Author: alaysia.mckenzie

Assistant Secretary John Plumb: “Now space is constantly a topic at the White House and at the Pentagon.”

By: Sandra Erwin

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department is prioritizing space like never before, assistant secretary of defense for space policy John Plumb said April 5.

Plumb, who recently announced he will step down after two years on the job, previously served in the Pentagon during the Obama administration, and he noted the stark contrast in how space issues are now being handled compared to a decade ago. 

Back then, space policy “was a hobby shop” and few people talked about space or discussed it in meetings, Plumb said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast meeting.

“Now space is constantly a topic at the White House and at the Pentagon,” he added. “It’s a very different situation.”

Rapid advancements in commercial space technology, coupled with the growing threat of adversaries’ space-based capabilities, have thrust space into the spotlight and is now viewed as fundamental to every aspect of national security, from communications to missile defense. 

Additionally, there is a growing number of nations and private companies with spacefaring capabilities, creating a more competitive environment. This spurred DoD to develop a strategy document released April 2 outlining how it would harness private sector innovation and integrate commercial space capabilities into military systems.

Plumb noted that various agencies across the military and the intelligence community have rolled out initiatives to increase use of private sector technology, but Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin wanted a more comprehensive blueprint for the department to convey the message “that we have to move faster,” he said. 

DoD has traditionally moved far too slowly when it comes to space innovation, Plumb noted, often taking five years to develop requirements and up to a decade to field new satellite constellations that then remain in service for 20 years without any meaningful technology refresh — a pace that is unsustainable in the face of rapid advancements by competitors like China. 

To solve that problem, DoD has to leverage private sector innovation, Plumb added.

Unfinished business

As Plumb prepares to depart the administration, there remains a significant amount of unfinished business within DoD’s space policy office.

More work is needed to figure out how to work more closely with allies on space security and how to share intelligence with private companies whose satellites could become targets during conflicts, he noted. 

More broadly, there is a need to press forward with a space policy that safeguards national interests while fostering responsible behavior in the space domain. There are norms that the U.S. and other countries have adopted to prevent the creation of space debris, for example. “But norms are not treaties, they are not laws,” said Plumb. “More work is needed” in the realm of international norms and collaboration to establish clear rules of the road.

Surprising developments in space

Plumb highlighted two developments that surprised him the most during his time in office: the rapid rise of low Earth orbit satellite communications as a game-changing technology in commercial and military applications, and the pace of China’s advances in both space and nuclear capabilities.

As he prepares to leave DoD, Plumb offered a piece of advice for his successor: “Pick an area to focus on and push, push, push.”

“Results matter,” he said. “Find things where you think you can make a difference. Otherwise the building tends to spread you thin. You just go to meetings all the time but never actually accomplish things.”

Others:

Results Unclear So Far For U.S. Pressure On Russian Space Weapon | Aviation Week Network

Space policy chief urges DOD to solve over-classification issues for commercial integration | DefenseScoop

But a spokesperson clarified that America continues to support "our ally."

ByLuis Martinez and Chris Boccia

The United States hasn't given Israel every weapon it has asked for as it continues military operations against Hamas in Gaza, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters on Thursday.

"Although we've been supporting them with capability, they've not received everything they've asked for," Gen. CQ Brown said at an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group,

That is partly "because they've asked for stuff that we're -- either don't have the capacity [for] or not willing to provide, not right now, in particular," said Brown, America's top military officer.

He did not provide details about what weapons systems are not being given to Israel: "I don't make those kinds of those decisions on what goes or doesn't go."

When asked if the U.S. has been withholding some aid to in order to get Israel to focus more on humanitarian aid or protecting civilians -- something the White House has criticized Israeli forces for, though Israel maintains it takes such steps despite the high death toll in Gaza -- Brown responded that the Israeli requests are seen through the same prism used for requests from other countries: how they could impact U.S. military readiness.

"It is a constant dialogue," he said.

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, wouldn't elaborate on Brown's comments during a separate briefing on Thursday, saying only that the U.S. remains committed to its "longstanding efforts to ensure Israel's qualitative military edge."

A spokesperson for Brown subsequently issued a statement clarifying that his remarks about Israel were "solely in reference to a standard practice before providing military aid to any of our allies and partners."

"We assess U.S. stockpiles and any possible impact on our own readiness to determine our ability to provide the requested aid," said the spokesperson, Navy Capt. Jereal Dorsey. "There is no change in U.S. policy. The United States continues to provide security assistance to our ally Israel as they defend themselves from Hamas."

Earlier this week, Brown participated in Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's meeting at the Pentagon with Austin's Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant. But Brown on Thursday declined to provide full details of that discussion.

