War, the military, COIN and stuff

Border Competition

We’ve been waiting since October for Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano to make a decision on the fate of SBInet, the Boeing-designed suite of cameras, ground sensors and radar systems that provide real-time, streaming intel to American border patrol officers standing watch over the U.S./Mexican border.

The program has cost $1.2 billion since 2006—with $800 million of that going to SBInet technologies, and the rest to road grading and fencing along the border—with only 53 mi. of the Arizona border having been covered by the gear. This led Napolitano to order a freeze on the program pending a top-to-bottom review in February, with orders for Customs and Border Protection to report back to her in October with their assessment of where the program stands, and where it can feasibly go in the near term.

While the October deadline was met, we still don’t know what the secretary’s decision is.

With many observers betting that the SBInet program won’t survive—despite the fact that agents in the field love the gear, as I reported in the November DTI—competitors are starting to enter the arena to fill the gaps in border security.

One contender is Raytheon’s Clear View, which a Raytheon representative says is essentially “a command and control system that manages situational awareness.” Designed as a modular system that can “plug and play” with a variety of other data systems, Clear View allows cameras and sensors to track moving objects automatically while storing the information for later use, allowing the operator to perform other tasks and analyze later, if needed.

Read the rest at ARES.....

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...

Linked In: New Ad Hoc Networks In the Works

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) – the Pentagon’s experimental research and development arm that thinks up new ideas and then pushes them as far out on a limb as they can – is trying to come up with a new, relatively inexpensive networked radio system that can keep soldiers in austere environments connected. And according to one engineer working on the project, they’re pretty close to wrapping it up.

Called the Wireless Network after Next (WNaN), the idea is to take inexpensive, upgradable commercial off the shelf radio components, harden them for military use, and issue each soldier his own radio.

DARPA has tapped Raytheon’s BBN Technologies to work on the network and Cobham to work on the radios. Jeff Feinberg of Raytheon’s BBN Technologies explains that the goal of the program is to produce radios that cost about $500 each, and can be easily swapped out every few years as technologies improve. He compared it to how civilians treat their cell phones. “Your phone is just an access device,” he explains, “all the smarts are in the network itself, and they get you to throw your phone away every two years and get a new phone that can get more use out of the network. That’s really where this program is trying to head—to make that radio an access device and drive all the high level performance to the network so the Army doesn’t have to reinvent and reinvest in a lot of new hardware every year.” Essentially, the Army will buy the network once, while tossing the inexpensive radios out every few years for better models that can exploit more of the network.

Readthe rest at ARES...

New Technologies Aid Border Patrol

I’ve written a few blog posts about the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Border Initiative, and its SBInet program, which was initiated in 2005 by the DHS to further secure the southern border by adding a string of radar, sensors, cameras and other communications and surveillance gear mounted on towers.

Funded by a $3.6-billion allocation from Congress, Boeing has been the lead contractor on the SBI program since receiving a three-year contract in 2006 to integrate and implement the technologies, and as of February, the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) had awarded Boeing about $800 million for the SBInet technologies. After five years of setbacks, technical problems, environmental controversies and cost overruns, in March Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered a freeze on the program pending a top-to-bottom review. At the time, nine towers in Arizona’s Tucson Sector had been completed, and by late October six more were conducting limited operations in the Ajo Sector. In a possible sign of things to come, in March Napolitano diverted $50 million in federal stimulus funding intended for SBInet to other more near-term technologies, including $32 million for more mobile surveillance systems (MSS)—sensor towers mounted on trucks—forty of which are already in use on the border.

In the just-released November issue of DTI, I have a longer look at all of this, including reactions from Border Patrol agents, who are big supporters of the SBInet technologies.

