War, the military, COIN and stuff

Tough Cuts: Marines Have Choices to Make

In the December issue of DTI, Kimberly Johnson, Mike Fabey and I have a story about some of the USMC's big ticket programs, and the challenges they'll face in staying afloat in the upcoming budget squeeze:

Many in and out of the Pentagon thought the EFV was on its way to the junk heap by mid-2010. Gates had the program in his sights and no one was sure what kind of support Amos would lend. Like other programs that have been decades in development, the EFV became a target for defense industry reformers who questioned the relevance of equipment they say is more suited to warfare from another era.

For example, it is designed to carry a large enough gun to engage hostile armored vehicles but not—in its basic form—to withstand large mines or improvised explosive devices.

The kind of amphibious assault landings for which the EFV was initially designed no longer make sense, critics added. But Amos presents a new idea of what constitutes an amphibious landing. In his first planning guidance, released in October, he cites global disasters in Haiti and Pakistan that required the deployment of 5,000 Marines from seven amphibious ships. Amos also made clear in his guidance that he was for anything that bolstered the Marines’ expeditionary capabilities.

“The Marine Corps is America’s expeditionary force in readiness,” he wrote in the guidance, which mentions “expeditionary” 15 times. “To a Marine, the term ‘expeditionary’ is more than a slogan; it is our state of mind. It drives the way we organize our forces, how we train and what kind of equipment we buy.” The defining expeditionary tool now is the EFV.

Read the whole thing here.

Army Issues New Guidelines for Ground Combat Vehicle Program

The U.S. Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle Project Manager Col. Anthony DiMarco told reporters this morning that the Army is looking at “a target range of $9 million to $10.5 million” average unit manufacturing cost for the GCV, billed as the Army’s replacement for the aging M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Scheduled to be completed by 2017, the Army expects to start a buy of 1,874 GCV Infantry Fighting Vehicles around that time.

DiMarco was speaking to announce the rollout of the second Request for Proposals to industry, (the first one went out in February 2010), which was released this morning. After putting the program on hold in August with the promise to issue a new RFP within 60 days, the Army missed its target by about a month, but DiMarco said that the service is still on track to award up to three contracts for the Technology Development phase in April 2011.

Proposals from industry are due on the 21^st of January, he said, which shouldn't be a problem since three contractor teams have long since linked up to try and win the contract: BAE Systems-Northrop Grumman; General Dynamics Land Systems along with Lockheed Martin and Raytheon; and SAIC-led team that includes Boeing, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, and Rheinmetall.

“We did not have affordability targets” in the first RFP, DiMarco said, but due to the new fiscally-conscious times, the new RFP does include such targets, such as capping each technology development contract at a ceiling of $450 million for each contractor under a fixed-price incentive contract, and if any competitor goes over that limit, that money comes out of their own pocket. The Army is also looking for costs of about $200 per operating mile, which DiMarco explained is “an initial target which we will refine as we go through the [technology development] phase.” Comparatively, Bradleys are about 100 dollars per operating mile, while the Abrams tank is closer to $300 per operating mile.

Posted at ARES...

Never Mind What's Been Selling, It's What You're Buying

Looking down the list of the names of the top five nations who make up the biggest international suppliers of conventional weapons, it reads pretty much just how you think it might. Over the past half-decade, the United States, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom have shipped the most weapons overseas, with the U.S. and Russia making up over half of the total, exporting 30 percent and 23 percent of all arms, respectively.

Of that total, combat aircraft accounted for a full 48 percent of all U.S. weapons exports, and 27 percent of the total exported by all countries overall—a number that rises to 33 percent when related weapons and components are factored in according to a new report released by SIPRI, a Swedish think tank that focuses on arms control and global conflict.

The author of the report, Siemon T. Wezeman, warns that unlike other conventional weapons, combat aircraft “are among the weapons with the greatest potential to cause instability” due to their ability to strike fast, and from long distances. Because such planes are so expensive to both purchase and maintain, their existence in any one country’s arsenal “may shape the direction of defence policy and doctrine for many years,” he adds. The numbers of aircraft that the United States and Russia have exported over the past five years aren’t insignificant, with the U.S. having shipped 331 new F-16C, F/A-18E and F-15E aircraft, while Russia has sent 215 Su-25, Su-27, Su-30 and MiG-29 aircraft overseas.