He said that the Israelis had provided "broad concepts" of their operational plan for an expected incursion into the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza next to Egypt.

"We got a little more detail on some of the broad concepts of the humanitarian [plan] and moving civilians than we got on the operational piece," Brown said. "So I'm anxious to hear both of those and how that all comes together."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to go into Rafah to target Hamas fighters, despite U.S. concerns about the potential civilian casualties, some six months into a war that was sparked by Hamas' Oct. 7 terror attack.

Approximately 1.4 million Palestinians are thought to be taking refuge in the city.

More than 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a trip to the Middle East last week, said a major military operation in Rafah would be a "mistake" that would result in more civilian deaths and worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis.

Netanyahu has said going into Rafah is crucial for victory over Hamas and to prevent future terror attacks. Israeli forces have also said they plan to push civilians toward "humanitarian islands" in the center of Gaza in advance of an offensive in Rafah.

Brown said on Thursday that he would like to hear more details of the Israeli plans that "will help tell us a bit more of the feasibility of their plan and how they're going to execute."

Others:

The INSIDER daily digest -- March 29, 2024 | InsideDefense.com

BY JON HARPER

A commission on reforming planning, programming, budgeting and execution recently delivered its final report to Congress.

Trying to improve acquisition processes to help the Pentagon modernize its forces isn’t a new item on Congress’ agenda. But the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee told reporters that he expects lawmakers to move more aggressively to institute major reforms in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill.

A commission on reforming defense planning, programming, budgeting and execution recently delivered its final report to Congress, a nearly 400-page document that recommends a slew of changes in these areas.

“We are thinking … very seriously about that. The PPBE panel was extremely well done, the report was excellent,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., told reporters Monday during a Defense Writers Group meeting. “Frankly, we have been trying to reform the acquisition and budget system of the Department of Defense since I got here, and we make incremental progress. But we’re recognizing now that time is really not on our side, that we have to move much more aggressively. We have to be more responsive and flexible. And so … you’ll see a much more keener interest in trying to streamline how DOD develops and acquires equipment, how they deal with these new emerging technologies, which are changing so quickly. So we’re really interested in moving forward with significant reforms.”

On Wednesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee will be holding a hearing with leaders of the PPBE commission to discuss their findings and recommendations.

“The U.S. risks losing more of its already diminishing technological edge without immediate transformational changes in resourcing, especially in the year of execution. The Commission’s recommendations include much-needed changes to the period of availability of funds, account structures, reprogramming processes, and data sharing with Congress. These reforms also leverage modern business systems and data analytics to better manage resourcing and communications,” the report stated.

“One of the most consistent concerns the Commission heard over the past two years is that the current PPBE process lacks agility, limiting the Department’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to evolving threats, unanticipated events, and emerging technological opportunities,” it noted.

The panel’s recommendations for changes to help foster innovation and adaptability include allowing new-start programs and increased program quantities in certain cases when the Pentagon is operating continuing resolutions.

“The CRs generally include a provision prohibiting new start activities, which can slow efforts to insert innovative technology in both new and current programs,” the report noted.

The commission also called for increasing the availability of operating funds and raising dollar amount thresholds for so-called below threshold reprogramming (BTR), among other recommendations.

“Ultimately the Commission proposes eliminating BTRs and allowing a small percentage of an entire appropriation to be realigned with appropriate congressional briefings and oversight,” per the report.

Reed did not identify which of the recommended reforms he wants to implement, but he said including some of them will be a top priority when his committee takes up work on drafting the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.  

The SASC wants to move forward in its quest to streamline the acquisition process and enable promising capabilities and technologies to cross the so-called “valley of death” between research and development and large-scale production, he said.

Reed noted that he’s visited Ukraine and seen how Ukrainian forces have been able to quickly adapt commercial, dual-use technologies for military purposes in their fight against Russian invaders.

“We have to have the same type of resiliency. So that’s one thing we want,” he said.

Tech from the commercial sector, such as artificial intelligence and cyber capabilities, can help fuel military modernization in areas such as robotics. However, current budgeting and execution processes don’t give the Pentagon sufficient agility in adopting them, the PPBE commission said.

Meanwhile, the department last week submitted its fiscal 2025 budget request to Congress, which lays out plans for its modernization programs.

On Monday, Reed was asked to comment on the budget submission.

