions and requirements might end up driving the train of national security policy, when it ought to be the other way around."
Adams also questioned the plan’s lack of detail on the White House’s role in setting priorities or guidance on what direction these funding pools will take, or how the administration will ensure they align with larger U.S. foreign policy goals.
“Normally the President determines the national security priorities of the U.S., which State and Defense carry out, including responding to urgent requirements by using draw-down authority,” Adams said. “This sounds like regional commanders, with the concurrence of ambassadors, setting the priorities, with very significant funding to carry them out." -- Carlo Muñoz
12232009_dec23a
New National Security Strategy Expected To Be Issued Next Month
Inside the Pentagon
Dec. 22, 2009 -- The Obama administration next month will unveil its first National Security Strategy (NSS), according to Pentagon officials. Draft versions of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review refer to a January 2010 rollout of the new NSS, a keystone strategic planning document, these officials say.
In development for nearly a year by the National Security Council, the new strategy is expected to provide an updated framework to guide the work of the Defense Department and other national security agencies in carrying out key tasks, including budgeting and planning, according to Pentagon sources.
The document is expected to set forth the United States' national security interests, to include “an international order underpinned by U.S. leadership and engagement that promotes peace, responsibility, and cooperation to meet global challenges, including transnational threats,” according to a Nov. 12 Joint Staff briefing that summarizes draft findings of a White House-led national security policy review.
By law, a new president is required to issue a new National Security Strategy to Congress within six months of taking office, but such reports have historically been late. Since the 1986 legislation calling for NSS reports was enacted, no president has submitted such a report to Congress within his first year, let alone within six months of taking office, according to the 2008 book "Difficult Transitions" by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.
On April 23, a senior defense official predicted the Obama administration's first NSS would not be released until after the QDR.
“We're unlikely to have a published National Security Strategy before the QDR is done, but what we do have is an NSC process -- one of the early policy reviews has been a national security priorities review,” the official told reporters at the Pentagon. “That is sort of the key insights that would be written up in an NSS.”
The policy review, which Inside the Pentagon first reported in March, continued through the summer, allowing Joint Staff officials this fall to provide feedback on matters the military regarded as central to a new strategy.
In September, the Joint Staff -- according to the briefing -- offered its view that the new strategy should consider six strategic challenges: transnational violent extremism; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; rising power and regional instability; cyber and space vulnerability; competition for natural resources; and natural disasters and pandemics.
Legislation requires that the strategy address five points: global interests, goals and objectives that are “vital” to U.S. national security; the U.S. “national defense capabilities” required to deter aggression; the proposed short- and long-term uses of the tools of national power, including the military, to protect or promote U.S. interests; and the adequacy of U.S. capabilities to execute the NSS, including an “evaluation of the balance” among U.S. national power capabilities.
As the White House prepares a new NSS, the Defense Department is preparing a number of related strategy documents as well.
First, the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review is due to be sent to Congress in February along with the Pentagon's fiscal year 2011 budget request.
Second, the Joint Staff is preparing a new guidance document updating the National Military Strategy. In the summer of 2008 the Joint Staff scuttled an update to the 2004 National Military Strategy without offering a reason why. The move came after Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in June 2008, issued a new National Defense Strategy that included a risk assessment that all the service chiefs disagreed with -- in particular its directive to reduce investments in conventional capabilities in order to boost spending for irregular capability.
Pentagon sources say the Office of the Secretary of Defense is also preparing an updated National Defense Strategy to be issued in the new year. -- Jason Sherman
12222009_dec22b
Dec. 22, 2009 -- The Obama administration next month will unveil its first National Security Strategy (NSS), according to Pentagon officials. Draft versions of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review refer to a January 2010 rollout of the new NSS, a keystone strategic planning document, these officials say.
In development for nearly a year by the National Security Council, the new strategy is expected to provide an updated framework to guide the work of the Defense Department and other national security agencies in carrying out key tasks, including budgeting and planning, according to Pentagon sources.
The document is expected to set forth the United States' national security interests, to include “an international order underpinned by U.S. leadership and engagement that promotes peace, responsibility, and cooperation to meet global challenges, including transnational threats,” according to a Nov. 12 Joint Staff briefing that summarizes draft findings of a White House-led national security policy review.
By law, a new president is required to issue a new National Security Strategy to Congress within six months of taking office, but such reports have historically been late. Since the 1986 legislation calling for NSS reports was enacted, no president has submitted such a report to Congress within his first year, let alone within six months of taking office, according to the 2008 book "Difficult Transitions" by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.
On April 23, a senior defense official predicted the Obama administration's first NSS would not be released until after the QDR.
“We're unlikely to have a published National Security Strategy before the QDR is done, but what we do have is an NSC process -- one of the early policy reviews has been a national security priorities review,” the official told reporters at the Pentagon. “That is sort of the key insights that would be written up in an NSS.”
The policy review, which Inside the Pentagon first reported in March, continued through the summer, allowing Joint Staff officials this fall to provide feedback on matters the military regarded as central to a new strategy.
In September, the Joint Staff -- according to the briefing -- offered its view that the new strategy should consider six strategic challenges: transnational violent extremism; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; rising power and regional instability; cyber and space vulnerability; competition for natural resources; and natural disasters and pandemics.
Legislation requires that the strategy address five points: global interests, goals and objectives that are “vital” to U.S. national security; the U.S. “national defense capabilities” required to deter aggression; the proposed short- and long-term uses of the tools of national power, including the military, to protect or promote U.S. interests; and the adequacy of U.S. capabilities to execute the NSS, including an “evaluation of the balance” among U.S. national power capabilities.
As the White House prepares a new NSS, the Defense Department is preparing a number of related strategy documents as well.
First, the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review is due to be sent to Congress in February along with the Pentagon's fiscal year 2011 budget request.
Second, the Joint Staff is preparing a new guidance document updating the National Military Strategy. In the summer of 2008 the Joint Staff scuttled an update to the 2004 National Military Strategy without offering a reason why. The move came after Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in June 2008, issued a new National Defense Strategy that included a risk assessment that all the service chiefs disagreed with -- in particular its directive to reduce investments in conventional capabilities in order to boost spending for irregular capability.
Pentagon sources say the Office of the Secretary of Defense is also preparing an updated National Defense Strategy to be issued in the new year. -- Jason Sherman
12222009_dec22b
21 December 2009
Army’s Vision For Network Shaped By Experiences In Iraq, Afghanistan
Inside the Army
The Army is working to marry competing ideas as it develops a vision for its future network capability, a cornerstone of the service’s revamped modernization program, according to a senior Army official.
On the one hand, the service views the ability to network its soldiers together as one of the most important aspects of its modernization strategy.
Speaking in June before the Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said, “Simply put, the network is the centerpiece of the Army’s modernization effort and any shortfall in funding will put that effort at risk.”
At the same time, though, the Army Capstone Concept argues that in the future it will be critical for forces to be able to operate in degraded environments -- including places where there is no access to a communications network. This lesson stems directly from the Army’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it’s been proven that technology cannot replace the situational awareness gained from political, historical and cultural understanding.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, agrees that tension exists between the service’s aspiration for technology and its recognition that soldiers need to be able to operate without it.
“In my time as a commander in the [19]90s, roughly stated from Desert Storm through the end of the century, we had a belief that the best information came from the top down,” said Dempsey, speaking with reporters at the Pentagon Dec. 9. “I think what these conflicts have reminded us is it’s equally -- and maybe even more -- important, particularly in counterinsurgency conflicts, to get information from the bottom up, because it’s from the bottom up that the real context of our actions is to be learned.”
This does not mean the concept of a networked force is no longer relevant, but the ways in which the Army views the network and the flow of information has changed.
“A satellite shot or a full-motion video shot will give you a picture of what is occurring, but it will be a picture of what is occurring from 3,000 or 4,000 feet,” said Dempsey. “The individual soldier on the ground -- the soldier as a sensor -- has to help us develop the context in which we operate, a context, by the way, that is important to be understood at every echelon. We really have to find a way to empower that edge to provide that context from the bottom up.”
In October, Inside the Army reported that the service’s revised network plans stress connectivity over capability (ITA, Oct. 12, p5). This means that providing the lower levels -- company level and below -- some network connectivity is a higher priority than creating a network robust enough to share large amounts of information.
“What you sense in our capstone concept is our aspiration for technological solutions to make us more precise, more knowledgeable, but the recognition that that will enable only to a point, but what actually has to happen at the end of the day is a soldier has to walk into a village in order to understand the village,” said Dempsey, who said he has been accused of rejecting technology and even “surrendering the future.”
He rejected those accusations, adding that he believes “technology will always be an important enabler but it will never be a substitute for the kind of close contact that has to occur in dealing with enemies on the ground.”
“We’re not surrendering or giving up on standoff precision munitions against identifiable, discreet high-value targets,” he continued. “Those kind of capabilities are enormously important. They tend to be a decided advantage for us today. I’m not suggesting we’ll have that advantage in perpetuity, but missions to stabilize land mass cannot be accomplished with precision weapons. That has to have land power and young men and women who are culturally astute and broadly developed in order to do that.”
All that said, Dempsey echoed Chiarelli’s endorsement of the network, describing it as “this century’s ‘big five’ all wrapped into one.”
In the early 1970s, the Army began work on a modernization strategy that aimed to develop the so-called “big five” equipment systems: a new tank, a new infantry combat vehicle, a new attack helicopter, a new transport helicopter and a new antiaircraft missile. The five systems became the Abrams tank, the Bradley fighting vehicle, the Patriot Air Defense Missile System, the Apache helicopter and the Black Hawk helicopter.
But even though the network could be the equivalent of this century’s big five, the Army does not yet need to know what it will look like, said Dempsey.
“I, personally, believe that of all the things we’re doing, the one that has the most potential to change dramatically, and in many ways surprisingly, is the network,” he said. “And so, what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to decide what’s our baseline of requirements, so that as these applications come screaming at us, as information technology improves and increases, we’ve got to decide what we want to bring in and what we do not, because otherwise you could quickly become overwhelmed by the good ideas of technology.”
The Army also faces the challenge of communicating the thinking behind network development to the outside world, especially those making funding decisions.
Recently, it has adopted new ways to explain the way the network will operate. In materials presented to Pentagon officials last month, the service compared the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical to a cell tower and the Joint Tactical Radio System to cell phones. Additionally, the documents likened battle command capabilities to applications like those available on iPhones.
The new way of representing the network may reflect the Army’s effort to adapt after complaints that the network was too difficult to understand, according to a source with knowledge of the brigade combat team modernization program. -- Kate Brannen
The Army is working to marry competing ideas as it develops a vision for its future network capability, a cornerstone of the service’s revamped modernization program, according to a senior Army official.
On the one hand, the service views the ability to network its soldiers together as one of the most important aspects of its modernization strategy.
Speaking in June before the Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said, “Simply put, the network is the centerpiece of the Army’s modernization effort and any shortfall in funding will put that effort at risk.”
At the same time, though, the Army Capstone Concept argues that in the future it will be critical for forces to be able to operate in degraded environments -- including places where there is no access to a communications network. This lesson stems directly from the Army’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it’s been proven that technology cannot replace the situational awareness gained from political, historical and cultural understanding.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, agrees that tension exists between the service’s aspiration for technology and its recognition that soldiers need to be able to operate without it.
“In my time as a commander in the [19]90s, roughly stated from Desert Storm through the end of the century, we had a belief that the best information came from the top down,” said Dempsey, speaking with reporters at the Pentagon Dec. 9. “I think what these conflicts have reminded us is it’s equally -- and maybe even more -- important, particularly in counterinsurgency conflicts, to get information from the bottom up, because it’s from the bottom up that the real context of our actions is to be learned.”
This does not mean the concept of a networked force is no longer relevant, but the ways in which the Army views the network and the flow of information has changed.
“A satellite shot or a full-motion video shot will give you a picture of what is occurring, but it will be a picture of what is occurring from 3,000 or 4,000 feet,” said Dempsey. “The individual soldier on the ground -- the soldier as a sensor -- has to help us develop the context in which we operate, a context, by the way, that is important to be understood at every echelon. We really have to find a way to empower that edge to provide that context from the bottom up.”
In October, Inside the Army reported that the service’s revised network plans stress connectivity over capability (ITA, Oct. 12, p5). This means that providing the lower levels -- company level and below -- some network connectivity is a higher priority than creating a network robust enough to share large amounts of information.
“What you sense in our capstone concept is our aspiration for technological solutions to make us more precise, more knowledgeable, but the recognition that that will enable only to a point, but what actually has to happen at the end of the day is a soldier has to walk into a village in order to understand the village,” said Dempsey, who said he has been accused of rejecting technology and even “surrendering the future.”
He rejected those accusations, adding that he believes “technology will always be an important enabler but it will never be a substitute for the kind of close contact that has to occur in dealing with enemies on the ground.”
“We’re not surrendering or giving up on standoff precision munitions against identifiable, discreet high-value targets,” he continued. “Those kind of capabilities are enormously important. They tend to be a decided advantage for us today. I’m not suggesting we’ll have that advantage in perpetuity, but missions to stabilize land mass cannot be accomplished with precision weapons. That has to have land power and young men and women who are culturally astute and broadly developed in order to do that.”
All that said, Dempsey echoed Chiarelli’s endorsement of the network, describing it as “this century’s ‘big five’ all wrapped into one.”
In the early 1970s, the Army began work on a modernization strategy that aimed to develop the so-called “big five” equipment systems: a new tank, a new infantry combat vehicle, a new attack helicopter, a new transport helicopter and a new antiaircraft missile. The five systems became the Abrams tank, the Bradley fighting vehicle, the Patriot Air Defense Missile System, the Apache helicopter and the Black Hawk helicopter.
But even though the network could be the equivalent of this century’s big five, the Army does not yet need to know what it will look like, said Dempsey.
“I, personally, believe that of all the things we’re doing, the one that has the most potential to change dramatically, and in many ways surprisingly, is the network,” he said. “And so, what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to decide what’s our baseline of requirements, so that as these applications come screaming at us, as information technology improves and increases, we’ve got to decide what we want to bring in and what we do not, because otherwise you could quickly become overwhelmed by the good ideas of technology.”
The Army also faces the challenge of communicating the thinking behind network development to the outside world, especially those making funding decisions.
Recently, it has adopted new ways to explain the way the network will operate. In materials presented to Pentagon officials last month, the service compared the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical to a cell tower and the Joint Tactical Radio System to cell phones. Additionally, the documents likened battle command capabilities to applications like those available on iPhones.
The new way of representing the network may reflect the Army’s effort to adapt after complaints that the network was too difficult to understand, according to a source with knowledge of the brigade combat team modernization program. -- Kate Brannen
19 December 2009
Afghan, Iraq Wars To Cost $163.1 Billion In FY-11
Inside Defense
Dec. 18, 2009 -- The Defense Department is preparing a $163.1 billion war-cost spending request for fiscal year 2011, a previously unreported figure that would finance the continuing drawdown of U.S. units from Iraq and sustain the surge of American forces in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon officials.
If approved by Congress, the FY-11 “overseas contingency operations” spending proposal would bring the price tag for the wars in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, and Iraq, which began in 2003, to more than $1.2 trillion, according to Pentagon budget documents.
The FY-11 war cost spending request -- due to be submitted to Congress in February along with the Pentagon's annual base budget plan -- was prepared as DOD officials continue to work with the White House Office of Management and Budget to hammer out a total price tag for overseas operations in FY-10, which began Oct. 1.
The Obama administration in February requested $130 billion for FY-10 war costs. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said $30 billion to $35 billion more would be required in FY-10 to pay for the 30,000 troops President Obama has ordered to Afghanistan.
“This is still a work in progress,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters Dec. 16. “We're still trying to determine the precise costs associated with surging these additional forces into theater.”
In May, the White House Office of Management and Budget set aside a $50 billion “placeholder” in the FY-11 budget request to allow the military services, the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense more time to refine anticipated costs for operations that will not begin being executed until October 2010.