As it stands today, eleven different countries manufacture combat aircraft: China, France, India, Japan, Russia, Sweden; while Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK together produce the Eurofighter Typhoon, of which only 24 aircraft have been sold to other countries since 2005. China has manufactured and shipped “about” 41 F-7 and JF-17 aircraft, and “while it has a substantial order for the JF-17 from Pakistan (reported as 50–150 units), there is no great prospect of large orders from other countries and production of the J-10 and other combat aircraft for national use will continue to outnumber exports,” Wezeman reports.

Please read the rest at ARES...

McCain, Unbound

Speaking at a daylong gathering sponsored by the new conservative/neocon foreign policy shop the Foreign Policy Initiative this morning, Sen. John McCain said that he is concerned about the isolationist tendencies of some his incoming Congressional Republican colleagues, and made some very pointed remarks about the Russian government.

Speaking with the Brookings Institution’s Robert Kagan, McCain said that “I worry, I worry a lot,” about his new Republican colleagues in Congress when it comes to their attitudes toward the war in Afghanistan and the ongoing mission in Iraq. He singled out “I think there are going to be some tensions within our party,” he said, “and I don’t know incoming Senator Rand Paul—I respect him, I admire his victory—but already he is talking about withdrawals, and cuts in defense, and a number of others are [as well.]”

Paul, who has said that he hasn’t thought much about the war in Afghanistan and that “can we say that gradually we don't need as large of an Army if we're not in two wars? Yes, I think you can say that. You can save money there,” is a bit of an unknown on where exactly he stands on defense issues. But he is clearly making some Republicans nervous.             

But it isn’t just Paul that McCain is concerned about. He seems wary of the entire crop of Tea Part-endorsed Republicans currently making their way to D.C. for their freshman orientation. “There’s no doubt that this new group of Republicans have come in with a commitment to take an axe to spending,” McCain continued. “I’m not sure that you could say, ok, everything in defense is sacrosanct, while the rest of these cuts in education and social programs are taking place, so I worry a lot about the rise of protectionism and isolationism in the Republican party.”

Please read the rest at ARES...

The Navy's Submarine Problem

My colleague Mike Fabey had a piece up yesterday about a new Congressional Research Service report that lays out some inconvenient facts about the future of the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet.

In short, the Navy doesn’t seem to have figured out a way to align its stated need for 48 submarines with its build schedule for new Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), or its yearly shipbuilding budget.

The Navy’s so-called 30-year shipbuilding plan, as updated for Fiscal 2009 and earlier years, showed the SSN force recovering to 48 boats by the early 2030s, the CRS pointed out. But the latest update indicated that benchmark may not be made after all. “The Navy’s new Fiscal 2011 30-year (fiscal years 2011-2040) plan shows the SSN remaining below 48 boats through 2040. The change is due to a reduction in planned SSN procurements,” CRS reported. “The Fiscal 2009 plan included procurement of 53 SSNs over 30 years, while the Fiscal 2011 plan includes procurement of 44 SSNs over 30 years.”

The reduction in SSN procurements in the Fiscal 2011 plan, the CRS reported, may be due in large part to the planned procurement of 12 next-generation SSBNs (nuclear-powered strategic ballistic-missile submarines) in Fiscal 2019-2033. “The Fiscal 2009 plan did not account for the cost of these 12 SSBNs, while the Fiscal 2011 does, apparently causing reductions in planned procurement rates for SSNs and other types of ships during that period,” the CRS reported.

Read the rest at ARES...

What Will the New Littoral Combat Ships Cost?

With the news this morning that the Navy wants to split the buy for twenty new Littoral Combat Ships through 2015—ten from Lockheed Martin and ten from Austal and General Dynamics—it’s instructive to take a quick look at how we got to such an odd moment in a long and odd acquisition process.

Originally slated to cost $220 million per ship when the program was launched in 2002, the first two ships out of the dock had blown that number apart by time they hit the water. In documents that accompanied the 2010 Navy budget request, it was learned that the Lockheed-built ship, the USS Freedom, wound up clocking in at $637 million, while the General Dynamics/Austal-built USS Independence came in at $704 million. Shocking perhaps, but hardly surprising given the confusion that has marked the program from the beginning, which included cancellation of the LCS 3 and 4 builds in 2007, followed by a quick reversal. An angry Congress got into the game by slapping a cost cap of $480 million per ship beginning this year, a figure the Navy has admitted neither company could meet. While Lockheed is currently reporting that LCS 3 is more than 60% complete, General Dynamics/Austal continues work in silence. A spokesman for the team told DTI that it will have no comment on the LCS 4 build at Austal USA shipyards in Alabama before the Navy issues its contract award....

Read the rest at ARES...