“Every budget is a work in progress. And we’re going to look very carefully at what the services need. We’re particularly waiting for their unfunded priority list so we can take a look at them. And then we’re going to make judgments, some of them independent of the administration’s proposal. But generally, I believe the … proposal sent out was thoughtful. It emphasized the need for innovation and it put pressure on the Congress to retire some systems that are no longer as functional as necessary. And we have to take our [legislative] responsibility too. And so I think we’re in a good position to begin this debate and get it done — hopefully this year, not next year,” he said.

Pentagon officials suggested that the DOD trimmed some of its requests for research, development, test and evaluation efforts — such as the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve — due to budget caps stemming from the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act.

“The Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) caps are mandatory and, if disregarded or exceeded, would be enforced by sequestration. Understanding those fiscal constraints, the Department made responsible choices to prioritize readiness and take care of people but make targeted reductions to programs that will not deliver capability to the force until the 2030s, preserving and enhancing the Joint Force’s ability to fight and win in the near term,” a DOD spokesperson said in an email to DefenseScoop.

Reed was asked how politically feasible it would be to lift the FRA caps, which set limits for defense and non-defense discretionary spending that vary depending on whether Congress passes full-year appropriations bills or CRs.

“We’re stuck with them right now. And it was really a quid pro quo for saving the country from an economic collapse if we hadn’t increased the debt ceiling. And now, it’s somewhat ironic that many of the folks that were insisting on that are now saying that the ceiling is terrible,” Reed said.

He noted that funding for border security has been one of the major sticking points in recent budget negotiations.

However, Reed suggested that he sees a potential opportunity to reach a deal on increasing spending for the Pentagon and other agencies in the future.

“I think what could drive an increase is recognizing that our national security is not simply the DOD budget, that there are other aspects [such as] our research in the sciences, our education activity, or health care activities,” he said.

“To me, one of the recruiting problems we’ve had in the military is because some young people would like to serve, but their education is such they can’t pass this very straightforward test to get in. That’s the reflection of our education system, not the military. We have a problem with obesity in our country that reflects on our public health care system. But if we had more fit young people, we’d have more recruits. So this is all one effort,” he added. “If there is a breakthrough, I think we would have to recognize, too, both sides of the agenda — both the defense and also domestic.”

Others:

Israel Will Dispatch Team to Hear Biden Administration Worries on Rafah - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

A Better Way to Give Pay Raises to Junior Enlisted? Key Senator Says It's Under Consideration This Year. | Military.com

Sen. Jack Reed praises Chuck Schumer's harsh critique of Israel's Netanyahu - Washington Times

By: John Grady

A mid-year budget review between the Defense Department and congressional committees could be the first step to improve relations between the Pentagon and Capitol Hill over spending, the chair of the commission charged with recommending ways to streamline the process told reporters on Monday.

When the budget is first presented, “an avalanche of information” is sent to Congress, but that slows down with additional data that is often late and incomplete, said Robert Hale, a former Defense Department comptroller.

The mid-year review is something that could be implemented quickly, he added. “We’re not waiting for the final report [due out in March] to sell” recommendations that can be acted immediately to congressional staff and senior Pentagon leaders. At the same time, it allows congressional members to give feedback.

Right now, the idea is still in the crawl step, if using a crawl-walk-run analogy, said Ellen Lord, vice chair of the comission and former top DoD acquisition official. She had “high expectations” for acceptance of many of the PPBE Reform Commission recommendations.

The congressionally-created commission recommends the mid-year review in its interim report.

“The budget proposal portion of this briefing would provide all the congressional defense, intelligence and military construction committee with the same information about new events and program status changes that would effect their review of the budget, perhaps including innovation opportunities,” reads the report.

While the existing system has strengths, the commission’s goal is to be “better able to foster innovation and adapt more quickly” to changes in the security environment like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s aggressive use of “gray zone tactics,” Hale said.

He added the review could also take advantage of innovation opportunities, often coming from firms not usually doing business with the Pentagon, that did not exist or were unknown when the budget was in its planning phase.

In the interim report, the commissioners wrote, they are “considering several alternatives to modify reprogramming authorities and policies such as authorizing below threshold reprogrammings at the account level and speeding up new start approvals.”

“The idea is to give [program managers and program executive officers] flexibility and retain [congressional] oversight,” reads the report.

As part of the commission’s work in the past six months, it studied how budgeting and buying works in China and Russia and with allies like Australia and Canada with democratic parliamentary governments. The commission also looked at other federal agencies like NASA and the Director of National Intelligence for ideas that could benefit the Pentagon.

Speaking Tuesday to the Defense Writers Group, Lord said the commission is looking to “take what works and streamline it” in the Planning, Programming, Budget Execution Process [PPBE].