In August, the military services presented FY-11 war cost spending requests that totaled $137 billion, estimates that did not include contributions to fund the new Afghanistan strategy (DefenseAlert, Oct. 20).
Sources say the war cost request would finance a portion of the $2.5 billion bill associated with temporarily increasing the size of the Army by 22,000 troops that Gates directed this summer.
According to budget documents on the Pentagon comptroller's Web site, the Pentagon in FY-01 requested $13 billion for the war in Afghanistan and $17 billion in FY-02 for the same mission. In FY-03, costs grew to $72 billion to pay for the invasion of Iraq and the first months of the initial occupation. War costs continued to grow in FY-04 to $91 billion, in FY-05 to $76 billion and in FY-06 to $116 billion, according to the DOD budget documents.
In FY-07, President Bush ordered a surge of U.S. forces to Iraq, pushing war costs to $166 billion. In FY-08, a massive industrial effort to field a new fleet of armored trucks resistant to roadside bombs helped propel war cost spending to $187 billion.
In FY-09, the incoming Obama administration applied new scrutiny to the Pentagon's war cost requests, which totaled $145 billion. -- Jason Sherman
12182009_dec18b
Dec. 18, 2009 -- The Defense Department is preparing a $163.1 billion war-cost spending request for fiscal year 2011, a previously unreported figure that would finance the continuing drawdown of U.S. units from Iraq and sustain the surge of American forces in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon officials.
If approved by Congress, the FY-11 “overseas contingency operations” spending proposal would bring the price tag for the wars in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, and Iraq, which began in 2003, to more than $1.2 trillion, according to Pentagon budget documents.
The FY-11 war cost spending request -- due to be submitted to Congress in February along with the Pentagon's annual base budget plan -- was prepared as DOD officials continue to work with the White House Office of Management and Budget to hammer out a total price tag for overseas operations in FY-10, which began Oct. 1.
The Obama administration in February requested $130 billion for FY-10 war costs. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said $30 billion to $35 billion more would be required in FY-10 to pay for the 30,000 troops President Obama has ordered to Afghanistan.
“This is still a work in progress,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters Dec. 16. “We're still trying to determine the precise costs associated with surging these additional forces into theater.”
In May, the White House Office of Management and Budget set aside a $50 billion “placeholder” in the FY-11 budget request to allow the military services, the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense more time to refine anticipated costs for operations that will not begin being executed until October 2010.
In August, the military services presented FY-11 war cost spending requests that totaled $137 billion, estimates that did not include contributions to fund the new Afghanistan strategy (DefenseAlert, Oct. 20).
Sources say the war cost request would finance a portion of the $2.5 billion bill associated with temporarily increasing the size of the Army by 22,000 troops that Gates directed this summer.
According to budget documents on the Pentagon comptroller's Web site, the Pentagon in FY-01 requested $13 billion for the war in Afghanistan and $17 billion in FY-02 for the same mission. In FY-03, costs grew to $72 billion to pay for the invasion of Iraq and the first months of the initial occupation. War costs continued to grow in FY-04 to $91 billion, in FY-05 to $76 billion and in FY-06 to $116 billion, according to the DOD budget documents.
In FY-07, President Bush ordered a surge of U.S. forces to Iraq, pushing war costs to $166 billion. In FY-08, a massive industrial effort to field a new fleet of armored trucks resistant to roadside bombs helped propel war cost spending to $187 billion.
In FY-09, the incoming Obama administration applied new scrutiny to the Pentagon's war cost requests, which totaled $145 billion. -- Jason Sherman
12182009_dec18b
16 December 2009
Army ‘Surging’ Unmanned Aircraft, Including Sky Warrior, To Afghanistan
Inside the Army
The Army’s “surge” of unmanned aircraft systems to Afghanistan is well-timed to President Obama’s announcement of an additional 30,000 troops to be deployed to the country, according to service officials.
“We received some funding a little over a year ago to really surge unmanned aircraft systems to theater, so we’re now at the point where we’re starting to execute,” said Col. Gregory Gonzalez, UAS project manager, at a Dec. 9 media briefing.
As an example, Gonzalez cited four Hunter aircraft recently fielded to Afghanistan with an updated tactical common data link and signals intelligence payloads, including Green Dart. Those systems reached initial operational capability at the end of November, said Gonzalez, “in perfect time for the surge.”
Also, all of the brigade combat teams going over have their own organic Shadow aircraft, he said.
“In addition to that, we are going to field our second quick reaction platoon of the pre-production Sky Warriors -- or the Extended Range Multipurpose [UAS] -- into Afghanistan in about the July time frame of 2010, and that should coincide very nicely with the rest of the troops going in,” said Gonzalez. That platoon will consist of four aircraft supported by two ground control stations, he added. Each aircraft also will be armed with improved Hellfire missiles.
The soldiers who will be operating those aircraft are already in training, according to Gonzalez.
Meanwhile, the first quick-reaction capability of Sky Warrior has logged over 1,000 hours of flight time in Iraq, he said.
The service was directed by the Pentagon to field the Sky Warrior more rapidly, which paved the way for the two QRCs.
The Army has tried to incrementally, but very rapidly, build upon existing capabilities, said Tim Owings, deputy project manager for UAS, at the same briefing. Part of this process has involved responding to what soldiers are asking for in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“For Shadow, there was a huge cry from the warfighter to have a laser designator on the Shadow and we are in the final stages of development of that laser designator,” said Gonzalez. “We put in one or two of those early on for the 25th Infantry Division to experiment with, but now we’re going to move forward and put those on 20 Shadow systems.”
The current Shadow system -- RQ-7B -- is also getting an enhanced wing, which will allow it to fly higher and longer, said Owings. With the enhanced 20-foot wing, Shadow’s endurance is about eight hours compared to 30 hours for the Warrior, he said.
The UAS program office also is trying to address the challenges that Afghanistan’s terrain presents. It is fielding a “cold-weather kit” to the Shadow systems “because we have run into issues at very high altitudes when it’s very cold,” said Owings.
“It certainly is a challenge in the higher altitudes in the form of our tactical unmanned aircraft systems,” said Col. Robert Sova, Army Training and Doctrine Command capabilities manager for UAS, at the same briefing. The current Shadow does not have a heavy fuel engine, which limits its use in certain parts of Afghanistan, he said.
“Without a heavy fuel engine, we have challenges at the higher altitudes with icing and vaporization,” he said.
The next version of Shadow -- the RQ-7C -- does have a requirement for a heavy fuel engine, he added.
“In certain areas of Afghanistan, Shadow has no problem,” Owings told Inside the Army, adding that it can still reach 18,000 feet. At very high and very cold elevations, however, conditions are a lot “tougher,” he said.
“The best-suited systems are things like Sky Warrior, because it flies much higher and you have [satellite communications] capability,” which allows you to see over the next mountain, said Owings.
Sky Warrior is also due for a heavier engine, allowing it to fly higher, said Owings.
In northeast Afghanistan small units, equipped primarily with the smaller Raven system, are challenged by the high altitudes, said Gonzalez.
“The two things we keep hearing in Afghanistan are they want something really small and really right for back-packable, dismounted units and then they wanted something that could get up higher so they can survey over these ridges that they’re struggling with with the pure Raven systems,” said Owings.
The Army’s plan to field a proof-of-principle version of a small UAS tool kit will bridge this gap temporarily, said Gonzalez. The proof-of-principle kit will contain a Wasp, a Raven and a Puma (ITA, Oct. 19, p1). -- Kate Brannen
ARMY-21-49-7
The Army’s “surge” of unmanned aircraft systems to Afghanistan is well-timed to President Obama’s announcement of an additional 30,000 troops to be deployed to the country, according to service officials.
“We received some funding a little over a year ago to really surge unmanned aircraft systems to theater, so we’re now at the point where we’re starting to execute,” said Col. Gregory Gonzalez, UAS project manager, at a Dec. 9 media briefing.
As an example, Gonzalez cited four Hunter aircraft recently fielded to Afghanistan with an updated tactical common data link and signals intelligence payloads, including Green Dart. Those systems reached initial operational capability at the end of November, said Gonzalez, “in perfect time for the surge.”
Also, all of the brigade combat teams going over have their own organic Shadow aircraft, he said.
“In addition to that, we are going to field our second quick reaction platoon of the pre-production Sky Warriors -- or the Extended Range Multipurpose [UAS] -- into Afghanistan in about the July time frame of 2010, and that should coincide very nicely with the rest of the troops going in,” said Gonzalez. That platoon will consist of four aircraft supported by two ground control stations, he added. Each aircraft also will be armed with improved Hellfire missiles.
The soldiers who will be operating those aircraft are already in training, according to Gonzalez.
Meanwhile, the first quick-reaction capability of Sky Warrior has logged over 1,000 hours of flight time in Iraq, he said.
The service was directed by the Pentagon to field the Sky Warrior more rapidly, which paved the way for the two QRCs.
The Army has tried to incrementally, but very rapidly, build upon existing capabilities, said Tim Owings, deputy project manager for UAS, at the same briefing. Part of this process has involved responding to what soldiers are asking for in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“For Shadow, there was a huge cry from the warfighter to have a laser designator on the Shadow and we are in the final stages of development of that laser designator,” said Gonzalez. “We put in one or two of those early on for the 25th Infantry Division to experiment with, but now we’re going to move forward and put those on 20 Shadow systems.”
The current Shadow system -- RQ-7B -- is also getting an enhanced wing, which will allow it to fly higher and longer, said Owings. With the enhanced 20-foot wing, Shadow’s endurance is about eight hours compared to 30 hours for the Warrior, he said.
The UAS program office also is trying to address the challenges that Afghanistan’s terrain presents. It is fielding a “cold-weather kit” to the Shadow systems “because we have run into issues at very high altitudes when it’s very cold,” said Owings.
“It certainly is a challenge in the higher altitudes in the form of our tactical unmanned aircraft systems,” said Col. Robert Sova, Army Training and Doctrine Command capabilities manager for UAS, at the same briefing. The current Shadow does not have a heavy fuel engine, which limits its use in certain parts of Afghanistan, he said.
“Without a heavy fuel engine, we have challenges at the higher altitudes with icing and vaporization,” he said.
The next version of Shadow -- the RQ-7C -- does have a requirement for a heavy fuel engine, he added.
“In certain areas of Afghanistan, Shadow has no problem,” Owings told Inside the Army, adding that it can still reach 18,000 feet. At very high and very cold elevations, however, conditions are a lot “tougher,” he said.
“The best-suited systems are things like Sky Warrior, because it flies much higher and you have [satellite communications] capability,” which allows you to see over the next mountain, said Owings.
Sky Warrior is also due for a heavier engine, allowing it to fly higher, said Owings.
In northeast Afghanistan small units, equipped primarily with the smaller Raven system, are challenged by the high altitudes, said Gonzalez.
“The two things we keep hearing in Afghanistan are they want something really small and really right for back-packable, dismounted units and then they wanted something that could get up higher so they can survey over these ridges that they’re struggling with with the pure Raven systems,” said Owings.
The Army’s plan to field a proof-of-principle version of a small UAS tool kit will bridge this gap temporarily, said Gonzalez. The proof-of-principle kit will contain a Wasp, a Raven and a Puma (ITA, Oct. 19, p1). -- Kate Brannen
ARMY-21-49-7
Gates Critiques Draft QDR Report, Seeks 'Personal' Assessment From Top DOD Officials
Inside Defense
Dec. 15, 2009 -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked the Pentagon's top civilian and military officials to provide their "personal" assessments of a draft of the Quadrennial Defense Review, which DOD officials say may be one of the final steps in finalizing the Obama administration's new 20-year blueprint for the military.
Gates, who sources say made the request yesterday during a meeting with the Pentagon's most senior leaders, is expected to soon circulate a QDR draft that incorporates a critique of the report he made during his trip last week to Afghanistan and Iraq.
More than a dozen of the Pentagon's top civilian and uniformed officials -- including the service secretaries and service chiefs -- who collectively make up the so-called “Large Group” that Gates regularly convenes to discuss issues that require high-level deliberation will have a few days to weigh in on the draft QDR report, sources said.
“He wants their personal assessment, not a staff assessment,” said one Pentagon official.
Sources who have read late November drafts say the report does not call for any radical restructuring of the military and that it makes no explicit calls for drastic force-structure changes.
Moreover, Pentagon sources say it appears the White House Office of Management and Budget's move to increase the size of the Defense Department budget by at least $60 billion between fiscal years 2011 and 2015 provides funds to pay for many capabilities recommended by the QDR, which Gates directed the services to fund in July, sources said. -- Jason Sherman
12152009_dec15c
Dec. 15, 2009 -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked the Pentagon's top civilian and military officials to provide their "personal" assessments of a draft of the Quadrennial Defense Review, which DOD officials say may be one of the final steps in finalizing the Obama administration's new 20-year blueprint for the military.
Gates, who sources say made the request yesterday during a meeting with the Pentagon's most senior leaders, is expected to soon circulate a QDR draft that incorporates a critique of the report he made during his trip last week to Afghanistan and Iraq.
More than a dozen of the Pentagon's top civilian and uniformed officials -- including the service secretaries and service chiefs -- who collectively make up the so-called “Large Group” that Gates regularly convenes to discuss issues that require high-level deliberation will have a few days to weigh in on the draft QDR report, sources said.
“He wants their personal assessment, not a staff assessment,” said one Pentagon official.
Sources who have read late November drafts say the report does not call for any radical restructuring of the military and that it makes no explicit calls for drastic force-structure changes.
Moreover, Pentagon sources say it appears the White House Office of Management and Budget's move to increase the size of the Defense Department budget by at least $60 billion between fiscal years 2011 and 2015 provides funds to pay for many capabilities recommended by the QDR, which Gates directed the services to fund in July, sources said. -- Jason Sherman
12152009_dec15c
Officials Plan for 'Conditions-Based' Growth of Afghan Forces After Next Fall
Inside Defense
Dec. 15, 2009 -- Defense officials will begin annual assessments next spring to review whether the envisioned end strength of 400,000 for the Afghan security forces still makes sense, according to officials and documents.
Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, cited the 400,000 goal in his Aug. 30 assessment for Defense Secretary Robert Gates. But during an appearance before Congress last week, McChrystal himself portrayed the figure as being subject to change.
“[I] think we need to view that not as a hard number at this point but as a goal we work toward and adjust constantly,” he told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Dec. 10.
A new briefing from the international command in charge of training Afghanistan's forces says officials will make any growth beyond 243,000 -- to be reached in October 2010 -- “conditions-based.” The number includes 134,000 Afghan National Army and 109,000 Afghan National Police personnel.
The briefing was published by the “Small Wars Journal” blog today. In a message this morning, editors wrote they received it from Army Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, the new commander of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan.
Reaching the subsequent step in the evolution of the Afghan forces -- 282,000 personnel by July 2011 -- would require “significant improvement” in recruiting, retention and “attrition,” the document states. The move also would require “enhanced accountability” of personnel, equipment and pay, the document adds.
The first annual assessment for evaluating the growth beyond 243,000 is scheduled for sometime between April and June of next year, according to the briefing.
Since the mention of the 400,000 target figure in the McChrystal assessment, some officials have privately questioned its rationale.
“[I am] not sure the assumptions that number was based upon remains valid today,” one military official told InsideDefense.com on condition of anonymity.
In testimony last week, McChrystal said an analysis “using basic [counterinsurgency] doctrine” arrived at an optimal level of nearly 600,000 forces. Officials finally settled on 400,000 because “not all the country is threatened” by the Taliban insurgency, he added.
“A number of 400,000, divided between the army and the police -- of 240,000 ultimately in the army, and 160,000 in the police -- would not be really out of range for that part of the world for standing armies and police,” McChrystal said. -- Sebastian Sprenger
12152009_dec15b
Dec. 15, 2009 -- Defense officials will begin annual assessments next spring to review whether the envisioned end strength of 400,000 for the Afghan security forces still makes sense, according to officials and documents.
Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, cited the 400,000 goal in his Aug. 30 assessment for Defense Secretary Robert Gates. But during an appearance before Congress last week, McChrystal himself portrayed the figure as being subject to change.