Standing on a ridge overlooking the border fence in Nogales, Ariz., Paul Boulier, a 16-year Customs and Border Patrol veteran, says that when it comes to fighting the drug runners and immigrants flooding across the border, boots on the ground are the most important thing, but “as the technology has come out, it has helped us overall.” He points to the ZBV Backscatter Van, a mobile, low-energy X-ray system made by American Science and Engineering, as being “an awesome piece of technology” that has been extremely effective in helping agents scan vehicles crossing the border. The technology is also popular with Customs agents at maritime ports (and for that matter with U.S. forces protecting forwarding operating bases in Iraq).

Driving though the Tucson Sector in September, Border Patrol agent Jose Verdugo said that most agents are big fans of SBInet technologies, as “they are helping us effect the right response.” Most important is the officer safety component. “We’re able to see what’s coming at us. It offers us greater ability to interdict groups on our terms rather than their terms.”

Traditionally, agents would be alerted to movement in their sector when an unmanned ground sensor in the desert was tripped, and they would be sent out to investigate. Most of the time, Verdugo said, it would take agents at least 1-2 hr. to reach the area, by which time whatever had tripped the sensor was long gone. With the SBInet system, agents in the command center see the activation of the sensor and are able to slew a camera over in real time, providing almost instant situational awareness. “With the SBInet cameras,” Verdugo continued, “we can monitor the group until they get to a place that’s more advantageous for us to apprehend them—where we have the higher ground and the advantage to make the operation on our terms.”

Read the rest of the story here….

Waiting for the Ground Combat Vehicle

On August 26, the Army temporarily put the brakes on its $40 billion Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program, which by 2017 will start churning out a planned 1,450 infantry vehicles big enough to fit nine soldiers, tough enough to survive IED and RPG attacks, and maneuverable enough to fight in tight urban centers or in austere terrain. The vehicle fills the gap left by last year’s cancellation of the Manned Ground Vehicle portion of the Future Combat Systems program.

The Army said at the time that the program would probably be put on hold for about six months before it award the development phase contracts, but the overall schedule for the program would remain unchanged, with plans calling for the first production vehicle to be delivered seven years after the initial contract award. The Army also said that it expected to issue a new Request for Proposal in about 60 days, which means that we should expect that to drop any day now.

The fact of the suspended RFP made trying to report the GCV story at this year’s AUSA convention tough, to say the least. All three contractors heading up teams to win the contract— BAE; General Dynamics; and SAIC—were at the show, but new information was hard to come by. Well, that’s not exactly true. In one case information was simply not available. SAIC smiled politely and took my card both times I stopped by, with a promise to get back to me.

I’m still waiting for the call.

Still, I feel comfortable reporting—going solely by having seen the big “GCV” banner hanging at their booth—that the company is indeed still interested in submitting a proposal. SAIC actually announced back in May that it was submitting a modified Puma Infantry Fighting Vehicle, originally built for the German army by Rheinmetall, to the GCV competition. This means that we can be pretty certain about at least one thing: the vehicle will be tracked.........

Read the rest at ARES....

Security Contractors, Coalition Comms, and Friendly Fire

Even with all of the communications, sensor and intelligence-gathering technologies at the disposal of the modern U.S. military, the battlefield continues to be a crowded, fast-moving, and confusing place. The notion of the “fog of war” may be a cliché, but it’s one that persists despite centuries of effort to clear it up -- and when you add civilian security contractors to the mix, it becomes even more complex.

It is essentially taken as a given that in future military operations, civilian contractors will—as they have in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia and Kosovo—work alongside American and allied forces providing everything from labor to support to security missions. The New York Times has done a good job combing through the Wikileaks files for material that captures the contractors’ role in Iraq, but there’s more.

The Times found that during the six years covered by the Wikileaks reports, “at least 175 private security contractors were killed. The peak appeared to come in 2006, when 53 died. Insurgents and other malefactors kidnapped at least 70 security contractors, many of whom were later killed.” Steve Fainaru did a great job capturing the disorganization surrounding some of the smaller, sketchier security outfits in his book, Big Boy Rules, but even when it comes to the large security companies, mistakes happened. Mistakes like shooting at, or being shot at, by the U.S. and coalition forces.