She stressed to make this system work data transmission has to be moved back and forth in the same protected ways publicly-traded corporations transmit sensitive information “so as not to affect markets.” Communications between the Pentagon and Congress “must be much more data-driven,” Lord said.

She said this would be one way “to bring modern technology to the Building [Pentagon] and the Congress.”

Lord and Hale said this could speed fielding of new technologies and systems. Other ways to speed the process could come from consolidating how items of similar nature move through the Research, Development and Technology and Evaluation.

“Many small companies can’t wait 18 months” to find out if they are now a “program of record,” included in the budget, Lord added.

However, there likely would be pushback on Capitol Hill in losing oversight of spending, Lord said.

Predictability for the defense industrial base comes from the longer-term than a single-year budget parliamentary democracies use for their programs, Lord said.

The timing of the review in June or July would coincide with the existing reprogramming sessions between Congress and the department.

While not a budget amendment, the review could assist the committees in their mark-ups of the authorization and appropriations bills to know which programs are moving faster or slower than expected, Hale added. Meeting in a secure location, the review would be led by the Pentagon comptroller with the services’ sending representatives and the committees’ key staffers.

“It would also move the budget closer to strategy,” Lord said.

When asked if the review would reduce the number of “requests for information” coming from Capitol, both were doubtful. The report notes, “there is no incentive for congressional staff to decrease the number of questions they ask.”

Hale said in the six months of the panel’s work the commissioners feel there “is some appetite and willingness” to change in Pentagon and Congress.

“The whole ecosystem [in DoD and Congress] has been working on this issue” of how to speed defense business practices to encourage innovation that can be fielded more quickly, Lord added.

Others:

Commission Recommends Changes to DOD Planning, Budgeting Processes - U.S. Department of Defense (deal.town)

Acquisition Reformers: Pentagon Can Achieve ‘Quick Wins’ in Multiyear Overhaul (airandspaceforces.com)

Can IT restore Congress’ trust in the Pentagon? – DNyuz

‘Big changes’: Congressional panel proposes new defense budget system (ussanews.com)

Long-awaited report would replace DoD’s PPBE process with ‘Defense Resourcing System’ (federalnewsnetwork.com)

Commission Calls for Major Overhaul of Defense Process (nationaldefensemagazine.org)

BY ELLEN MITCHELL

The U.S. Army is cutting its force by about 24,000 positions, nearly 5 percent, in a restructuring effort it says will help prepare it to fight in future wars as it struggles to recruit soldiers.  

The cuts will bring the Army from a force structure of roughly 494,000 troops to 470,000 by fiscal 2029, mainly cutting already-empty roles such as jobs in counterinsurgency. Such positions increased during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but demand dropped off after the conflicts were ended.  

“We’re moving away from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency; we want to be postured for large-scale combat operations,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters Tuesday morning at an event in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Defense Writers Group.

While the Army is structured for a force of about 494,000, it currently only has roughly 445,000 active-duty soldiers. Its new plan seeks to fill the ranks over the next five years, getting to an eventual level of 470,000, according to a new service document released Tuesday.

To do that, the service seeks to phase out around 32,000 roles, with about 3,000 cuts from special operations forces and another 10,000 from Stryker brigade combat teams, cavalry squadrons, infantry brigade combat teams and security force assistance brigades, the latter meant to train foreign forces.

In addition, the service found 10,000 engineer jobs and related positions linked to counterinsurgency missions it can cut; it will slash about 2,700 roles from units that don’t usually deploy; and it will decrease the number of transients, trainees, holdees and students by approximately 6,300. 

Officials stressed that the planned reductions are “to authorizations (spaces), and not to individual soldiers (faces),” meaning already empty roles. 

“The Army is not asking current soldiers to leave,” according to the document. “As the Army builds back end strength over the next few years, most installations will likely see an increase in the number of soldiers actually stationed there.” 

The plan also looks to add back 7,500 troops in missions seen as more critical, such as air-defense and counterdrone units and five new task forces for better capabilities in intelligence, cyber, and long-range strikes.  

Three of the task forces would fall under U.S. Army Pacific — with the Indo-Pacific theater considered the most important for national security in the years ahead — one will be within U.S. Army Europe-Africa, and the last likely focused on U.S. Central Command in the Middle East. 

The plans indicate a major shift within the Army as the military anticipates future conflicts as large-scale operations against more advanced adversaries such as China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. They also reflect the service’s struggles with recruiting, a phenomenon happening across the military.  

The Army for a decade has struggled with recruiting shortfalls, not meeting its annual goal for new enlistment contracts since 2014, according to Wormuth. That means jobs have been left empty due to a lack of warm bodies. 