“[I] think we need to view that not as a hard number at this point but as a goal we work toward and adjust constantly,” he told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Dec. 10.
A new briefing from the international command in charge of training Afghanistan's forces says officials will make any growth beyond 243,000 -- to be reached in October 2010 -- “conditions-based.” The number includes 134,000 Afghan National Army and 109,000 Afghan National Police personnel.
The briefing was published by the “Small Wars Journal” blog today. In a message this morning, editors wrote they received it from Army Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, the new commander of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan.
Reaching the subsequent step in the evolution of the Afghan forces -- 282,000 personnel by July 2011 -- would require “significant improvement” in recruiting, retention and “attrition,” the document states. The move also would require “enhanced accountability” of personnel, equipment and pay, the document adds.
The first annual assessment for evaluating the growth beyond 243,000 is scheduled for sometime between April and June of next year, according to the briefing.
Since the mention of the 400,000 target figure in the McChrystal assessment, some officials have privately questioned its rationale.
“[I am] not sure the assumptions that number was based upon remains valid today,” one military official told InsideDefense.com on condition of anonymity.
In testimony last week, McChrystal said an analysis “using basic [counterinsurgency] doctrine” arrived at an optimal level of nearly 600,000 forces. Officials finally settled on 400,000 because “not all the country is threatened” by the Taliban insurgency, he added.
“A number of 400,000, divided between the army and the police -- of 240,000 ultimately in the army, and 160,000 in the police -- would not be really out of range for that part of the world for standing armies and police,” McChrystal said. -- Sebastian Sprenger
12152009_dec15b
15 December 2009
Contractors in Afghanistan Surpass 100K Mark, DOD Figures Show
Inside Defense
Dec. 14, 2009 -- The number of contractors employed by the Defense Department in Afghanistan surpassed the 100,000 mark during this summer, according to newly released Pentagon figures.
The number of private workers in Afghanistan rose from 74,000 by the end of June to 104,000 by the end of September, according to a November Defense Department information paper made public on a DOD Web site earlier this month.
The “significant” increase of roughly 40 percent is due to workers needed on construction projects under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and an increase in operational tempo, the document states.
About three quarters, or 78,500, of the workers were Afghans; 9,300 were U.S. citizens; and 16,300 were “third-country nationals,” according to the document.
The number of DOD's private security contractors in Afghanistan has roughly doubled during the reporting period. As of Sept. 30, U.S. Central Command officials counted 11,423 private guards, of which 10,712 were armed. Within that category, the percentage of third-country nationals rose from about 5 percent to slightly under 10 percent, compared with figures from June 30.
The doubling of private guards in Afghanistan “correlates to the decentralized expansion of operations,” the document explains. Less than one percent of security guards are American citizens, the figures show.
In Iraq, the number of DOD contractors fell from 120,000 to 114,000 between June and September, according to the document. Multi-National Force-Iraq “remains ahead of its quarterly 5 percent reduction target established in January 2009,” it adds.
Meanwhile, U.S. defense officials are pursuing a “universal code of conduct” for private security contractors, the document notes.
“DOD is supporting the initiative of the Swiss government to move beyond the Montreux Document and implement an industry-led, government-supported international accountability regime that will apply to all PSCs in all operational environments,” it states.
The United States is one of 17 governments that signed the Montreux Document on Sept. 17, 2008, in Switzerland. It serves as a “guide on the legal and practical issues raised by private military and security companies,” according to the Swiss government, which helped broker the agreement. The Montreux Document has no legal ramifications for its signatories. Of the countries in CENTCOM's area of responsibility, Afghanistan and Iraq have ratified the document.
U.S. government officials, along with their counterparts from the United Kingdom and Switzerland, are now working on a draft universal standard of conduct with “broad” endorsement by the private security industry, the DOD document notes. Nongovernmental organizations in the fields of human rights law and armed conflict law would help craft the new document, according to the DOD paper. -- Sebastian Sprenger
12142009_dec14b
Dec. 14, 2009 -- The number of contractors employed by the Defense Department in Afghanistan surpassed the 100,000 mark during this summer, according to newly released Pentagon figures.
The number of private workers in Afghanistan rose from 74,000 by the end of June to 104,000 by the end of September, according to a November Defense Department information paper made public on a DOD Web site earlier this month.
The “significant” increase of roughly 40 percent is due to workers needed on construction projects under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and an increase in operational tempo, the document states.
About three quarters, or 78,500, of the workers were Afghans; 9,300 were U.S. citizens; and 16,300 were “third-country nationals,” according to the document.
The number of DOD's private security contractors in Afghanistan has roughly doubled during the reporting period. As of Sept. 30, U.S. Central Command officials counted 11,423 private guards, of which 10,712 were armed. Within that category, the percentage of third-country nationals rose from about 5 percent to slightly under 10 percent, compared with figures from June 30.
The doubling of private guards in Afghanistan “correlates to the decentralized expansion of operations,” the document explains. Less than one percent of security guards are American citizens, the figures show.
In Iraq, the number of DOD contractors fell from 120,000 to 114,000 between June and September, according to the document. Multi-National Force-Iraq “remains ahead of its quarterly 5 percent reduction target established in January 2009,” it adds.
Meanwhile, U.S. defense officials are pursuing a “universal code of conduct” for private security contractors, the document notes.
“DOD is supporting the initiative of the Swiss government to move beyond the Montreux Document and implement an industry-led, government-supported international accountability regime that will apply to all PSCs in all operational environments,” it states.
The United States is one of 17 governments that signed the Montreux Document on Sept. 17, 2008, in Switzerland. It serves as a “guide on the legal and practical issues raised by private military and security companies,” according to the Swiss government, which helped broker the agreement. The Montreux Document has no legal ramifications for its signatories. Of the countries in CENTCOM's area of responsibility, Afghanistan and Iraq have ratified the document.
U.S. government officials, along with their counterparts from the United Kingdom and Switzerland, are now working on a draft universal standard of conduct with “broad” endorsement by the private security industry, the DOD document notes. Nongovernmental organizations in the fields of human rights law and armed conflict law would help craft the new document, according to the DOD paper. -- Sebastian Sprenger
12142009_dec14b
12 December 2009
The Army Looks Beyond Afghanistan
The service has struggled with weapons purchases in recent years.
National Journal
Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009
by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
While Army combat troops get ready to ramp up the current war, their comrades in the acquisition corps are quietly preparing to buy weapons for the next conflict, whatever and wherever it may be. On November 24, as the nation headed into Thanksgiving amid rising anxiety over President Obama's plan to escalate in Afghanistan, senior officers held a closed-door meeting with more than 350 defense contractors from 247 companies to discuss the still-evolving requirements for the Army's next Ground Combat Vehicle, already known by the Pentagon shorthand GCV.
The vehicle will not enter service until 2017, six years after Obama's deadlines to complete the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and begin a drawdown in Afghanistan. Compared with timetables for past weapons purchases, that's a tight schedule. The Army had been working on new armored vehicles since 1999 as part of what grew into the unwieldy, $200 billion Future Combat System program. But in April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates summarily canceled the FCS's armored vehicles and ordered the service to start over. The reboot has forced the Army to rethink a decade of assumptions -- and to rein in its ambitions for new technology.
"If you look at the GCV timeline, the technology has got to be there now," said Donald Kotchman, a retired Army colonel who works on the vehicle for defense contractor General Dynamics. "This program can't be about technology development."
The Army wants to design and build the Ground Combat Vehicle quickly because its fleet of armored vehicles is aging. But assuming that the first GCVs arrive on schedule in 2017, the Army will need years to buy them in quantity because of budget constraints, and even then, the baseline GCVs will replace only one type of vehicle now in service, the tanklike Bradley infantry carrier.
So, in tandem with developing the new machine, the Army must redouble its efforts to overhaul and update its old armor. Existing Bradleys and M1 Abrams tanks, designed in the 1970s and built in the 1980s, must last until 2030. Contractors and the Army are rebuilding the M109 Paladin howitzer, a self-propelled artillery vehicle that travels on tracks, by placing the gun turret on a new chassis, and the vehicle is supposed to stay in service until 2060 -- a century after it was introduced in 1963.
The Army has twice tried to replace the Paladin. First came the Crusader artillery vehicle, which designers slimmed down from 60 tons to 40 before then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld canceled it in 2002 because it was still too heavy to be shipped to a battlefield by air. Then there was the cannon variant of the Future Combat System vehicle, which grew from 19 tons to 26 before Gates canceled it this summer, deciding that it was still too lightly armored to survive roadside bombs. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, one of the intellectual fathers of the now-gutted Future Combat System, fumed, "You can't keep up with the changing fashion."
Being whiplashed by changing Defense secretaries, however, is not the sole source of the Army's modernization problems. It was the service's own chiefs who canceled the Comanche stealth helicopter in 2004 and the Armored Gun System light tank in 1996 to free up money to keep other, aging-but-necessary hardware in operation. Indeed, since 1996, the only new armored vehicles to enter Army service have been the Stryker armored troop transport and the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected trucks, both of which are modest modifications of vehicles already for sale on the world market rather than original designs.
The other services have had their share of procurement problems. The Air Force's F-22 Raptor fighter, the Marine Corps's V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, and the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship have become bywords for cost overruns and schedule delays caused by overly ambitious technology. Ultimately, however, all of them are being built, if only in reduced quantities. Only one service consistently invests so much time and money but has nothing to show for it: the Army.
The Army's Problem
So, what's wrong with the Army? As the largest service, with 500,000 active-duty personnel and as many reservists, the Army is not only the most bureaucratic but also the most divided. The Army is less a cohesive culture, like the much-smaller Marine Corps, and more a confederation of tribes. They're officially called "branches," and they range from armor to artillery, infantry to intelligence, and engineering to supply corps, each with its own insignia, doctrinal manual, training programs, and sacred cows. Some Army chiefs muddle through, mediating between the branches over piecemeal changes; others gamble that they can unite the service behind common bold programs.
When Gates canceled the Future Combat System's tanks in April, he did not just reject a vehicle -- he also rejected a vision of future war and a plan to reorganize and re-equip the force for that future. The service had been following that course for a decade, ever since then-Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki imposed it on an ambivalent leadership in 1999. Gen. Shinseki reversed 50 years of Cold War investment in ever-heavier vehicles and ordered the development of lightweight, high-tech alternatives that forsook the impermeability of armor in favor of long-range sensors and precision weapons to win battles. His manifesto ultimately gave rise to both the relatively successful, technologically modest Stryker, which has seen heavy use in Iraq, and the ambitious but disastrous Future Combat System. Shinseki soon found that his embrace of this "revolution in military affairs" was at once too radical for traditionalist tank and infantry officers and too moderate for his new boss, Rumsfeld. (See "The Counter-Revolution in Military Affairs," NJ, 12/5/09, p. 33.)
Now Gates and a new generation of Army leaders are throwing out not only the Future Combat System but also its underlying assumptions. "A lot of these ideas have been thoroughly discredited by recent experience and our rediscovery of history," said Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, an Iraq combat veteran.
Even before he deployed to war, McMaster publicly challenged the then-dominant "revolution" thesis in a 2003 paper he wrote while he was at the Army War College; its title is "Crack in the Foundation: Defense Transformation and the Underlying Assumption of Dominant Knowledge in Future War." Today, the former rebel oversees the writing of an "Army Capstone Concept" -- a foundational document that will guide future training and doctrinal manuals. A widely circulated draft of the concept explicitly rejects the logic behind the Future Combat System, which was designed to be a high-tech "system of systems" that would use high-speed computer networks to connect foot soldiers and armored vehicles to ground- and air-based sensors.
"Overall, it's the best Capstone Concept I've seen out of the Army in quite a while," said retired Col. Richard Hart Sinn-reich, who helped develop the definitive "AirLand Battle" concept that guided the Army buildup in the 1980s, when the Abrams and Bradley tanks were introduced as the latest technology to defeat a Soviet land army. "It's written in English, and, thankfully, largely forswears the repeated deployment of unwanted assumptions... that marred many of its predecessors."
Above all, McMaster said, the Army has abandoned the idea that you could minimize the risk to soldiers by firing at your enemy from such a long range -- with the aid of high-tech sensors -- that your foe couldn't find you and fire back. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught the Army, or maybe reminded it, that, in McMaster's words, "you're always going to have to develop the situation in close contact with the enemy."
The requirements for the Ground Combat Vehicle remain in flux, but it is clear that the program is placing its trust in the protection of old-fashioned armor first and high technology second, much as the Capstone Concept does. "They've turned the FCS order of priorities upside down," said Robert Sorge, General Dynamics's former director for the Future Combat System vehicles.
The war is on within the Army over not only what soldiers will fight with in the future but also how they will fight. "Just as the Abrams and Bradley... defined operational maneuver in the 1980s, GCV will define mounted maneuver for another generation," Scales said. "It's not just about a vehicle; it's about something that's going to define your culture for a generation."
The Illusion Of Certainty
Technology has changed the tools of war. What seemed revolutionary 10 years ago is now routine: reconnaissance drones such as the Predator; digital Global Positioning System maps in Humvees and tanks; wireless networks linking manned and unmanned vehicles to command posts through electronic displays. But what has not changed is the nature of war: confusing and chaotic.
The new technology was "fantastic," said retired Lt. Col. Steven Russell, who led a heavy battalion in Iraq in 2003 and early 2004 with what were then the latest digital systems. "But it did not replace the need to still close with the enemy and fight."
Lt. Col. Charles Hodges, whose Stryker unit served in Iraq in 2003-04 and 2006, agreed. The new technology allows you to "know where your guys are, but you don't know where the bad guys are.... While we've lifted some of the fog of war, we still haven't eliminated all of that."
Lifting the Fog of War was the title and promise of a book published in 2000 by the highest-ranking apostle of the "revolution in military affairs," Navy Adm. William Owens, who had retired as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff four years earlier. "Technology can give us the ability to see a 'battlefield' as large as Iraq or Korea," Owens wrote. "By 2010 -- and earlier if we accelerate the current rate of research and procurement -- the U.S. military will be able to 'see' virtually everything of military significance in and above such an area all the time, in all weather conditions, and regardless of the terrain."
On the eve of 2010, with 115,000 U.S. troops still engaged in Iraq, Owens's virtual vision rings hollow. "It was not that technology has failed us, it is that technology was never going to be able to provide what was being claimed for it," Sinnreich, the retired colonel, said. "This confidence that we could see, know, and understand everything that mattered on a ground battlefield was just ludicrous -- and so indeed it has proved.... It's like [Werner] Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Uncertainty is built into the structure of subatomic physics; well, uncertainty is built into the structure of the land battle."
The Army's forthcoming Capstone Concept, McMaster said, explicitly rejects "the belief that technological capabilities had essentially lifted the fog of war... [and] that the development of these technological capabilities would substitute for traditional elements of combat power, fighting power, especially on land. Now we see the limitations of these technologies."
Stryker Not Ideal
Some members of Congress have asked the Army why it doesn't just build more Strykers, which travel on huge rubber tires rather than tracks and have gotten decent reviews in Iraq for their survivability and maneuverability. The Stryker does meet one of the key goals set for the future Ground Combat Vehicle. Because the Stryker carries nine soldiers into battle instead of the Bradley's six, it injects 50 percent more combat power where it counts most: at the lowest fighting level, the squad.
All else being equal, more passengers means that a bigger, heavier, and more expensive vehicle is needed to protect them. But with the Stryker, all else is very much unequal: It weighs about half as much as a Bradley, while carrying half again as many troops, because it has far less weaponry and armor. Shinseki's vision was that superior technology would make up the difference, allowing Stryker units to see the enemy coming on their sensors, avoid being hit in the first place, and supplement their own light weapons by calling in long-range precision strikes from artillery or aircraft.
As the next step in Shinseki's program, the now-canceled Future Combat System infantry carrier was supposed to combine Stryker's nine-soldier capacity with even more electronics, a bigger gun, and better protection than the Bradley -- while maintaining the Stryker's weight. But the revolutionary lightweight technologies that were supposed to make this possible never materialized. The FCS was delayed repeatedly, and the vehicle grew steadily heavier, from less than 20 tons to more than 26, until Gates canceled it outright because it still lacked adequate underbelly protection to survive roadside bombs.