In one “White-on-Blue” incident exposed by Wikileaks, trucks from security contractor Armor Group was fired on by an American convoy when it tried to pass the military trucks on the highway. The contractor “had previously understood signals…to means that he was cleared to pass.” No one was hurt. In another incident, an American convoy “inadvertently engaged a civilian contractor security element” after two Ford trucks approached the convoy. The trucks were hit three times before U.S. forces realized that they were friendly. No one was hurt.

One hindrance in performing operations as part of an international coalition is the inability to speak to your allies, since different countries use different communications technologies. In Iraq, this led to some hairy moments early in the war between coalition military forces.

 In April 2004, Polish troops in Karbala fired warning shots at “a fast approaching vehicle packet,” which returned fire before turning around. When the convoy turned, the Polish troops recognized the trucks as American Humvees belonging to the Military Police. An investigation found that one coalition troop was lightly injured and the incident occurred because of a “lack of radio communications” between the MP patrol and the traffic control point. In July 2004 the it was the Americans turn to fire on the Poles in Karbala when “unknown vehicles” approached their position one evening. Unaware that any Polish convoy was in the area, and unable to make verbal contact with the vehicles, the Poles withdrew, and no one was hurt.

Please read the rest over at ARES...

SBInet Takes More Heat

The Coast Guard had Deepwater. The Army had Future Combat Systems. The Navy is struggling through the Littoral Combat Ship acquisition process. And now the Department of Homeland Security might soon add to this list of very expensive failures its $1 billion SBInet family of sensor technologies, once billed as a “virtual fence” that would provide real-time surveillance across the entire U.S./Mexican border.

Funded by a $3.6-billion allocation from Congress, Boeing has been the lead contractor on the program since receiving a three-year, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract in 2006 to integrate and implement its sensor technologies. As of February, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) had awarded 13 task orders to Boeing for $1.2 billion, $800 million of which has gone to SBInet.

After four years of setbacks, technical problems, environmental controversies and cost overruns, that $800-million investment has only managed to cover about 53 miles of the  Arizona border near Tuscon, and in March Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered a freeze on the program pending a top-to-bottom review. Mark Borkowski, executive director of the SBI program, recently told ARES that when Napolitano took action in March, “we were still well behind our schedule. Tucson should have been completed and we should have had test data from it, so we were continuing to have delays and cost growth.” Borkowski hopes to have system acceptance tests on the Ajo towers complete by the end of the year.

One of the problems with the program, Borkowski concedes, is something that has plagued the Pentagon in recent years: reaching for a complicated technology-driven solution before reaching a full understanding of its costs. For one thing, there wasn’t any cost analysis done before the Department jumped into the SBInet program. “There was a certain urgency,” he says, “and a belief that this wouldn’t be all that hard to do. That belief turned out to be wrong.”

Please read the rest at ARES...

Update on the Senate Report

A spokesman from Armor Group writes in to comment on the senate report:

“We are unable to comment on the detail of the report as this is the first we have seen of it.

However, what we can say is that ArmorGroup engaged workers from two local villages as stated by the Senate Report – but did so only upon the recommendation and encouragement of U.S. Special Forces.  ArmorGroup personnel remained in close contact with U.S. Special Forces personnel to ensure that the company was constantly acting in harmony with, and in support of, U.S. military interests and desires.”

 This is partially borne out by the report itself, which says that one of the two Afghan men -- Mr. White and Mr. Pink -- contracted by the company to provide security forces for a U.S. air base, was in fact recommended by American military personnel. But blaming the whole mess on U.S. Special Forces isn't going to win the company any supporters.