Last fiscal year, only the Marine Corps and the Space Force met their recruiting targets, while the Army fell 15,000 people short of its 65,000 person goal. 

The year prior, the Army also missed its 60,000 enlistment goal by 15,000.  

Wormuth acknowledged that the recruiting challenges have strained current service members, on full display when she visited with troops at Fort Cavazos, Texas, earlier this summer. 

“They feel like they have very full plates and they are doing the work of one and a half to two soldiers,” she said. “I think that’s a reality. … There’s no doubt that it’s putting some strains on our shoulders.” 

Others:

Continuing resolution could degrade training for future fights (navytimes.com)

Army has funneled $500M from forces in Europe and Africa to train Ukrainian troops, Wormuth says | Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON --- This has been the most transformative year for U.S. force posture in the Indo-Pacific in a generation, Ely Ratner, assistant defense secretary for Indo-Pacific security affairs said today.

Even with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Hamas attack on Israel, terror attacks in the Red Sea and more, DOD has concentrated on the "pacing challenge" for the United States -- China, he told the Defense Writers Group.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific defense strategy has made steady and impressive progress over the past year, Ratner said. While the force posture progress is perhaps the most notable, other aspects of the strategy have contributed to the overall U.S. position in the region.

On the defense side, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has concentrated on China, because it "has been identified as the only country in the world with both the will and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order," Ratner said. "That was the assessment at the time of the release of the National Defense Strategy, and that remains the assessment today."

China has the ambition and the will and is developing the capabilities to become "the national security challenge of our time," Ratner said.

Still, the United States is rising to the challenge, the assistant secretary said.

Austin's travels throughout the region over the past year have also been marked by major achievements in implementing strategy in the region, Ratner said. In December 2022, the Australia-U.S. talks ushered in major new force posture initiatives in Northern Australia in January 2023, he said.

During talks with Japan, there were announcements of major revisions to U.S. force posture in Japan, including the stand-up of a Marine Littoral Regiment in Okinawa, the Marines most advanced fighting formation. There were other revisions that made "U.S. posture in Japan more resilient, more mobile, more distributed and more lethal," he said. In addition, the two nations agreed to increase cooperation and exercises and discussed Japan's counterstrike capabilities.

In February, Austin traveled to Manila where he negotiated for four more enhanced defense cooperation agreement sites. This enhanced the strategic opportunity for U.S. forces to work with Philippine counterparts, he said.

Austin traveled to the region in May and June, met with many allies and partners. Ratner said Austin discussed the United States' ideas for the region with these partners. The U.S. strategy is shared by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, India, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and by some European nations as, well, Ratner said.

"This is not an American vision for the region," the assistant secretary said. "This is a vision shared by our allies and partners."

Austin visited New Delhi and signed a new defense industrial base cooperation road map. Ratner said this is a historic agreement "that is setting our countries toward a deeper level of cooperation and an area that has been aspirational for decades."

Austin became the first U.S. secretary of defense to travel to Papua New Guinea, where he signed a new Defense Cooperation Agreement. "We are looking to increase access in [Papua New Guinea] through some upgrading of their port and airport facilities and other critical step[s] in terms of working toward that more distributed posture in the region.

The secretary journeyed to Brisbane for more talks with Australian leaders that continued furthering force posture cooperation across all domains, including space.

Finally, last month, Austin spent 10 days in the region visiting India, South Korea and Indonesia, where he attended the Association of Southeast Asian Nations defense ministers meeting.

"Within a 50-day period the secretary met face-to-face with all five of our treaty allies in the Indo-Pacific region, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, Japan and South Korea," Ratner said. "These are remarkable engagements with our allies during a time [when] there are other things going on in the world."

"We are, through the investments we are making, more capable in the region," he said. "We're more forward in the region due to the force-posture changes that we made. And we're more together in terms of really remarkable progress and deepening our cooperation with our allies and partners."

Others:

DOD staff working on new 'mil-to-mil' communication with China | InsideDefense.com

Use more drones, US tells allies, partners – DNyuz

The Pentagon sees its task as deterring the PRC in order to prevent an "invasion" of Taiwan - Pravda EN (pravda-en.com)

U.S. lacks the infrastructure it needs to produce the nuclear weapons needed to keep pace with Russia and China, according to a congressional panel.

“I think we have to be very practical. And right now, pretty much everything is behind schedule and over budget,” Madelyn Creedon, chair of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, told reporters Thursday at a Defense Writers Group event. 

The commission’s final report, released in October, argues that the U.S. lacks the comprehensive strategy and force structure needed to face the nuclear threats of the future. 