Now the Army wants the Ground Combat Vehicle to carry nine infantrymen while providing better protection than the Stryker or the Bradley -- but it cannot rely on discredited ideas of substituting technology for armor, or wait for the development of ultralight materials. That is the engineering challenge the Army put to the defense industry on November 24.
New Armor For Old
While the Army and the industry struggle to design the Ground Combat Vehicle, they are feverishly overhauling the machines the service has. Since 2004, more than 5,100 vehicles that roll onto the battlefield on tracks have been "reset" to zero miles on the odometer, as have more than 44,000 trucks, in a collaboration between Army repair depots and the vehicles' manufacturers. The total cost of these rebuilds so far is $25.3 billion. The overhaul "takes it literally down to the frame," explained James Dwyer, the Army Materiel Command's reset chief. "We take basically all of the parts off... to include the track, the road wheels, the engine, and the transmission. We take the turret off the hull" -- then put it all back together again.
"Resetting" a single M1 tank costs $3.3 million; taking the opportunity to upgrade to the latest electronics boosts the price tag to $5.2 million -- but that's still less than the cost of a new vehicle. The same process on an M2 Bradley costs $1.5 million, or $2.7 million with new electronics. Because a reset replaces the moving parts that wear out over time -- some 30,000 of them on a single tank -- "on average, the usage-age of an M1 tank is only about four years.... The M2 fleet is about five to six years old," Dwyer said. "To be quite honest with you, the health of the heavy fleet is really very, very good."
The Pentagon is counting on that because it has not bought any new tracked combat vehicles since 1995. Instead, it has invested in vehicles that travel on rubber tires: Strykers, up-armored Humvees, and, above all, the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles that Secretary Gates rushed into service for Iraq. Spending a total of $23.3 billion, Gates has bought 16,000 MRAPs in a dozen models, ranging in weight from less than 15 tons to more than 40. But these vehicles have proved too heavy for Afghanistan's poor roads, let alone for highway-less terrain. So Gates has ordered 6,000 M-ATVs -- Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected, All-Terrain Vehicles, relatively nimble at 12 tons -- from Oshkosh Corp. for $5.5 billion, and he has told Congress he might buy 4,000 more.
Meanwhile, after canceling most of the Army's Future Combat System program, the secretary ordered the service to start over with tracked-vehicle development. "The opponents of FCS," Scales, the retired major general, said pointedly, "many of them have in the back of their minds that either the Bradley or the MRAP will suffice, so all we need to do is gussy up those two things." But Scales considers further Bradley upgrades to be long past the point of diminishing returns and calls MRAP "a technological disaster." "It's not a fighting vehicle," he said. "I interviewed several soldiers who were in that platform in Afghanistan, and they all said the same thing. One called it a 'panic room.' It's where you go to hide, but you can't fight from it because you can't get off the road."
Among the soldiers interviewed for National Journal's ongoing oral history project of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, only four had firsthand experience with MRAPs; their opinions differed but in a revealing way. Two engineers tasked with driving along Iraqi roads clearing improvised explosive devices -- or getting hit by them -- loved their MRAPs. Two advisers whose job was to circulate among the local population and security forces preferred Humvees. Even in Iraqi cities, "there are some routes you can't get through in MRAPs" because they're too big, said Lt. Fernando Garcia, currently with an adviser brigade in Muthanna province. Although the new M-ATVs may change the Afghan equation, said Maj. Andrew Ashley, a former adviser in Helmand and Zabul provinces there, "for the day-to-day patrols, the MRAPs were too big, too heavy, too immobile."
The Bradley's Shortcomings
As a tracked vehicle, the Bradley still does better cross-country than the MRAP, and with a 25 mm automatic cannon and anti-tank missiles, it has far more firepower than the MRAP's machine guns provide. But the Bradley has its own problems, some of them the unintended consequences of three decades of upgrades.
"I'm 5-foot-10, 150 pounds, and I was very cramped inside the commander's hatch of the Bradley," Russell, the retired lieutenant colonel, said. "And reloading our machine guns was a real chore because the access doors to the machine gun were blocked by the screen" for the new digital displays. "You just have no room in the Bradley turret.... It wasn't designed to have all that stuff in there."
The Bradley's electrical system has not kept pace with the added electronics, nor has its engine been modified to handle the extra weight. "We've put armor on the sides, put armor on the belly... [and] that has all come at a cost," said Roy Perkins, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who heads the heavy-vehicle team at BAE Systems' land and armaments division, the contractor modifying the Bradleys. "It's not as fast as it used to be, it takes a little longer to stop, and the ground pressure's a little bit higher," which raises the risk of bogging down in sand or mud.
BAE plans to outfit the Bradley with a mini-generator along with a more powerful engine, which would boost the vehicle's electrical output from an anemic 11 kilowatts to 70 kW. A more elaborate installation being considered would kick that up to 140 kW and possibly even 200 kW. That is still less than the 420 kW capacity of the canceled Future Combat System vehicles, which were to have a hybrid-electric drive. But the Ground Combat Vehicle's requirements for power-hungry high technology are more modest: At least 40 kilowatts would be available for new communications networks after all other systems on the vehicle have been fully powered.
Could an upgraded Bradley be the new vehicle that the Army seeks? "BAE can submit anything they want," said Col. Bryan McVeigh, the Army's project manager for the Ground Combat Vehicle, but "the technology on the Bradley is getting pretty long in the tooth, and its ability to be upgraded to provide enough power to support the network is limited."
Even if a better Bradley could muster the necessary kilowatts and horsepower, it would still have to meet the fundamental requirement that the GCV transport more troops with better protection. The current Bradley carries three crew members and six passengers (with a seventh theoretically crammed into what even BAE's Perkins calls "the hellhole"). BAE did build a test model of a three-crew, nine-passenger Bradley by replacing the bulky two-man turret with a slimmer, unmanned weapons station remotely controlled from inside the hull. Meeting the GCV's protection standard, however, would probably require adding still more armor to the Bradley's underbelly and changing the suspension to lift the hull away from ground-based blasts. "We are looking for something that has the IED protection of an MRAP," McVeigh said, "but we also have to make sure that it's a mobile vehicle."
Rebuilds For Abrams And Paladin
The Bradley's burden is not unique. The new Tank Urban Survival Kit for the M1 Abrams main battle tank adds some 6 tons of side and underbelly armor, plus additional hardware, bringing the total weight to more than 75 tons. The Stryker, originally intended to be light enough to deploy on C-130 turboprop transport planes, has gone from 21 tons just seven years ago to 26 tons for the latest models now operating in Afghanistan with no increase in horsepower, which impairs cross-country mobility in the very war zone where it is most essential. A 30-ton Stryker is in the works, with a more powerful engine that will partially restore its original performance.
Is the Army at risk of upgrading its armored vehicles into the ground? An alternative approach is the radical rebuilding of the Vietnam-era M109 howitzer; BAE expects to complete the first five prototypes by January. The Army has overhauled the M109 before: In 1979, the howitzer got a new cannon; in 1992, it got a larger turret (with the same gun) and the nickname "Paladin." Now, under the modest title of Paladin Integrated Management, the Army and BAE are removing the Paladin turret, replacing its electronics and hydraulics, and installing it on an all-new chassis -- built largely with parts from the Bradley to save on development costs and spare parts. The cost per Paladin: $1.7 million.
The rebuilt howitzer will lack the weapons improvements planned for the canceled Crusader and Future Combat System cannons, such as longer range, greater accuracy, and a tireless automatic loader to replace human muscle in chambering shell after shell during long barrages. But it will have 24 percent more horsepower per ton to improve its lackluster mobility. And it will have four times as much electrical power for high-tech systems -- courtesy of the new, water-cooled mini-generator built by BAE that will also go into the renovated Bradleys.
Heavy And Adaptable
BAE declined to discuss what it might propose for a Ground Combat Vehicle. General Dynamics, which does not have an existing infantry carrier to build off of, was more forthcoming. "If you want to go up against the 30 millimeter cannon" -- standard on cheap, Russian-made armored vehicles in service around the world -- "you're probably in the 40-ton range, or mid-40s," Kotchman said.
Scales reluctantly agrees. "If you build what we're building into this thing -- all the self-protection and all the enablers and all the mobility -- and you still need to operate in primitive terrain like Afghanistan, and you follow the laws of physics, then in all probability, the vehicle will cut in between 35 and 40 tons," he said. "I wish it were less."
Indeed, there is a remarkable consensus among Capitol Hill staff, retired Army officers, and the defense industry on the new vehicle weighing in at 40 tons. That is the weight, incidentally, of the heaviest, best-protected MRAPs and Bradleys in service. It continues a trend of ever-greater weight not just in U.S. combat vehicles but also abroad. Having faced Hezbollah fighters with sophisticated anti-tank missiles in Lebanon in 2006, the Israelis have not only up-armored their Merkava tanks to 72 tons but are also building a Merkava variant, the Namer, as a super-heavy infantry carrier. (General Dynamics is bidding to build Namers in the U.S. for Israel.) Even the cost-conscious Russians have begun to up-armor their historically middleweight tanks after debacles at the hands of Chechen guerrillas armed with rocket-propelled grenades.
Whether it starts at 40 tons, or more, or less, the Ground Combat Vehicle is intended to keep growing heavier. To avoid often-awkward retrofits, the Army wants the GCV to be built from the start with electrical power, horsepower, and space to spare. Even the GCV's armor will be easily replaceable bolt-on plates (a technique pioneered on the Stryker and refined for the canceled Future Combat System vehicles). "It's making sure that you've got a design in there that can accept plug-and-play technology, that can accept upgraded armor," McVeigh said. "We know what the threat is today, but we know the threat will be ever-evolving over the next few decades."
This room for growth on the Ground Combat Vehicle is just one reflection of the Army's new emphasis on the need to adapt. Instead of the "revolution in military affairs," with its quest for certainty, the Army Capstone Concept emphasizes "flexibility of thought and operational adaptability" in the face of uncertainty. "If you try to optimize your force for a particular type or category of armed conflict," McMaster said, "you're just about guaranteeing that that's not the kind of fight you're going to have -- because the enemy will adapt."
National Journal
Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009
by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
While Army combat troops get ready to ramp up the current war, their comrades in the acquisition corps are quietly preparing to buy weapons for the next conflict, whatever and wherever it may be. On November 24, as the nation headed into Thanksgiving amid rising anxiety over President Obama's plan to escalate in Afghanistan, senior officers held a closed-door meeting with more than 350 defense contractors from 247 companies to discuss the still-evolving requirements for the Army's next Ground Combat Vehicle, already known by the Pentagon shorthand GCV.
The vehicle will not enter service until 2017, six years after Obama's deadlines to complete the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and begin a drawdown in Afghanistan. Compared with timetables for past weapons purchases, that's a tight schedule. The Army had been working on new armored vehicles since 1999 as part of what grew into the unwieldy, $200 billion Future Combat System program. But in April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates summarily canceled the FCS's armored vehicles and ordered the service to start over. The reboot has forced the Army to rethink a decade of assumptions -- and to rein in its ambitions for new technology.
"If you look at the GCV timeline, the technology has got to be there now," said Donald Kotchman, a retired Army colonel who works on the vehicle for defense contractor General Dynamics. "This program can't be about technology development."
The Army wants to design and build the Ground Combat Vehicle quickly because its fleet of armored vehicles is aging. But assuming that the first GCVs arrive on schedule in 2017, the Army will need years to buy them in quantity because of budget constraints, and even then, the baseline GCVs will replace only one type of vehicle now in service, the tanklike Bradley infantry carrier.
So, in tandem with developing the new machine, the Army must redouble its efforts to overhaul and update its old armor. Existing Bradleys and M1 Abrams tanks, designed in the 1970s and built in the 1980s, must last until 2030. Contractors and the Army are rebuilding the M109 Paladin howitzer, a self-propelled artillery vehicle that travels on tracks, by placing the gun turret on a new chassis, and the vehicle is supposed to stay in service until 2060 -- a century after it was introduced in 1963.
The Army has twice tried to replace the Paladin. First came the Crusader artillery vehicle, which designers slimmed down from 60 tons to 40 before then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld canceled it in 2002 because it was still too heavy to be shipped to a battlefield by air. Then there was the cannon variant of the Future Combat System vehicle, which grew from 19 tons to 26 before Gates canceled it this summer, deciding that it was still too lightly armored to survive roadside bombs. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, one of the intellectual fathers of the now-gutted Future Combat System, fumed, "You can't keep up with the changing fashion."
Being whiplashed by changing Defense secretaries, however, is not the sole source of the Army's modernization problems. It was the service's own chiefs who canceled the Comanche stealth helicopter in 2004 and the Armored Gun System light tank in 1996 to free up money to keep other, aging-but-necessary hardware in operation. Indeed, since 1996, the only new armored vehicles to enter Army service have been the Stryker armored troop transport and the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected trucks, both of which are modest modifications of vehicles already for sale on the world market rather than original designs.
The other services have had their share of procurement problems. The Air Force's F-22 Raptor fighter, the Marine Corps's V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, and the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship have become bywords for cost overruns and schedule delays caused by overly ambitious technology. Ultimately, however, all of them are being built, if only in reduced quantities. Only one service consistently invests so much time and money but has nothing to show for it: the Army.
The Army's Problem
So, what's wrong with the Army? As the largest service, with 500,000 active-duty personnel and as many reservists, the Army is not only the most bureaucratic but also the most divided. The Army is less a cohesive culture, like the much-smaller Marine Corps, and more a confederation of tribes. They're officially called "branches," and they range from armor to artillery, infantry to intelligence, and engineering to supply corps, each with its own insignia, doctrinal manual, training programs, and sacred cows. Some Army chiefs muddle through, mediating between the branches over piecemeal changes; others gamble that they can unite the service behind common bold programs.
When Gates canceled the Future Combat System's tanks in April, he did not just reject a vehicle -- he also rejected a vision of future war and a plan to reorganize and re-equip the force for that future. The service had been following that course for a decade, ever since then-Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki imposed it on an ambivalent leadership in 1999. Gen. Shinseki reversed 50 years of Cold War investment in ever-heavier vehicles and ordered the development of lightweight, high-tech alternatives that forsook the impermeability of armor in favor of long-range sensors and precision weapons to win battles. His manifesto ultimately gave rise to both the relatively successful, technologically modest Stryker, which has seen heavy use in Iraq, and the ambitious but disastrous Future Combat System. Shinseki soon found that his embrace of this "revolution in military affairs" was at once too radical for traditionalist tank and infantry officers and too moderate for his new boss, Rumsfeld. (See "The Counter-Revolution in Military Affairs," NJ, 12/5/09, p. 33.)
Now Gates and a new generation of Army leaders are throwing out not only the Future Combat System but also its underlying assumptions. "A lot of these ideas have been thoroughly discredited by recent experience and our rediscovery of history," said Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, an Iraq combat veteran.
Even before he deployed to war, McMaster publicly challenged the then-dominant "revolution" thesis in a 2003 paper he wrote while he was at the Army War College; its title is "Crack in the Foundation: Defense Transformation and the Underlying Assumption of Dominant Knowledge in Future War." Today, the former rebel oversees the writing of an "Army Capstone Concept" -- a foundational document that will guide future training and doctrinal manuals. A widely circulated draft of the concept explicitly rejects the logic behind the Future Combat System, which was designed to be a high-tech "system of systems" that would use high-speed computer networks to connect foot soldiers and armored vehicles to ground- and air-based sensors.
"Overall, it's the best Capstone Concept I've seen out of the Army in quite a while," said retired Col. Richard Hart Sinn-reich, who helped develop the definitive "AirLand Battle" concept that guided the Army buildup in the 1980s, when the Abrams and Bradley tanks were introduced as the latest technology to defeat a Soviet land army. "It's written in English, and, thankfully, largely forswears the repeated deployment of unwanted assumptions... that marred many of its predecessors."