Navy Facing "a new fiscal reality"

In the wake of Secretary of Defense Gates calling for Pentagon bean counters to find $100 billion in savings over the next five years, the services are scrambling to cut costs where they can. The process won’t be easy says Adm. Jonathan Greenert, vice chief of Naval Operations, who told the Center for Strategic and International Studies yesterday that upcoming budgets are going to introduce “a new fiscal reality for most of our [officers] and most of our senior executive service. They’ve gone fifteen years on supplemental appropriations. We’ve been on them since at least ’95…and we have really not had a lot of folks really need to be accountable for the fiscal performance out there because there’s always been a supplemental around the corner.”

Greenert didn’t single out any underperforming programs by name, but stressed that the Navy was going to have little patience for programs that are “just not going to get there.” He did say that the service sees multiyear procurement deals for programs as one of many ways to reduce costs, along with a greater focus on fixed-price contracts....

Read the rest over at ARES...

Rising Powers, and American 'Declinist' Paranoia

In coming years, the United States will most likely come to rely on “non-traditional” allies and partners such as India and Brazil to cemenet its regional influence as domestic defense budgets shrink and global economic power becomes more diffuse. So says Eric Edelman, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Bush administration, who presented a new CSBA report yesterday titled Understanding America’s Contested Primacy (PDF!)--a look at whether or not the United States is facing a period of decline.

His answer? Despite many obvious fiscal challenges like heavy domestic entitlement spending, the global economic downturn, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is in no real danger of seeing its global primacy slip any time in the near future. Americans have been worrying about decline since the Puritans fretted the decay of the shining city on the hill, Edelman said, adding that concerns over eroding American primacy have come about every decade or so since the end of the Second World War.

Starting with the Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons and the launch of Sputnik and continuing through the fallout from the Vietnam war, the recessions of the late 70s and 80s, talk of the end of the nation state in the late 90s, all the way to the “declinism” talk of today surrounding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rise of economic centers in India, China and Brazil, the theme has been the same: decline is right around the corner.

Edelman finds this kind of talk wanting. Besides, if you think things are rough here, he says, you should take a look at the other guys.....

Please read the rest over at ARES...

This Sentinel Not on Watch

Stop me if this sounds familiar: A government agency taps a major contractor to lead a complicated technical project. The parties agree on terms, budget, and timeframe. Things look great, promises are made, and big things are expected. In just a few years the project will revolutionize how said government agency goes about its business.

And then the Inspector General starts writing reports.

This time the agency is the FBI, the contractor is Lockheed Martin, the IG comes from the Department of Justice, and the project in question is called Sentinel, the Bureau’s troubled second attempt at developing a new electronic (billed as paperless) information and investigative case management system. Back in March 2006, the plan was that Sentinel would be developed in four phases for $425 million, and be completed around December 2009. But in the four and a half years since those hopeful days, the FBI has issued a full stop-work order to Lockheed Martin Services Incorporated for portions of Sentinel’s Phase 3 and all of the project’s Phase 4 “because of significant issues regarding performance, usability, and quality of work delivered by Lockheed Martin,” according to a new Department of Justice IG report. (PDF)

This all comes at the close of almost a decade’s worth of failed attempts by the FBI to move from a paper-based case management system to an electronic one--a journey that has cost over half a billion dollars and yielded almost no gains. The first attempt was the $170 million failure known as the  Virtual Case File system, which staggered along from 2001-2005 before being canceled. Then in 2006 came Sentinel, which started with a $305 million contract with Lockheed as the first part of a $425 million project, later revised to $451 million, and which the IG writes is on track to being “$100 million over budget and 2 years behind schedule.”

Please read the rest over at ARES...

USMC Cutting 10,000 Ground Vehicles

The Marine Corps is about the get leaner, according to the USMC’s Lt. Gen. George Flynn, who said recently that the service is planning on ditching 10,000 of the current 42,000 tactical vehicles it has in its fleet.

Flynn, who is the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told This Week in Defense News that although the USMC’s Ground Combat Tactical Vehicle Strategy is still evolving, the service is committed to the cut, but he failed to elaborate which vehicles will be jettisoned. “We’re going to cut 10,000 vehicles from the inventory because we’ve decided what capabilities we need,” he said.

The Marines have some tough decisions to make when it comes to their ground vehicle fleet. The biggest, of course, is the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the $2.5 billion, decades-long program to replace the ancient Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAVs) which was first fielded in the 1970s. The Corps has estimated that the EFV will run them over $16 million per vehicle and hopes to build a total of 573 of them, although leadership has made some noises lately talking up the capabilities they provide--amphibious forced entry, speed, armor--rather than the EFV specifically.

Please read the rest at ARES...