Critics have responded that the commission’s “full-throated embrace of a U.S. nuclear build-up…ignores the consequences of a likely arms race with Russia and China.”

The report says today’s nuclear bombers, submarines, and ICBMs could fail before their replacements are ready.

“All three of the major platform programs—B-21, Columbia, and Sentinel—are already experiencing delays,” the report says. “Further delays in delivering modernized systems, or early aging out of legacy systems, could create shortfalls in U.S. nuclear capabilities if adequate mitigation measures are not developed and implemented.”

The Sentinel program, for example, which aims to replace 400 ICBMs, 450 silos, and more than 600 facilities, recently saw its planned initial capability delayed by a year to 2030. 

“We haven’t done a new missile like this in 50 years. I know people talk about where we did a Peacekeeper, but the Peacekeeper was just the missile. It wasn’t the launch control facilities. It wasn’t redoing all the silos…we haven’t done this in a very long time,” Creedon said, noting similar delays with the Navy’s Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program. “So one of the lessons learned is ‘don’t let these things die’. Don’t let these things atrophy. Keep, at some level, the industrial base alive.”

The commissioners rejected suggestions that the aging ICBM force be retired, not replaced by a new generation of weapons that critics have called vulnerable, unnecessary, and destabilizing. Land-based missiles provide “unique strengths,” the report says, citing their ability to be launched quickly during an enemy attack or to ride out a strike—two capabilities shared by submarines.

The report says that part of the reason for modernizing the nuclear force is to deter China and Russia if U.S. conventional forces cannot.

“The objectives of U.S. strategy must include effective deterrence and defeat of simultaneous Russian and Chinese aggression in Europe and Asia using conventional forces,” the report states. “If the United States and its Allies and partners do not field sufficient conventional forces to achieve this objective, U.S. strategy would need to be altered to increase reliance on nuclear weapons to deter or counter opportunistic or collaborative aggression in the other theater.”

Critics of the report say it leans too hard on this “doomsday scenario” of simultaneous attacks, and ignores the likely consequences of a nuclear build-up. 

“If the United States responds to the Chinese buildup by increasing its own deployed warheads and launchers, Russia would most likely respond by increasing its deployed warheads and launchers. That would increase the nuclear threat against the United States and its allies. China, who has already decided that it needs more nuclear weapons to stand up to the existing U.S. force level (and those of Russia and India), might well respond to the U.S and Russian increases by increasing its own arsenal even further,” wrote Hans Kristensen and three colleagues at the Federation of American Scientists.

The report does not attempt to put a price tag on its recommendations. It acknowledges that more money would be needed—in 2021, the Congressional Budget Office put the cost of nuclear modernization plans at $621 billion—but says nuclear-weapons efforts are “a relatively small portion of the overall defense budget but provide the backbone and foundation of deterrence and are the nation’s highest defense priority.” does not attempt to put a price tag on its recommendations. It acknowledges that more money would be needed—in 2021, the Congressional Budget Office put the cost of nuclear modernization plans at $621 billion—but says nuclear-weapons efforts are “a relatively small portion of the overall defense budget but provide the backbone and foundation of deterrence and are the nation’s highest defense priority.” 

Among the recommendations: add a third shipyard to produce nuclear-powered vessels, especially submarines.

Among the recommendations: add a third shipyard to produce nuclear-powered vessels, especially submarines.

“We made this recommendation for a third shipyard because we know, right now, that we need more conventional capability in the Asia-Pacific and we also know that, right now, it’s going to be very hard for the Navy to produce the Virginia class. Even on the schedule that they want to,” said Creedon, who was the former principal deputy administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration. “But it isn’t just the floor space, it’s also people…It’s concrete, it’s rebar, it’s everything” from engineers and physicists to technicians and electricians. 

Part of that workforce challenge goes beyond jobs and training but making areas where the work would be done more livable. 

“If you’re going to recruit people to come out and do these things that we need them to do, you need to make sure that there are schools there for their kids to go to that aren’t an hour and a half away,” said Rebeccah Heinrichs, a commissioner and director of the Hudson Institute’s Keystone Defense Initiative. “There are second-, third-order, issues that we simply have to take, but it takes a national focus over many years.”

The Pentagon is planning to release its first defense industrial base strategy in December, which is expected to focus on areas like supply chains, workforce, and emerging technologies. 

The Pentagon is planning to release its first defense industrial base strategy in December, which is expected to focus on areas like supply chains, workforce, and emerging technologies.

The post Does the US have what it takes to keep its nuclear edge? appeared first on Defense One.