Above all, McMaster said, the Army has abandoned the idea that you could minimize the risk to soldiers by firing at your enemy from such a long range -- with the aid of high-tech sensors -- that your foe couldn't find you and fire back. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught the Army, or maybe reminded it, that, in McMaster's words, "you're always going to have to develop the situation in close contact with the enemy."
The requirements for the Ground Combat Vehicle remain in flux, but it is clear that the program is placing its trust in the protection of old-fashioned armor first and high technology second, much as the Capstone Concept does. "They've turned the FCS order of priorities upside down," said Robert Sorge, General Dynamics's former director for the Future Combat System vehicles.
The war is on within the Army over not only what soldiers will fight with in the future but also how they will fight. "Just as the Abrams and Bradley... defined operational maneuver in the 1980s, GCV will define mounted maneuver for another generation," Scales said. "It's not just about a vehicle; it's about something that's going to define your culture for a generation."
The Illusion Of Certainty
Technology has changed the tools of war. What seemed revolutionary 10 years ago is now routine: reconnaissance drones such as the Predator; digital Global Positioning System maps in Humvees and tanks; wireless networks linking manned and unmanned vehicles to command posts through electronic displays. But what has not changed is the nature of war: confusing and chaotic.
The new technology was "fantastic," said retired Lt. Col. Steven Russell, who led a heavy battalion in Iraq in 2003 and early 2004 with what were then the latest digital systems. "But it did not replace the need to still close with the enemy and fight."
Lt. Col. Charles Hodges, whose Stryker unit served in Iraq in 2003-04 and 2006, agreed. The new technology allows you to "know where your guys are, but you don't know where the bad guys are.... While we've lifted some of the fog of war, we still haven't eliminated all of that."
Lifting the Fog of War was the title and promise of a book published in 2000 by the highest-ranking apostle of the "revolution in military affairs," Navy Adm. William Owens, who had retired as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff four years earlier. "Technology can give us the ability to see a 'battlefield' as large as Iraq or Korea," Owens wrote. "By 2010 -- and earlier if we accelerate the current rate of research and procurement -- the U.S. military will be able to 'see' virtually everything of military significance in and above such an area all the time, in all weather conditions, and regardless of the terrain."
On the eve of 2010, with 115,000 U.S. troops still engaged in Iraq, Owens's virtual vision rings hollow. "It was not that technology has failed us, it is that technology was never going to be able to provide what was being claimed for it," Sinnreich, the retired colonel, said. "This confidence that we could see, know, and understand everything that mattered on a ground battlefield was just ludicrous -- and so indeed it has proved.... It's like [Werner] Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Uncertainty is built into the structure of subatomic physics; well, uncertainty is built into the structure of the land battle."
The Army's forthcoming Capstone Concept, McMaster said, explicitly rejects "the belief that technological capabilities had essentially lifted the fog of war... [and] that the development of these technological capabilities would substitute for traditional elements of combat power, fighting power, especially on land. Now we see the limitations of these technologies."
Stryker Not Ideal
Some members of Congress have asked the Army why it doesn't just build more Strykers, which travel on huge rubber tires rather than tracks and have gotten decent reviews in Iraq for their survivability and maneuverability. The Stryker does meet one of the key goals set for the future Ground Combat Vehicle. Because the Stryker carries nine soldiers into battle instead of the Bradley's six, it injects 50 percent more combat power where it counts most: at the lowest fighting level, the squad.
All else being equal, more passengers means that a bigger, heavier, and more expensive vehicle is needed to protect them. But with the Stryker, all else is very much unequal: It weighs about half as much as a Bradley, while carrying half again as many troops, because it has far less weaponry and armor. Shinseki's vision was that superior technology would make up the difference, allowing Stryker units to see the enemy coming on their sensors, avoid being hit in the first place, and supplement their own light weapons by calling in long-range precision strikes from artillery or aircraft.
As the next step in Shinseki's program, the now-canceled Future Combat System infantry carrier was supposed to combine Stryker's nine-soldier capacity with even more electronics, a bigger gun, and better protection than the Bradley -- while maintaining the Stryker's weight. But the revolutionary lightweight technologies that were supposed to make this possible never materialized. The FCS was delayed repeatedly, and the vehicle grew steadily heavier, from less than 20 tons to more than 26, until Gates canceled it outright because it still lacked adequate underbelly protection to survive roadside bombs.
Now the Army wants the Ground Combat Vehicle to carry nine infantrymen while providing better protection than the Stryker or the Bradley -- but it cannot rely on discredited ideas of substituting technology for armor, or wait for the development of ultralight materials. That is the engineering challenge the Army put to the defense industry on November 24.
New Armor For Old
While the Army and the industry struggle to design the Ground Combat Vehicle, they are feverishly overhauling the machines the service has. Since 2004, more than 5,100 vehicles that roll onto the battlefield on tracks have been "reset" to zero miles on the odometer, as have more than 44,000 trucks, in a collaboration between Army repair depots and the vehicles' manufacturers. The total cost of these rebuilds so far is $25.3 billion. The overhaul "takes it literally down to the frame," explained James Dwyer, the Army Materiel Command's reset chief. "We take basically all of the parts off... to include the track, the road wheels, the engine, and the transmission. We take the turret off the hull" -- then put it all back together again.
"Resetting" a single M1 tank costs $3.3 million; taking the opportunity to upgrade to the latest electronics boosts the price tag to $5.2 million -- but that's still less than the cost of a new vehicle. The same process on an M2 Bradley costs $1.5 million, or $2.7 million with new electronics. Because a reset replaces the moving parts that wear out over time -- some 30,000 of them on a single tank -- "on average, the usage-age of an M1 tank is only about four years.... The M2 fleet is about five to six years old," Dwyer said. "To be quite honest with you, the health of the heavy fleet is really very, very good."
The Pentagon is counting on that because it has not bought any new tracked combat vehicles since 1995. Instead, it has invested in vehicles that travel on rubber tires: Strykers, up-armored Humvees, and, above all, the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles that Secretary Gates rushed into service for Iraq. Spending a total of $23.3 billion, Gates has bought 16,000 MRAPs in a dozen models, ranging in weight from less than 15 tons to more than 40. But these vehicles have proved too heavy for Afghanistan's poor roads, let alone for highway-less terrain. So Gates has ordered 6,000 M-ATVs -- Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected, All-Terrain Vehicles, relatively nimble at 12 tons -- from Oshkosh Corp. for $5.5 billion, and he has told Congress he might buy 4,000 more.
Meanwhile, after canceling most of the Army's Future Combat System program, the secretary ordered the service to start over with tracked-vehicle development. "The opponents of FCS," Scales, the retired major general, said pointedly, "many of them have in the back of their minds that either the Bradley or the MRAP will suffice, so all we need to do is gussy up those two things." But Scales considers further Bradley upgrades to be long past the point of diminishing returns and calls MRAP "a technological disaster." "It's not a fighting vehicle," he said. "I interviewed several soldiers who were in that platform in Afghanistan, and they all said the same thing. One called it a 'panic room.' It's where you go to hide, but you can't fight from it because you can't get off the road."
Among the soldiers interviewed for National Journal's ongoing oral history project of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, only four had firsthand experience with MRAPs; their opinions differed but in a revealing way. Two engineers tasked with driving along Iraqi roads clearing improvised explosive devices -- or getting hit by them -- loved their MRAPs. Two advisers whose job was to circulate among the local population and security forces preferred Humvees. Even in Iraqi cities, "there are some routes you can't get through in MRAPs" because they're too big, said Lt. Fernando Garcia, currently with an adviser brigade in Muthanna province. Although the new M-ATVs may change the Afghan equation, said Maj. Andrew Ashley, a former adviser in Helmand and Zabul provinces there, "for the day-to-day patrols, the MRAPs were too big, too heavy, too immobile."
The Bradley's Shortcomings
As a tracked vehicle, the Bradley still does better cross-country than the MRAP, and with a 25 mm automatic cannon and anti-tank missiles, it has far more firepower than the MRAP's machine guns provide. But the Bradley has its own problems, some of them the unintended consequences of three decades of upgrades.
"I'm 5-foot-10, 150 pounds, and I was very cramped inside the commander's hatch of the Bradley," Russell, the retired lieutenant colonel, said. "And reloading our machine guns was a real chore because the access doors to the machine gun were blocked by the screen" for the new digital displays. "You just have no room in the Bradley turret.... It wasn't designed to have all that stuff in there."
The Bradley's electrical system has not kept pace with the added electronics, nor has its engine been modified to handle the extra weight. "We've put armor on the sides, put armor on the belly... [and] that has all come at a cost," said Roy Perkins, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who heads the heavy-vehicle team at BAE Systems' land and armaments division, the contractor modifying the Bradleys. "It's not as fast as it used to be, it takes a little longer to stop, and the ground pressure's a little bit higher," which raises the risk of bogging down in sand or mud.
BAE plans to outfit the Bradley with a mini-generator along with a more powerful engine, which would boost the vehicle's electrical output from an anemic 11 kilowatts to 70 kW. A more elaborate installation being considered would kick that up to 140 kW and possibly even 200 kW. That is still less than the 420 kW capacity of the canceled Future Combat System vehicles, which were to have a hybrid-electric drive. But the Ground Combat Vehicle's requirements for power-hungry high technology are more modest: At least 40 kilowatts would be available for new communications networks after all other systems on the vehicle have been fully powered.
Could an upgraded Bradley be the new vehicle that the Army seeks? "BAE can submit anything they want," said Col. Bryan McVeigh, the Army's project manager for the Ground Combat Vehicle, but "the technology on the Bradley is getting pretty long in the tooth, and its ability to be upgraded to provide enough power to support the network is limited."
Even if a better Bradley could muster the necessary kilowatts and horsepower, it would still have to meet the fundamental requirement that the GCV transport more troops with better protection. The current Bradley carries three crew members and six passengers (with a seventh theoretically crammed into what even BAE's Perkins calls "the hellhole"). BAE did build a test model of a three-crew, nine-passenger Bradley by replacing the bulky two-man turret with a slimmer, unmanned weapons station remotely controlled from inside the hull. Meeting the GCV's protection standard, however, would probably require adding still more armor to the Bradley's underbelly and changing the suspension to lift the hull away from ground-based blasts. "We are looking for something that has the IED protection of an MRAP," McVeigh said, "but we also have to make sure that it's a mobile vehicle."
Rebuilds For Abrams And Paladin
The Bradley's burden is not unique. The new Tank Urban Survival Kit for the M1 Abrams main battle tank adds some 6 tons of side and underbelly armor, plus additional hardware, bringing the total weight to more than 75 tons. The Stryker, originally intended to be light enough to deploy on C-130 turboprop transport planes, has gone from 21 tons just seven years ago to 26 tons for the latest models now operating in Afghanistan with no increase in horsepower, which impairs cross-country mobility in the very war zone where it is most essential. A 30-ton Stryker is in the works, with a more powerful engine that will partially restore its original performance.
Is the Army at risk of upgrading its armored vehicles into the ground? An alternative approach is the radical rebuilding of the Vietnam-era M109 howitzer; BAE expects to complete the first five prototypes by January. The Army has overhauled the M109 before: In 1979, the howitzer got a new cannon; in 1992, it got a larger turret (with the same gun) and the nickname "Paladin." Now, under the modest title of Paladin Integrated Management, the Army and BAE are removing the Paladin turret, replacing its electronics and hydraulics, and installing it on an all-new chassis -- built largely with parts from the Bradley to save on development costs and spare parts. The cost per Paladin: $1.7 million.
The rebuilt howitzer will lack the weapons improvements planned for the canceled Crusader and Future Combat System cannons, such as longer range, greater accuracy, and a tireless automatic loader to replace human muscle in chambering shell after shell during long barrages. But it will have 24 percent more horsepower per ton to improve its lackluster mobility. And it will have four times as much electrical power for high-tech systems -- courtesy of the new, water-cooled mini-generator built by BAE that will also go into the renovated Bradleys.
Heavy And Adaptable
BAE declined to discuss what it might propose for a Ground Combat Vehicle. General Dynamics, which does not have an existing infantry carrier to build off of, was more forthcoming. "If you want to go up against the 30 millimeter cannon" -- standard on cheap, Russian-made armored vehicles in service around the world -- "you're probably in the 40-ton range, or mid-40s," Kotchman said.
Scales reluctantly agrees. "If you build what we're building into this thing -- all the self-protection and all the enablers and all the mobility -- and you still need to operate in primitive terrain like Afghanistan, and you follow the laws of physics, then in all probability, the vehicle will cut in between 35 and 40 tons," he said. "I wish it were less."
Indeed, there is a remarkable consensus among Capitol Hill staff, retired Army officers, and the defense industry on the new vehicle weighing in at 40 tons. That is the weight, incidentally, of the heaviest, best-protected MRAPs and Bradleys in service. It continues a trend of ever-greater weight not just in U.S. combat vehicles but also abroad. Having faced Hezbollah fighters with sophisticated anti-tank missiles in Lebanon in 2006, the Israelis have not only up-armored their Merkava tanks to 72 tons but are also building a Merkava variant, the Namer, as a super-heavy infantry carrier. (General Dynamics is bidding to build Namers in the U.S. for Israel.) Even the cost-conscious Russians have begun to up-armor their historically middleweight tanks after debacles at the hands of Chechen guerrillas armed with rocket-propelled grenades.
Whether it starts at 40 tons, or more, or less, the Ground Combat Vehicle is intended to keep growing heavier. To avoid often-awkward retrofits, the Army wants the GCV to be built from the start with electrical power, horsepower, and space to spare. Even the GCV's armor will be easily replaceable bolt-on plates (a technique pioneered on the Stryker and refined for the canceled Future Combat System vehicles). "It's making sure that you've got a design in there that can accept plug-and-play technology, that can accept upgraded armor," McVeigh said. "We know what the threat is today, but we know the threat will be ever-evolving over the next few decades."
This room for growth on the Ground Combat Vehicle is just one reflection of the Army's new emphasis on the need to adapt. Instead of the "revolution in military affairs," with its quest for certainty, the Army Capstone Concept emphasizes "flexibility of thought and operational adaptability" in the face of uncertainty. "If you try to optimize your force for a particular type or category of armed conflict," McMaster said, "you're just about guaranteeing that that's not the kind of fight you're going to have -- because the enemy will adapt."
Public Opinion Hardens On Afghanistan
After eight years, opinions about Afghanistan are pretty well set, and drifting downward.
National Journal
Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009
by Will Englund
Unpopular wars don't become popular. It has never happened in American history -- at least while they're still being fought. President Obama's speech last week at West Point sparked an uptick in support for the war in Afghanistan, but an uptick is not a long-term trend. After eight years, opinions about Afghanistan are pretty well set, and drifting downward. Obama probably won't be able to swing huge numbers of Americans into the pro-war camp. Yet he may not need to. If he can keep support for his policies above the 50 percent level, where it's hovering now, that should leave him, politically, in good shape on Afghanistan. But can he?
Experience shows that polls fluctuate from moment to moment, but the larger course of public opinion isn't greatly affected by the ups and downs of particular events. The Iraq war became more popular after Saddam Hussein was captured, notes John E. Mueller, professor of national security studies at Ohio State University, and less popular after the Abu Ghraib photos came out. In both cases, support quickly returned to its previous level. Support for the Korean War plunged after the Chinese joined the fighting, but that was while the conflict was still in the early going; the meter didn't move much until the end was in sight. Opposition to the Vietnam War gathered over time.
The key, for Obama, is to frame his effort in Afghanistan as vital to Americans' security and convince the public that the commitment can have a good outcome, say those who have made a study of public opinion in wartime. That doesn't necessarily mean complete and total victory over all enemies; a sufficient level of stability may be enough. Iraq -- if it doesn't all unravel, as it shows signs of doing -- would seem to be a useful model. The war there is still hugely unpopular (it will always be George W. Bush's war), but the decline in violence has moved it off the front burner.