 

 

Mr. White vs. Mr. Pink, Afghan Style

(Pic: Paul McLeary)

Described by one observer as acting like Mafia dons, Mr. White and Mr. Pink were fierce business rivals. With a lot of money at stake, and the power and prestige that come along with that money, Mr. Pink did something any ruthless criminal might do: he made an attempt on Mr. White’s life. The initial attempt in July 2007 failed, but a few months later, in the midst of a large firefight between Mr. Pink and Mr. White’s men in December 2007, Mr. White was shot three times and killed.

Sound like a movie plot? The names, in fact, have been borrowed from Reservoir Dogs, a brutal Quentin Tarantino flick, but the event s are all too real. They took place in Herat, Afghanistan, between two warlords who had been tapped by American and coalition forces to provide men to guard the Shindand Airbase, an American military installation. They also serve as the driving narrative in an explosive Senate Armed Services Committee report (PDF!) issued late this afternoon on the role of private security contractors in Afghanistan.

The report, rolled out for reporters this morning by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), also tells the tale of two security contractors, Armor Group North America and EOD Technology, and the larger failure of American and international forces to contract out security work to Afghan nationals. The Senate Committee writes that in the course of its investigation, it “uncovered evidence of private security contractors funneling U.S. taxpayers dollars to Afghan warlord and strongmen linked to murder, kidnapping, bribery as well as Taliban and other anti-Coalition activities.”

The saga of Mr. White (real name Timor Shah) and Mr. Pink (Nadir Khan) is only part of the story, but deserves an airing. After Mr. White was killed by Mr. Pink, he then fled into the protection of the local Taliban while his men continued to work as security contractors for Armor Group at Shindand Airbase for more than a month. They were eventually fired for supplying intelligence about the base to Mr. Pink, who the U.S. military eventually identified as a “mid-level Taliban manager.”

Please read the rest over at ARES

 

Moving Day in Iraq

A few weeks back I blogged about Operation Clean Sweep, an Army-led effort to tag, catalog, and ship non-essential items out of Iraq prior to the ultimate drawdown of American forces. The larger story about the operation is out in DTI's October issue. You can read it here.

The Defense Department estimates that between May 2009 and August 2010, 2.4 million of the 3.4 million pieces of U.S. military equipment in Iraq were shipped out. At its height Clean Sweep boasted a force of 20,000 soldiers fanned out among U.S. forward operating bases across the country, poking their heads into warehouses, shipping containers and offices to find out what the military had in its inventory. “Our teams would go out and walk around with the units on the ground and get a good idea of how much stuff was there and what kind of resources we would have to send to get a site cleaned up,” Pagonis says. Some of his troops went so far as to head out with metal detectors to find things such as shipping boxes that were buried in the early days of the war and used as bunkers.

But not everything went smoothly. According to a June 2010 Inspector General’s (IG) report, the 13th Brigade’s Mobile Redistribution Teams (MRTs) ran into trouble with some units. “Not all units supported the MRT mission, limiting the effectiveness of Operation Clean Sweep,” the IG reported. In the course of a series of site visits to bases in Iraq, the IG found there were units “that denied the MRTs access to their excess equipment, did not comply with requirements to sort their excess equipment before the MRT’s arrival and did not provide adequate logistical support to the MRTs.”

And what did things look like when a unit denied or impeded an MRT’s access to their gear, or was being lax in packing their containers? Some storage units that were shipped to Kuwait were “poorly packed and some contained weapons and hazardous material.” Other containers not packed or shipped by MRTs held unserviceable and non-repairable equipment and trash that should have been destroyed or scrapped in Iraq.

But Pagonis downplays the problems his soldiers faced with units on the ground, saying that any initial friction “dissipated once they saw how quickly we could get rid of their stuff.” He adds that the receiving units in Kuwait would typically come across 2-3 containers a week that had problems, which averaged to less than 0.5% of all containers shipped out of Iraq. Most problem containers were those that had slipped through the grasp of the 13th, and more often than not came from units that shipped gear to Kuwait themselves.

Read the rest here