   ASHLEY ROQUE

“I've talked to Congress in classified sessions on this, but how we choose to speak about it, in terms of the particular programs or projects that will be accelerating through Replicator is to be determined,” said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department will decide by mid-December which attritable autonomous systems will be the first ones mass produced under the new Replicator initiative, but don’t expect a big public unveiling, according to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.

“We will select the candidates within the next … three weeks,” Hicks said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington, DC, today. “I would not necessarily say the candidates will be announced. We’re being very careful.”

Since the ultimate goal is to mass produce those drones for the Indo-Pacific theater to create a dilemma for the Chinese military in the event of conflict, she said details — including what systems are selected — are likely to remain scarce to avoid undermining the entire effort. 

“We will be very clear and transparent with Congress. I’ve talked to Congress in classified sessions on this, but how we choose to speak about it, in terms of the particular programs or projects that will be accelerating through Replicator is to be determined,” Hicks added. She did not disclose if a “controlled unclassified information” stamp will be attached to that list.

That said, though, the selected projects are already in the fiscal 2024 budget request, and Hicks said the department is not looking for a new chunk of money for this first tranche of Replicator drones. Instead, it is seeking ways to speed up production and delivery and bridge one valley of death between innovation and fielding. 

“How do we pick the ones that are most relevant for Indo-Pacom and that can deliver quickly and that can deliver in quantity? That’s what we’re looking at right now,” Hicks said. 

In late August, Hicks unveiled the new Replicator initiative that is designed to find attritable autonomous systems already in the services or combatant commands pipeline and crank out thousands over the next two years. Since that initial announcement, details have been slowly trickling out but also prompting questions from analysts and lawmakers about implementation and funding, including from Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Armed Services cyber, innovative technologies and information systems subcommittee.

Hicks said that while she doesn’t anticipate needing additional FY24 dollars for Replicator, the department may for FY25, and a budget request that is still being crafted. Specifically, the department is eyeing additional attritable systems for its Replicator umbrella that are less mature today but could be ready for mass production within the next 18 to 20 months.

“We’ll add funds as needed in there, or maybe the services have already put the funds there: We’ll be able to tell the Hill what that looks like,” Hicks said, noting that she has already spoken with Gallagher.

“I have been very clear with him, and I will say very clearly here: We are all about the strategy winning. We are not going to go after long-range strike platforms or systems or munitions that are critical to the fight in order to look at another approach here, which is complementary to [but] doesn’t substitute for it,” she added.

Others:

Hicks: DOD Is Becoming More Agile (globalsecurity.org)

Stopgap funding is undercutting US military modernization, while another budget time bomb is about to explode | Washington Examiner

Pentagon Is Poised to Pick ‘Replicator’ Drones to Counter China (vnexplorer.net)

Oct. 4, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

An Air Force task force charged with advancing new technologies is considering fielding one-way attack drones in the Middle East, the top USAF commander for the region told reporters Oct. 4.

Task Force 99, a small detachment in Air Forces Central (AFCENT), is exploring kinetic and electronic warfare options for unmanned aerial systems, AFCENT commander Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich said at a Defense Writers Group event.

AFCENT’s future drones “could include being used for one-way kinetic attack—the kamikaze drones that have been used against us,” Grynkewich said. “That is certainly something that we’re looking at.”

U.S. personnel in the Middle East have been targeted by drone attacks launched by Iranian-backed militias. In March, a drone that the U.S. said came from an Iranian-backed militia killed a U.S. contractor and injured numerous U.S. military and civilian personnel in eastern Syria.

Iranian-supplied one-way attack drones have also been used extensively by Russian forces in their invasion of Ukraine.

Task Force 99 was established a year ago to develop unmanned and digital technologies and explore their application in an operational environment. It is comprised of a small team of about 15 Airmen that operates out of Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, and is largely unfettered by traditional service bureaucracy.

“They just happen to be the right people with the right skills that we discovered—knew how to code or knew how to 3D-print,” Grynkewich said.

The task force’s current fleet is made up of 98 drones either in its inventory or on order, with ranges that vary from fewer than 15 miles to 900 miles.

Some of its drones have already been used for operational intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. Unlike MQ-9s, the Task Force 99 drones can fly below cloud cover to gather information with high fidelity.

“They’ve proven capable,” Grynkewich said of the systems. “Using smaller, more bespoke capabilities that fly lower and under the weather, we’ve been able to use high-resolution cameras and get information on things that might be a threat to us. So that’s one use case that we’ve really started to flesh out.”

Grynkewich declined to definitively say Task Force 99 will field one-way attack or electronic warfare drones. But he said such capabilities might be useful.