If Obama can convince the American people that action now will similarly put Afghanistan on a back burner later, that should be enough. He took a step in that direction with his speech at West Point. The White House acknowledges that it's only a first step. But Obama also has to demonstrate to war supporters -- concentrated on the Republican end of the political spectrum -- that he really means it, says Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University who worked for a time on President Bush's National Security Council on the question of public opinion and the Iraq war. Feaver argued in 2005 that Bush needed to project a sense of victory in Iraq; the president tried but failed. He argues today that Obama has to demonstrate to those who would support his war policy that he means to stick with it -- that he won't try to put it on a back burner too soon.
"He has to show he's committed to it and that he views it not as a distraction from his main job," Feaver says.
Obama's taking possession of the war in Afghanistan in midstream is inevitably a difficult proposition and potentially a treacherous one. In 1969, the White House switched from the Democrats to the Republicans and so did support for the Vietnam War. The Democrats had been the more hawkish party while Lyndon Johnson was president, but that changed almost the moment Richard Nixon was sworn in. Polls showed that Democratic support, which had been trending down since 1967, essentially collapsed, while Republicans' opinions remained fairly constant.
Nixon was the third president in a span of 25 years to have inherited a war upon taking office, and the least successful. Harry Truman saw World War II to victory. Dwight Eisenhower went to South Korea, sought an immediate truce (which had the effect of temporarily making the Korean War more popular), and was able to bring the fighting to a quick suspension. Nixon made the Vietnam War his own -- and in some sense Obama could be seen as following his path.
There are essential differences, though. Obama is not likely to see the other party's support for the war evaporate, as Nixon did. "The we've-got-to-see-this-thing-through wing of the Republican Party is less likely to be flipped because Obama is for it," Feaver says. Because of 9/11, polls show, Americans are still, all these years later, more likely to view Afghanistan as a paramount national concern than they did Vietnam.
And there's this: Nixon ran as a peace candidate and then expanded a war. Obama said he was going to finish the job in Afghanistan, and that's how he pitches his recent escalation.
In fact, it was a standard Democratic talking point during the Bush era that the Democrats were more reliable on national security because they would address the real problem -- in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. Now that the main opposition to Obama on Afghanistan is coming from his own party, he's going to have to find a way to contain it.
One factor to consider, in the view of Adam Berinsky, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has just written In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion From World War II to Iraq, is that Americans don't pay that much attention to the issues. They take their cues from the elites, he argues -- positive cues from those politicians they feel in sync with, negative cues from those they don't. Few Americans bother to become conversant with the policy questions of the day, he says. Republicans began to shed their isolationism in 1940, for example, because their presidential candidate, Wendell Willkie, spoke in favor of helping the Allies. Public opposition to the Vietnam War, Berinsky suggests, followed the growing disenchantment among Democratic members of Congress such as Sen. William Fulbright, not the other way around.
Obama still enjoys the advantage of high personal ratings among Democrats. Berinsky says that this could translate into the feeling that "if Obama thinks this is a good idea, maybe it's something we should support." He isn't talking about enthusiasm but tolerance, and that may be enough.
Mueller found that during the Vietnam War, public opinion often swung in behind public policy. In September 1965, 30 percent of Americans thought that the U.S. should start bombing Hanoi or Haiphong. In July 1966, after the bombing had started, 85 percent supported it. In April 1968, after Johnson had imposed a partial halt, just 26 percent remained in favor.
But what if Obama enjoys more success with his strategy than Johnson did? Wouldn't progress count for something? After all, a string of Union victories in 1864 seemingly revived Abraham Lincoln's faltering re-election campaign. But there is no evidence (from that pre-polling era) that the popularity of the war was transformed, from negative to positive or in any other direction, by the battlefield victories; and Lincoln might have won at the polls anyway. In the larger sense, of course, the Civil War bears no relation to Afghanistan. The fate of the nation depended directly on its outcome, and several million young men were fighting in it. It was like World War II, where popular support continued over four years, in the face of tremendous losses, and even as -- in the latter case -- polling showed that Americans weren't always sure what the war was about. With the future of the country at stake, that's bearable.
Afghanistan is difficult and limited. It is not the first such war that America has fought in Asia. Vietnam was a disaster. The Korean conflict became unpopular faster than the one in Vietnam, although toward the end "doubt over the wisdom of the war apparently had begun to be replaced by a need to rationalize the loss," Mueller wrote in 1971. In the decade after it halted, the Korean War gained considerable retrospective support (much the way the highly unpopular War of 1812 did).
The Philippine insurgency at the beginning of the 20th century, on the other hand, came to a more palatable end, at least from Washington's perspective. It was ugly and unpopular at home, especially after it was reported that U.S. soldiers were waterboarding captured guerrillas. The Anti-Imperialist League, rooted in the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, flourished as the principal voice of an opposition that grew stronger every year.
But in 1902 Theodore Roosevelt declared the war to be over (even though fighting continued sporadically until 1913), and the domestic opposition -- and attention -- melted away. That was three years after the insurgency began. If Obama's Afghan clock starts ticking now (and Mueller makes a case for resetting it to the present), that gives him until Election Day 2012 to accomplish what Roosevelt did, and put the war behind him.
National Journal
Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009
by Will Englund
Unpopular wars don't become popular. It has never happened in American history -- at least while they're still being fought. President Obama's speech last week at West Point sparked an uptick in support for the war in Afghanistan, but an uptick is not a long-term trend. After eight years, opinions about Afghanistan are pretty well set, and drifting downward. Obama probably won't be able to swing huge numbers of Americans into the pro-war camp. Yet he may not need to. If he can keep support for his policies above the 50 percent level, where it's hovering now, that should leave him, politically, in good shape on Afghanistan. But can he?
Experience shows that polls fluctuate from moment to moment, but the larger course of public opinion isn't greatly affected by the ups and downs of particular events. The Iraq war became more popular after Saddam Hussein was captured, notes John E. Mueller, professor of national security studies at Ohio State University, and less popular after the Abu Ghraib photos came out. In both cases, support quickly returned to its previous level. Support for the Korean War plunged after the Chinese joined the fighting, but that was while the conflict was still in the early going; the meter didn't move much until the end was in sight. Opposition to the Vietnam War gathered over time.
The key, for Obama, is to frame his effort in Afghanistan as vital to Americans' security and convince the public that the commitment can have a good outcome, say those who have made a study of public opinion in wartime. That doesn't necessarily mean complete and total victory over all enemies; a sufficient level of stability may be enough. Iraq -- if it doesn't all unravel, as it shows signs of doing -- would seem to be a useful model. The war there is still hugely unpopular (it will always be George W. Bush's war), but the decline in violence has moved it off the front burner.
If Obama can convince the American people that action now will similarly put Afghanistan on a back burner later, that should be enough. He took a step in that direction with his speech at West Point. The White House acknowledges that it's only a first step. But Obama also has to demonstrate to war supporters -- concentrated on the Republican end of the political spectrum -- that he really means it, says Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University who worked for a time on President Bush's National Security Council on the question of public opinion and the Iraq war. Feaver argued in 2005 that Bush needed to project a sense of victory in Iraq; the president tried but failed. He argues today that Obama has to demonstrate to those who would support his war policy that he means to stick with it -- that he won't try to put it on a back burner too soon.
"He has to show he's committed to it and that he views it not as a distraction from his main job," Feaver says.
Obama's taking possession of the war in Afghanistan in midstream is inevitably a difficult proposition and potentially a treacherous one. In 1969, the White House switched from the Democrats to the Republicans and so did support for the Vietnam War. The Democrats had been the more hawkish party while Lyndon Johnson was president, but that changed almost the moment Richard Nixon was sworn in. Polls showed that Democratic support, which had been trending down since 1967, essentially collapsed, while Republicans' opinions remained fairly constant.
Nixon was the third president in a span of 25 years to have inherited a war upon taking office, and the least successful. Harry Truman saw World War II to victory. Dwight Eisenhower went to South Korea, sought an immediate truce (which had the effect of temporarily making the Korean War more popular), and was able to bring the fighting to a quick suspension. Nixon made the Vietnam War his own -- and in some sense Obama could be seen as following his path.
There are essential differences, though. Obama is not likely to see the other party's support for the war evaporate, as Nixon did. "The we've-got-to-see-this-thing-through wing of the Republican Party is less likely to be flipped because Obama is for it," Feaver says. Because of 9/11, polls show, Americans are still, all these years later, more likely to view Afghanistan as a paramount national concern than they did Vietnam.
And there's this: Nixon ran as a peace candidate and then expanded a war. Obama said he was going to finish the job in Afghanistan, and that's how he pitches his recent escalation.
In fact, it was a standard Democratic talking point during the Bush era that the Democrats were more reliable on national security because they would address the real problem -- in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. Now that the main opposition to Obama on Afghanistan is coming from his own party, he's going to have to find a way to contain it.
One factor to consider, in the view of Adam Berinsky, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has just written In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion From World War II to Iraq, is that Americans don't pay that much attention to the issues. They take their cues from the elites, he argues -- positive cues from those politicians they feel in sync with, negative cues from those they don't. Few Americans bother to become conversant with the policy questions of the day, he says. Republicans began to shed their isolationism in 1940, for example, because their presidential candidate, Wendell Willkie, spoke in favor of helping the Allies. Public opposition to the Vietnam War, Berinsky suggests, followed the growing disenchantment among Democratic members of Congress such as Sen. William Fulbright, not the other way around.
Obama still enjoys the advantage of high personal ratings among Democrats. Berinsky says that this could translate into the feeling that "if Obama thinks this is a good idea, maybe it's something we should support." He isn't talking about enthusiasm but tolerance, and that may be enough.
Mueller found that during the Vietnam War, public opinion often swung in behind public policy. In September 1965, 30 percent of Americans thought that the U.S. should start bombing Hanoi or Haiphong. In July 1966, after the bombing had started, 85 percent supported it. In April 1968, after Johnson had imposed a partial halt, just 26 percent remained in favor.
But what if Obama enjoys more success with his strategy than Johnson did? Wouldn't progress count for something? After all, a string of Union victories in 1864 seemingly revived Abraham Lincoln's faltering re-election campaign. But there is no evidence (from that pre-polling era) that the popularity of the war was transformed, from negative to positive or in any other direction, by the battlefield victories; and Lincoln might have won at the polls anyway. In the larger sense, of course, the Civil War bears no relation to Afghanistan. The fate of the nation depended directly on its outcome, and several million young men were fighting in it. It was like World War II, where popular support continued over four years, in the face of tremendous losses, and even as -- in the latter case -- polling showed that Americans weren't always sure what the war was about. With the future of the country at stake, that's bearable.
Afghanistan is difficult and limited. It is not the first such war that America has fought in Asia. Vietnam was a disaster. The Korean conflict became unpopular faster than the one in Vietnam, although toward the end "doubt over the wisdom of the war apparently had begun to be replaced by a need to rationalize the loss," Mueller wrote in 1971. In the decade after it halted, the Korean War gained considerable retrospective support (much the way the highly unpopular War of 1812 did).
The Philippine insurgency at the beginning of the 20th century, on the other hand, came to a more palatable end, at least from Washington's perspective. It was ugly and unpopular at home, especially after it was reported that U.S. soldiers were waterboarding captured guerrillas. The Anti-Imperialist League, rooted in the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, flourished as the principal voice of an opposition that grew stronger every year.
But in 1902 Theodore Roosevelt declared the war to be over (even though fighting continued sporadically until 1913), and the domestic opposition -- and attention -- melted away. That was three years after the insurgency began. If Obama's Afghan clock starts ticking now (and Mueller makes a case for resetting it to the present), that gives him until Election Day 2012 to accomplish what Roosevelt did, and put the war behind him.
Expanding mission of State's Diplomatic Security Bureau concerns lawmakers, GAO
By Elizabeth Newell enewell@govexec.com December 9, 2009
Both the Government Accountability Office and lawmakers are concerned about how the State Department's Diplomatic Security Bureau is handling a rapid acceleration of responsibilities during the past decade.
At a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia on Wednesday, GAO presented the results of a recent audit showing the security service faces significant challenges as a result of the considerable growth in its mission since 1998.
Jess Ford, GAO director of international affairs and trade, told lawmakers the bureau's presence in an increasing number of dangerous posts overseas requires additional resources, even though Diplomatic Security's budget has grown almost tenfold during the past 10 years.
Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, expressed concern that the extra resources have not guaranteed the bureau's readiness, particularly given Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent statement that the number of American civilians in Afghanistan will triple by early next year.
"Diplomatic Security must be fully prepared to support an even greater role in protecting our civilians," Akaka said.
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said most pressing is the second challenge GAO identified -- staffing shortages and challenges such as language deficiencies and experience gaps. According to Voinovich, 53 percent of special agents do not speak or read at the foreign language level their position requires.
Both senators said the bureau must do more to balance the increasing reliance on contractors and properly manage them. Almost 90 percent of Diplomatic Security's workforce needs are met by contractors, and GAO found that some employees are not prepared to manage such a large private sector workforce. Akaka said recent security lapses at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, which resulted in State's decision not to renew a contract with ArmorGroup North America, illustrate the need for stronger contractor oversight.
According to Ford, Diplomatic Security is missing out on important benefits that would come from a strategic review and guidance.
"Although some planning initiatives have been undertaken, neither State's departmental strategic plan nor Diplomatic Security's strategic plan specifically addresses its resource needs or its management challenges," Ford told the subcommittee. "Diplomatic Security's tremendous growth over the last 10 years has been reactive and has not benefited from adequate strategic guidance."
The watchdog agency recommended the secretary of State conduct a strategic review of the security bureau, either as part of the department's Quadrennial Diplomatic and Development Review or separately, to ensure its missions and activities address priority needs.
Eric Boswell, assistant secretary of State for diplomatic security, said GAO's assessment was on target.
"The recently released Government Accountability Office review of my bureau correctly assesses that DS must do more to anticipate potential and emerging global security trouble spots in order to create risk management and mitigation strategies that best focus on our limited resources and prioritize security needs," Boswell said.
He told lawmakers the bureau is actively participating in the quadrennial review.
Boswell said the military ramp-up in Afghanistan will affect the security service. He said the bureau will double its staff in Kabul and request a "large resource package" in fiscal 2011. He did say, however, that the service's role in Afghanistan is currently limited to Kabul.
"It is fair to say civilian surges in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and in Pakistan -- severely challenged DS from the point of view of stressing us and making great demands on our resources," Boswell said. "But we have done extremely well stepping up to the plate and meeting those challenges."
Where the agency needs to improve, he said, is in providing administrative support for agents in the field.
Both the Government Accountability Office and lawmakers are concerned about how the State Department's Diplomatic Security Bureau is handling a rapid acceleration of responsibilities during the past decade.
At a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia on Wednesday, GAO presented the results of a recent audit showing the security service faces significant challenges as a result of the considerable growth in its mission since 1998.
Jess Ford, GAO director of international affairs and trade, told lawmakers the bureau's presence in an increasing number of dangerous posts overseas requires additional resources, even though Diplomatic Security's budget has grown almost tenfold during the past 10 years.
Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, expressed concern that the extra resources have not guaranteed the bureau's readiness, particularly given Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent statement that the number of American civilians in Afghanistan will triple by early next year.
"Diplomatic Security must be fully prepared to support an even greater role in protecting our civilians," Akaka said.
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said most pressing is the second challenge GAO identified -- staffing shortages and challenges such as language deficiencies and experience gaps. According to Voinovich, 53 percent of special agents do not speak or read at the foreign language level their position requires.
Both senators said the bureau must do more to balance the increasing reliance on contractors and properly manage them. Almost 90 percent of Diplomatic Security's workforce needs are met by contractors, and GAO found that some employees are not prepared to manage such a large private sector workforce. Akaka said recent security lapses at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, which resulted in State's decision not to renew a contract with ArmorGroup North America, illustrate the need for stronger contractor oversight.
According to Ford, Diplomatic Security is missing out on important benefits that would come from a strategic review and guidance.