“I call it imposing dilemmas on the adversary,” Grynkewich said. “In a way these are just low, slow cruise missiles with different payloads. So we’re looking at that as options. But it also could include something that can do spectrum warfare, something that just harasses the adversary, etc.”

Grynkewich said that the Pentagon’s Replicator Initiative, which was recently announced by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, could provide an important boost for the task force. That effort aims to field thousands of new drones in the next 18-24 months, which could help Task Force 99 field drones at a greater scale.

Task Force 99 “does a really good job of surveying the innovative space for technologies, bringing them into a realistic combat environment, austere environment, a hot environment, a humid environment, and testing them,” Grynkewich said. “We can come up with concepts of operation to use them. But getting them from that next step where we need to scale is a little bit difficult.”

“I think what Replicator will do is help us make that shift,” he added.

While Grynkewich did not name commercial drones Task Force 99 has used, he did give an example of “adaptability” when asked how AFCENT might create an attack drone. Task Force 99 has 3D-printed a system it calls “Kestrel” for around $2,500 per drone with a range of about 100 kilometers.

Kestrel is “something that can be relevant on the battlefield,” he said. “$2,500, that includes all the avionics. What it doesn’t include is a payload. It can carry about a three-kilogram payload, plus or minus. That payload could be any number of things that you put in it.”

By Josh Keating of The Messenger

The U.S. government is concerned about foreign actors, including China, using new artificial intelligence tools to spread lies and disinformation in the U.S. during the 2024 presidential election, as well as launching cyberattacks aimed at “sowing chaos” in U.S. society, a top Pentagon cyber official said on Friday. 

“Certainly [the People’s Republic of China] is one of the actors that we are quite concerned about when it comes to elections defense and foreign malign influence,” Mieke Eoyang, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, said at a reporter’s roundtable hosted by George Washington University. “And I think our concern is that they will see the value in that kind of misinformation/disinformation, and use these tools to get better.”

Eoyang said that generative artificial intelligence capabilities–programs such as ChatGPT which study huge data sets in order to generate plausibly realistic text or images–can be useful as a “means to help people who may have not a particularly wide range of language skill affect a nation where they don’t speak the same language.”

That means that future misinformation campaigns targeting U.S. elections could be cheaper and easier to carry out than Russia’s well-publicized efforts in 2016. They could also be more effective. 

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported on a Chinese misinformation campaign which used AI-generated text and images to suggest that the recent wildfires in Maui were caused by a “weather weapon” being tested by the U.S. government. It’s believed to be one of the first large-scale efforts to use artificial intelligence to spread misinformation, and officials worry it could be a preview of what’s in store for the 2024 election.

Traditionally, state-backed online influence campaigns like these have been carried out by large groups like the St. Petersburg-based troll army employed by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, or the so-called “50-cent army” of online nationalists who push messages on behalf of the Chinese government.  

AI could allow governments to generate the same amount of content with far less manpower, and potentially higher believability. A report released by the RAND Corporation this month suggested a scenario in which social networks like Twitter and Facebook would be populated by massive numbers of AI-generated fake accounts that “do not just sound like native U.S. English speakers but use regional variations, such as “Pittsburghese” or Southern American English. They get jokes and U.S. cultural references, and they post pictures of their life: camping with the kids, their dog lying on the living room rug, a birthday party…they also share their political opinions from time to time.”

According to the Times report, U.S. intelligence officials believe Chinese influence campaigns will likely try to undermine support for President Joe Biden and boost the campaign of Donald Trump, but Eoyang wouldn’t comment on Beijing’s intentions.

“I wish I could read Xi’s mind,” she said. 

Eoyang also noted that efforts to bolster election cybersecurity have “broad bipartisan support.”

Elections are not the only area of concern for U.S. cybersecurity officials when it comes to China. Earlier this week, the Pentagon released a new cybersecurity strategy, the unclassified version of which warned that both China and Russia “have embraced malicious cyber activity as a means to counter U.S. conventional military power.”

Last May, Microsoft released a report on a state-backed Chinese hacking group nicknamed “Volt Typoon,” which it said has targeted a wide range of  government and private organizations and is part of a campaign aimed at disrupting “critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises.”

On Friday, Eoyang said the Volt Typhoon report and other recent revelations of Chinese activity suggested “a theory of disrupting military mobilization, but also sowing chaos in the United States.”

Others:

‘Be careful what you wish for:’ DoD official warns separate cyber force could pose new challenges | USSA News | The Tea Party's Front Page.

Senior DOD official on creating an independent cyber service: 'Be careful what you wish for' | DefenseScoop