"Although some planning initiatives have been undertaken, neither State's departmental strategic plan nor Diplomatic Security's strategic plan specifically addresses its resource needs or its management challenges," Ford told the subcommittee. "Diplomatic Security's tremendous growth over the last 10 years has been reactive and has not benefited from adequate strategic guidance."
The watchdog agency recommended the secretary of State conduct a strategic review of the security bureau, either as part of the department's Quadrennial Diplomatic and Development Review or separately, to ensure its missions and activities address priority needs.
Eric Boswell, assistant secretary of State for diplomatic security, said GAO's assessment was on target.
"The recently released Government Accountability Office review of my bureau correctly assesses that DS must do more to anticipate potential and emerging global security trouble spots in order to create risk management and mitigation strategies that best focus on our limited resources and prioritize security needs," Boswell said.
He told lawmakers the bureau is actively participating in the quadrennial review.
Boswell said the military ramp-up in Afghanistan will affect the security service. He said the bureau will double its staff in Kabul and request a "large resource package" in fiscal 2011. He did say, however, that the service's role in Afghanistan is currently limited to Kabul.
"It is fair to say civilian surges in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and in Pakistan -- severely challenged DS from the point of view of stressing us and making great demands on our resources," Boswell said. "But we have done extremely well stepping up to the plate and meeting those challenges."
Where the agency needs to improve, he said, is in providing administrative support for agents in the field.
DOD Issues Draft Directive Calling For Major Changes to F-35 Program
Inside Defense
Dec. 9, 2009 -- The Office of the Secretary of Defense has issued a draft directive that would require the services to fund the F-35 fighter program in accordance with the recommendations of recent independent reviews, a move that would extend development by at least a year, reduce production by approximately 100 aircraft and require the addition of billions of dollars to the effort through 2015, according to defense officials.
This previously unreported development, spelled out in a draft fiscal year 2011 resource management decision and confirmed by four Defense Department officials, amounts to a repudiation of the cost estimate advanced by the Joint Strike Fighter program office and prime contractor Lockheed Martin and sets the Pentagon's costliest acquisition program on course to immediately breach so-called “critical” Nunn-McCurdy cost-growth thresholds, these officials said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- who recently huddled with a small group of senior Pentagon officials to consider the way forward with JSF -- is scheduled to consider appeals by the military services to the proposed FY-11 budget next week, according to DOD officials.
The goal is to complete the FY-11 spending proposal and outyear numbers by Dec. 22, these officials say.
The proposed changes to the F-35 program follow recommendations this fall by the JSF Joint Estimate Team II, reaffirming findings prepared in 2008 that said as many as two additional years for development were required and as much as $16.6 billion more was needed between FY-10 and FY-15 (DefenseAlert, Oct. 22).
In addition, the draft budget decision reflects the recommendations of a previously unreported independent review team headed by retired Navy Rear Adm. Craig Steidle -- currently a Naval Academy professor and the JSF program executive officer from 1995 to 1997 -- that was asked by the office of the Pentagon's acquisition executive to assess Lockheed's JSF manufacturing capability.
The review by Steidle's “Independent Manufacturing Review Team,” according to DOD officials, concluded that production of approximately 100 aircraft between FY-11 and FY-15 should be delayed because Lockheed -- without taking a number of remedial steps -- was not poised to meet planned production targets during a phase of the program when production was slated to accelerate. The draft budget directive, Pentagon officials said, would require cuts to JSF production by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
At press time Lockheed was unable to respond to questions about the assessment.
Extending the development schedule will permit additional time to understand JSF flight sciences and to conduct more extensive mission system flight testing, according to Pentagon sources (DefenseAlert, Nov. 24).
Pentagon officials say the draft budget decision, if approved, would suggest that Gates has endorsed the JSF JET II estimate, which his spokesman last month characterized as “pessimistic,” as well as the findings of the independent manufacturing review team.
Gates, after an August meeting with Lockheed executives at the JSF manufacturing plant in Texas, said, “My impression is that most of the high-risk elements associated with this developmental program are largely behind us, and I felt a good deal of confidence on the part of the leadership here that the manufacturing process, that the supply chain, that the issues associated with all of these have been addressed or are being addressed.”
The Nunn-McCurdy law requires that Congress be notified if a program faces cost growth greater than 15 percent over the current baseline estimate. It also dictates that the project be terminated if the price climbs higher than 25 percent above the baseline -- a “critical” breach -- unless the defense secretary certifies the program is essential to national security, that no lesser-cost alternative is available, and that cost controls are in place.
A new Pentagon policy adopted Dec. 4 to implement the 2009 Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act calls for programs that experience a critical cost breach to be restructured “in a manner that addresses the root cause or causes of the critical cost growth,” to have their "most recent milestone approval rescinded,” as well as other steps to rein in cost growth. -- Jason Sherman
1292009_dec9g
Dec. 9, 2009 -- The Office of the Secretary of Defense has issued a draft directive that would require the services to fund the F-35 fighter program in accordance with the recommendations of recent independent reviews, a move that would extend development by at least a year, reduce production by approximately 100 aircraft and require the addition of billions of dollars to the effort through 2015, according to defense officials.
This previously unreported development, spelled out in a draft fiscal year 2011 resource management decision and confirmed by four Defense Department officials, amounts to a repudiation of the cost estimate advanced by the Joint Strike Fighter program office and prime contractor Lockheed Martin and sets the Pentagon's costliest acquisition program on course to immediately breach so-called “critical” Nunn-McCurdy cost-growth thresholds, these officials said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- who recently huddled with a small group of senior Pentagon officials to consider the way forward with JSF -- is scheduled to consider appeals by the military services to the proposed FY-11 budget next week, according to DOD officials.
The goal is to complete the FY-11 spending proposal and outyear numbers by Dec. 22, these officials say.
The proposed changes to the F-35 program follow recommendations this fall by the JSF Joint Estimate Team II, reaffirming findings prepared in 2008 that said as many as two additional years for development were required and as much as $16.6 billion more was needed between FY-10 and FY-15 (DefenseAlert, Oct. 22).
In addition, the draft budget decision reflects the recommendations of a previously unreported independent review team headed by retired Navy Rear Adm. Craig Steidle -- currently a Naval Academy professor and the JSF program executive officer from 1995 to 1997 -- that was asked by the office of the Pentagon's acquisition executive to assess Lockheed's JSF manufacturing capability.
The review by Steidle's “Independent Manufacturing Review Team,” according to DOD officials, concluded that production of approximately 100 aircraft between FY-11 and FY-15 should be delayed because Lockheed -- without taking a number of remedial steps -- was not poised to meet planned production targets during a phase of the program when production was slated to accelerate. The draft budget directive, Pentagon officials said, would require cuts to JSF production by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
At press time Lockheed was unable to respond to questions about the assessment.
Extending the development schedule will permit additional time to understand JSF flight sciences and to conduct more extensive mission system flight testing, according to Pentagon sources (DefenseAlert, Nov. 24).
Pentagon officials say the draft budget decision, if approved, would suggest that Gates has endorsed the JSF JET II estimate, which his spokesman last month characterized as “pessimistic,” as well as the findings of the independent manufacturing review team.
Gates, after an August meeting with Lockheed executives at the JSF manufacturing plant in Texas, said, “My impression is that most of the high-risk elements associated with this developmental program are largely behind us, and I felt a good deal of confidence on the part of the leadership here that the manufacturing process, that the supply chain, that the issues associated with all of these have been addressed or are being addressed.”
The Nunn-McCurdy law requires that Congress be notified if a program faces cost growth greater than 15 percent over the current baseline estimate. It also dictates that the project be terminated if the price climbs higher than 25 percent above the baseline -- a “critical” breach -- unless the defense secretary certifies the program is essential to national security, that no lesser-cost alternative is available, and that cost controls are in place.
A new Pentagon policy adopted Dec. 4 to implement the 2009 Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act calls for programs that experience a critical cost breach to be restructured “in a manner that addresses the root cause or causes of the critical cost growth,” to have their "most recent milestone approval rescinded,” as well as other steps to rein in cost growth. -- Jason Sherman
1292009_dec9g
09 December 2009
A new poll shows isolationism creeping into the body politic
Fed Up With The Rest Of The World
Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009
by Bruce Stokes, National Journal
Selling the American people on engagement with the world has never been easy. Even the advent of a president who talks the talk of internationalism has not persuaded the public to walk that walk.
And it seems that the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression combined with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have convinced Americans that the world is a more dangerous place than it was during the Cold War. Indeed, Americans are turning inward. They are more isolationist and more unilateralist than at any other time in recent history, according to America's Place in the World, a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
The survey underscores the stiff challenge that the Obama administration faces in rallying support for the troop surge in Afghanistan and for combating global warming, two of the president's principal international initiatives. Making the White House's task more difficult is a deep partisan divide among Americans on key foreign-policy issues.
Furthermore, a serious gulf is emerging between public views on foreign affairs and opinions held by the policy elites who often shape government decisions, according to the poll. The survey, conducted in October and early November, involved 2,000 members of the public and 642 foreign-policy opinion makers who belong to the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan nongovernmental organization. It was taken before President Obama announced that he will send more troops to Afghanistan.
For the first time in more than four decades of polling, a plurality -- 49 percent -- of Americans say that the United States should "mind its own business internationally" and let other countries get along the best they can on their own. This surpasses U.S. isolationist sentiment -- 41 percent -- recorded in 1976, not long after the Vietnam War ended.
In addition, more than two in five -- 44 percent -- of those surveyed think that America should go its own way on the international stage and not worry too much about whether other countries agree. That is by far the highest percentage holding such sentiments since Gallup first asked the question in 1964. This unprecedented support for what has been termed "unilateralism" could undermine Obama's avowed goal of closer cooperation with U.S. allies and multinational coalitions.
Complicating matters further for the Democratic administration, a majority of Democrats (53 percent) express isolationist attitudes, as do nearly half of independents (49 percent) and a significant proportion of Republicans (43 percent). Since 2002, Democrats' isolationist sentiment has grown 13 percentage points, independents' isolationism by 22 points, and Republicans' by 21 points.
Obama's plan to dispatch an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan exposes sharp differences of opinion between the public and the foreign-policy elite with regard to the eight-year-old war. Half (50 percent) of the Council on Foreign Relations members surveyed agree with increasing the number of troops, suggesting that the move will receive support from the foreign-policy establishment. But only a third of the public (32 percent) favors the troop surge, and this scant support reveals a deep partisan divide. The proportion of Republicans who back a troop increase is more than double that of Democrats (48 percent compared with 21 percent).
Climate change is also not a popular passion, the polling shows. Despite Obama's plan to attend the Copenhagen climate summit on December 9 and climate-change legislation pending in the U.S. Senate, less than half of the American public (44 percent) sees global warming as a major threat to the United States. This finding seems to agree with other opinion polls that show a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising.
But foreign-policy elites have a different take on climate change as well, with 59 percent seeing global warming as a major threat. There is a sharp partisan division on this issue, too, which doesn't bode well for pending congressional action. A majority of Democrats (56 percent) want global climate change to be a top administration priority, compared with just a quarter of Republicans (23 percent).
Afghanistan and climate change are immediate administration challenges, but more Americans cite Iran as posing the greatest danger to the United States in the long run. In the wake of the International Atomic Energy Agency's censure of Tehran's nuclear program and in light of long-standing Israeli threats to attack those facilities, the U.S. public's concern complicates White House efforts to restrain the Israelis and peacefully curb the Iranians' nuclear ambitions.
More than six in 10 Americans (63 percent) approve of using force if it were certain that Iran had produced a nuclear weapon. Yet another partisan divide and differences between elite and mass opinion make Iranian policy a tricky issue for the administration. Eight in 10 Republicans (79 percent) approve of a possible pre-emptive strike against Iran, but significantly fewer Democrats (57 percent) and independents (59 percent) agree. Only a third of the Council on Foreign Relations members surveyed approve of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
The Pew poll also highlights why the Obama administration's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and to try terrorism suspects in New York City has stirred such controversy, even within the president's own party. And it exposes yet another disconnect between foreign-policy experts and other Americans.
Half of the public surveyed (49 percent) disapproves of the president's decision to close Guantanamo, while the shutdown is backed by four in five of the Council on Foreign Relations members (81 percent). The public's opposition may be rooted in a growing fear of terrorism: 29 percent of Americans now say that terrorists have a greater ability to launch an attack than they had on September 11, 2001, up 12 percentage points since last February. This total includes 27 percent of Democrats surveyed, whose concern has grown 20 percentage points since their party took control of the White House. Two-thirds of those surveyed (67 percent) think that terrorists have the same or less capacity to launch another major attack, down from four-fifths (79 percent) earlier this year.
The administration's attention to civil liberties, which in part motivated its decision to try five 9/11 suspects in civilian court in New York City, is seemingly not shared by the general public. More than half of those polled (54 percent) say that using torture on suspected terrorists to gain important information is justified. This is the first time since Pew began asking the question five years ago that a majority of Americans have expressed such a view. Likewise, support for extreme interrogation measures is up 18 percentage points among Democrats since Obama took office.
But it is the public's views of America's changing stature in the world that are possibly the starkest evidence of growing partisanship infecting foreign-policy attitudes. More than two-thirds of Republicans (68 percent) think that the United States is less respected today than in the past, up from 55 percent who felt that way in September 2008. In contrast, over the same period, there has been a 28-percentage-point increase in the proportion of Democrats who say that America is more respected than before, and a similar 15-percentage-point increase among independents.
Unlike many foreign-policy attitudes, America's stature in the world, as judged by opinion polls abroad, is measurable. Support for the United States is indisputably and dramatically up in most parts of the world since Obama's election, according to the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes survey, the German Marshall Fund's 2009 Transatlantic Trends survey, and several other recent international polls. It seems that GOP judgments on this issue reflect Republicans' general disaffection with Obama rather than the reality of U.S. stature abroad.
Obama took office vowing to re-engage with the world. He has turned to the Europeans for help on Afghanistan; to the Chinese and the Russians for cooperation on Iran; and to the Indians and the Brazilians for aid on trade and climate change. It may be too early to judge the success of those efforts, but it is clear that the administration and the U.S. foreign-policy establishment have failed to convince the American public that such engagement is worthwhile.
Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009
by Bruce Stokes, National Journal
Selling the American people on engagement with the world has never been easy. Even the advent of a president who talks the talk of internationalism has not persuaded the public to walk that walk.
And it seems that the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression combined with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have convinced Americans that the world is a more dangerous place than it was during the Cold War. Indeed, Americans are turning inward. They are more isolationist and more unilateralist than at any other time in recent history, according to America's Place in the World, a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
The survey underscores the stiff challenge that the Obama administration faces in rallying support for the troop surge in Afghanistan and for combating global warming, two of the president's principal international initiatives. Making the White House's task more difficult is a deep partisan divide among Americans on key foreign-policy issues.
Furthermore, a serious gulf is emerging between public views on foreign affairs and opinions held by the policy elites who often shape government decisions, according to the poll. The survey, conducted in October and early November, involved 2,000 members of the public and 642 foreign-policy opinion makers who belong to the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan nongovernmental organization. It was taken before President Obama announced that he will send more troops to Afghanistan.
For the first time in more than four decades of polling, a plurality -- 49 percent -- of Americans say that the United States should "mind its own business internationally" and let other countries get along the best they can on their own. This surpasses U.S. isolationist sentiment -- 41 percent -- recorded in 1976, not long after the Vietnam War ended.
In addition, more than two in five -- 44 percent -- of those surveyed think that America should go its own way on the international stage and not worry too much about whether other countries agree. That is by far the highest percentage holding such sentiments since Gallup first asked the question in 1964. This unprecedented support for what has been termed "unilateralism" could undermine Obama's avowed goal of closer cooperation with U.S. allies and multinational coalitions.
Complicating matters further for the Democratic administration, a majority of Democrats (53 percent) express isolationist attitudes, as do nearly half of independents (49 percent) and a significant proportion of Republicans (43 percent). Since 2002, Democrats' isolationist sentiment has grown 13 percentage points, independents' isolationism by 22 points, and Republicans' by 21 points.
Obama's plan to dispatch an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan exposes sharp differences of opinion between the public and the foreign-policy elite with regard to the eight-year-old war. Half (50 percent) of the Council on Foreign Relations members surveyed agree with increasing the number of troops, suggesting that the move will receive support from the foreign-policy establishment. But only a third of the public (32 percent) favors the troop surge, and this scant support reveals a deep partisan divide. The proportion of Republicans who back a troop increase is more than double that of Democrats (48 percent compared with 21 percent).
Climate change is also not a popular passion, the polling shows. Despite Obama's plan to attend the Copenhagen climate summit on December 9 and climate-change legislation pending in the U.S. Senate, less than half of the American public (44 percent) sees global warming as a major threat to the United States. This finding seems to agree with other opinion polls that show a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising.
But foreign-policy elites have a different take on climate change as well, with 59 percent seeing global warming as a major threat. There is a sharp partisan division on this issue, too, which doesn't bode well for pending congressional action. A majority of Democrats (56 percent) want global climate change to be a top administration priority, compared with just a quarter of Republicans (23 percent).
Afghanistan and climate change are immediate administration challenges, but more Americans cite Iran as posing the greatest danger to the United States in the long run. In the wake of the International Atomic Energy Agency's censure of Tehran's nuclear program and in light of long-standing Israeli threats to attack those facilities, the U.S. public's concern complicates White House efforts to restrain the Israelis and peacefully curb the Iranians' nuclear ambitions.
More than six in 10 Americans (63 percent) approve of using force if it were certain that Iran had produced a nuclear weapon. Yet another partisan divide and differences between elite and mass opinion make Iranian policy a tricky issue for the administration. Eight in 10 Republicans (79 percent) approve of a possible pre-emptive strike against Iran, but significantly fewer Democrats (57 percent) and independents (59 percent) agree. Only a third of the Council on Foreign Relations members surveyed approve of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
The Pew poll also highlights why the Obama administration's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and to try terrorism suspects in New York City has stirred such controversy, even within the president's own party. And it exposes yet another disconnect between foreign-policy experts and other Americans.
Half of the public surveyed (49 percent) disapproves of the president's decision to close Guantanamo, while the shutdown is backed by four in five of the Council on Foreign Relations members (81 percent). The public's opposition may be rooted in a growing fear of terrorism: 29 percent of Americans now say that terrorists have a greater ability to launch an attack than they had on September 11, 2001, up 12 percentage points since last February. This total includes 27 percent of Democrats surveyed, whose concern has grown 20 percentage points since their party took control of the White House. Two-thirds of those surveyed (67 percent) think that terrorists have the same or less capacity to launch another major attack, down from four-fifths (79 percent) earlier this year.
The administration's attention to civil liberties, which in part motivated its decision to try five 9/11 suspects in civilian court in New York City, is seemingly not shared by the general public. More than half of those polled (54 percent) say that using torture on suspected terrorists to gain important information is justified. This is the first time since Pew began asking the question five years ago that a majority of Americans have expressed such a view. Likewise, support for extreme interrogation measures is up 18 percentage points among Democrats since Obama took office.
But it is the public's views of America's changing stature in the world that are possibly the starkest evidence of growing partisanship infecting foreign-policy attitudes. More than two-thirds of Republicans (68 percent) think that the United States is less respected today than in the past, up from 55 percent who felt that way in September 2008. In contrast, over the same period, there has been a 28-percentage-point increase in the proportion of Democrats who say that America is more respected than before, and a similar 15-percentage-point increase among independents.
Unlike many foreign-policy attitudes, America's stature in the world, as judged by opinion polls abroad, is measurable. Support for the United States is indisputably and dramatically up in most parts of the world since Obama's election, according to the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes survey, the German Marshall Fund's 2009 Transatlantic Trends survey, and several other recent international polls. It seems that GOP judgments on this issue reflect Republicans' general disaffection with Obama rather than the reality of U.S. stature abroad.
Obama took office vowing to re-engage with the world. He has turned to the Europeans for help on Afghanistan; to the Chinese and the Russians for cooperation on Iran; and to the Indians and the Brazilians for aid on trade and climate change. It may be too early to judge the success of those efforts, but it is clear that the administration and the U.S. foreign-policy establishment have failed to convince the American public that such engagement is worthwhile.
Letdown On The Left
Afghanistan escalation adds to liberal Democrats' grievances against President Obama.
Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009
by Kirk Victor, National Journal
President Obama's plans to boost U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, although not quite the last straw, exacerbated the frustration of liberals who once had sky-high expectations for his administration. Democrats on the left were already disappointed by his leadership on issues such as health care, the Wall Street bailout, the pace of judicial appointments, and civil liberties.
Many Democratic activists see the decision to deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops as further evidence that Obama has done little to advance their priorities despite their support for him last year, when they opened their wallets, spent hours knocking on doors, and provided the energy that a successful presidential campaign feeds on.
"The progressive community really is disappointed, after feeling for the first time in a long time that they had the Republicans and the Wall Street big corporation crowd on the run -- that this was our time, this was a moment of opportunity. And Obama not only failed to take it but bailed out these guys and got nothing for it," said Jeff Faux, who founded the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, in 1986.
"Disappointment doesn't necessarily have to be fatal, but creeping into this disappointment is the sense that he may not be on our side after all," Faux added. "That gets to be more fatal."
The president's unruffled demeanor -- "No-Drama Obama" -- that was such a campaign asset in reassuring voters is becoming a liability with liberals who are unhappy that Obama is unwilling to draw a line in the sand on their biggest issues, such as including a government-run public option in health care legislation.
"Instinctively, he is not a line-drawer; he is a compromiser," said a longtime Democratic strategist who asked for anonymity. "I don't think people have a sense of what he would draw a line in the sand on. I don't know."
The disconnect between Obama's coolness and the activists' desire for passion on certain issues is a challenge for the president. Darrell West, director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, noted that the president cannot assume that his supporters on the left will remain steadfast. "He still controls his own fate, but he is in a delicate situation, and he has to be mindful not just of his enemies but of his friends," West said. "He can't take his friends for granted. He has to deliver on some things they care about."
Some labor leaders still cut the president some slack, given the realities of governing with Republicans maintaining a wall of resistance against his initiatives. "It's total partisan warfare, and even with 60 votes in the Senate, if you don't have 60 senators who feel exactly as you do, it's pretty hard to insist on getting your way," Bill Samuel, the AFL-CIO's top lobbyist, acknowledged. "So whether he draws a line or not, he doesn't have the votes for the things that he might want that we agree with."
Still, activists on the left greeted Obama's Tuesday night speech on Afghanistan with hostility, as evidenced in scathing comments in the liberal blogosphere and by left-leaning Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Describing the war as "no longer in our national security interest," Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said that the plan was "an expensive gamble to undertake armed nation building on behalf of a corrupt government of questionable legitimacy." He and several other liberal lawmakers held a press conference before Obama's address to denounce attempts to shore up the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Disenchantment stretches beyond the war. Activists fault Obama on his handling of the health care debate, not only on the public option but also for not taking a stance against the proposal to tax "Cadillac" insurance plans that offer cost-free health care -- which unions have negotiated for in lieu of higher wages. Some labor advocates are especially incensed that as workers were pushed to make concessions to rescue teetering companies, the government showered Wall Street firms with bailout assistance because they were "too big to fail."
Civil libertarians criticize Obama for reversing campaign promises and adopting policies on detainee treatment that echo President Bush's. In addition, liberals gripe that Obama has been far slower than Bush was to appoint judges, especially to Appellate Courts, who play a critical role in resolving contentious social issues.
Those disappointments, Faux said, "make it hard for the labor guys and leaders of the other parts [of the progressive movement] to go back to their constituents and say, 'This is a great guy, and he has done this for us and we have to mobilize ourselves again next November.' "
"I don't think today there is any doubt that a good chunk of the base of the party is not enthused and would sit home" during an election, said Victor Kamber, a veteran labor and Democratic Party strategist. "That base being African-Americans, the youth, gay and lesbian activists, and labor. Is it enough to turn the kind of numbers as in '94 [when Republicans won control of Congress for the first time in 40 years]? Probably not. But enough in close races to make a difference for carrying several Senate seats that right now we would think should be ours. And enough to swing 10, 15 House seats, or 20 maybe."
Democratic campaign veterans worry particularly that the young people who flocked to the polls to support Obama may be turned off because the president has deferred action on various promises. He pledged during the campaign, for example, to end the ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military; as president, he has reaffirmed the promise but set no timetable for acting.
Young voters played a critical role in several closely contested states in the presidential contest, supporting Obama over Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., by a whopping 68 percent to 30 percent. It was the largest share of the youth vote won by a candidate since exit polls began reporting results by age in 1976, according to CIRCLE, a nonpartisan organization that encourages young voters to participate.
"If you look at Obama as broadening the base, bringing in a bunch of young people, disaffected people -- a lot of them are probably the most disillusioned, and I don't think they will be motivated to vote like last time," said David Rudd, former executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "I think that is a big problem."
Amid this gloom, however, Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, says that Obama has a not-so-secret weapon: Republican hostility. Liberals "understand that the [GOP] opposition to Obama is virtually unanimous and much more rigid and confrontational even than Clinton dealt with," Baker said. "My own feeling is that they will become interval pragmatists -- sort of pragmatists pro tem -- because the stakes are so high."
"It was said of Grover Cleveland, and it may well be said of Barack Obama, that he was loved for the enemies he made," Baker added.
The AFL-CIO's Samuel agreed. "We are pretty sophisticated now, having gone through '94, and there would be a great reluctance for [progressives] to assume that it can't get any worse. Because it can, and it did, starting in 1995."
Faux, however, takes little comfort from that analysis. "That's what people in the White House think -- that [liberals] have no place to go and the behavior of right-wingers will scare everybody. I don't think that is going to be decisive, because for a large part of the rank and file of labor unions, the economic [situation] will mean a helluva lot more than right-wing nutcakes babbling on.
"I remember in '78-79, we got into a lot of economic arguments with the Carter White House, and the people in the White House just sneered at us, saying, 'Where are you guys going to go? Is the country going to vote for Reagan?' "
In the end, Faux said, progressives will judge Obama on his performance. "What they care about is, is this guy delivering and is he on our side?
Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009
by Kirk Victor, National Journal
President Obama's plans to boost U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, although not quite the last straw, exacerbated the frustration of liberals who once had sky-high expectations for his administration. Democrats on the left were already disappointed by his leadership on issues such as health care, the Wall Street bailout, the pace of judicial appointments, and civil liberties.
Many Democratic activists see the decision to deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops as further evidence that Obama has done little to advance their priorities despite their support for him last year, when they opened their wallets, spent hours knocking on doors, and provided the energy that a successful presidential campaign feeds on.
"The progressive community really is disappointed, after feeling for the first time in a long time that they had the Republicans and the Wall Street big corporation crowd on the run -- that this was our time, this was a moment of opportunity. And Obama not only failed to take it but bailed out these guys and got nothing for it," said Jeff Faux, who founded the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, in 1986.
"Disappointment doesn't necessarily have to be fatal, but creeping into this disappointment is the sense that he may not be on our side after all," Faux added. "That gets to be more fatal."
The president's unruffled demeanor -- "No-Drama Obama" -- that was such a campaign asset in reassuring voters is becoming a liability with liberals who are unhappy that Obama is unwilling to draw a line in the sand on their biggest issues, such as including a government-run public option in health care legislation.
"Instinctively, he is not a line-drawer; he is a compromiser," said a longtime Democratic strategist who asked for anonymity. "I don't think people have a sense of what he would draw a line in the sand on. I don't know."
The disconnect between Obama's coolness and the activists' desire for passion on certain issues is a challenge for the president. Darrell West, director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, noted that the president cannot assume that his supporters on the left will remain steadfast. "He still controls his own fate, but he is in a delicate situation, and he has to be mindful not just of his enemies but of his friends," West said. "He can't take his friends for granted. He has to deliver on some things they care about."
Some labor leaders still cut the president some slack, given the realities of governing with Republicans maintaining a wall of resistance against his initiatives. "It's total partisan warfare, and even with 60 votes in the Senate, if you don't have 60 senators who feel exactly as you do, it's pretty hard to insist on getting your way," Bill Samuel, the AFL-CIO's top lobbyist, acknowledged. "So whether he draws a line or not, he doesn't have the votes for the things that he might want that we agree with."
Still, activists on the left greeted Obama's Tuesday night speech on Afghanistan with hostility, as evidenced in scathing comments in the liberal blogosphere and by left-leaning Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Describing the war as "no longer in our national security interest," Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said that the plan was "an expensive gamble to undertake armed nation building on behalf of a corrupt government of questionable legitimacy." He and several other liberal lawmakers held a press conference before Obama's address to denounce attempts to shore up the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Disenchantment stretches beyond the war. Activists fault Obama on his handling of the health care debate, not only on the public option but also for not taking a stance against the proposal to tax "Cadillac" insurance plans that offer cost-free health care -- which unions have negotiated for in lieu of higher wages. Some labor advocates are especially incensed that as workers were pushed to make concessions to rescue teetering companies, the government showered Wall Street firms with bailout assistance because they were "too big to fail."
Civil libertarians criticize Obama for reversing campaign promises and adopting policies on detainee treatment that echo President Bush's. In addition, liberals gripe that Obama has been far slower than Bush was to appoint judges, especially to Appellate Courts, who play a critical role in resolving contentious social issues.
Those disappointments, Faux said, "make it hard for the labor guys and leaders of the other parts [of the progressive movement] to go back to their constituents and say, 'This is a great guy, and he has done this for us and we have to mobilize ourselves again next November.' "
"I don't think today there is any doubt that a good chunk of the base of the party is not enthused and would sit home" during an election, said Victor Kamber, a veteran labor and Democratic Party strategist. "That base being African-Americans, the youth, gay and lesbian activists, and labor. Is it enough to turn the kind of numbers as in '94 [when Republicans won control of Congress for the first time in 40 years]? Probably not. But enough in close races to make a difference for carrying several Senate seats that right now we would think should be ours. And enough to swing 10, 15 House seats, or 20 maybe."
Democratic campaign veterans worry particularly that the young people who flocked to the polls to support Obama may be turned off because the president has deferred action on various promises. He pledged during the campaign, for example, to end the ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military; as president, he has reaffirmed the promise but set no timetable for acting.
Young voters played a critical role in several closely contested states in the presidential contest, supporting Obama over Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., by a whopping 68 percent to 30 percent. It was the largest share of the youth vote won by a candidate since exit polls began reporting results by age in 1976, according to CIRCLE, a nonpartisan organization that encourages young voters to participate.
"If you look at Obama as broadening the base, bringing in a bunch of young people, disaffected people -- a lot of them are probably the most disillusioned, and I don't think they will be motivated to vote like last time," said David Rudd, former executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "I think that is a big problem."
Amid this gloom, however, Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, says that Obama has a not-so-secret weapon: Republican hostility. Liberals "understand that the [GOP] opposition to Obama is virtually unanimous and much more rigid and confrontational even than Clinton dealt with," Baker said. "My own feeling is that they will become interval pragmatists -- sort of pragmatists pro tem -- because the stakes are so high."
"It was said of Grover Cleveland, and it may well be said of Barack Obama, that he was loved for the enemies he made," Baker added.
The AFL-CIO's Samuel agreed. "We are pretty sophisticated now, having gone through '94, and there would be a great reluctance for [progressives] to assume that it can't get any worse. Because it can, and it did, starting in 1995."
Faux, however, takes little comfort from that analysis. "That's what people in the White House think -- that [liberals] have no place to go and the behavior of right-wingers will scare everybody. I don't think that is going to be decisive, because for a large part of the rank and file of labor unions, the economic [situation] will mean a helluva lot more than right-wing nutcakes babbling on.
"I remember in '78-79, we got into a lot of economic arguments with the Carter White House, and the people in the White House just sneered at us, saying, 'Where are you guys going to go? Is the country going to vote for Reagan?' "
In the end, Faux said, progressives will judge Obama on his performance. "What they care about is, is this guy delivering and is he on our side?