Author: alaysia.mckenzie

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

BY JEFF SCHOGOL of Task and Purpose

The U.S. military is making plans to evacuate its drone bases in Niger, but no such order is imminent, said Air Force Gen. James Hecker, commander of US Air Forces Europe/Africa.

“We are doing a lot of prudent planning, but right now we’re not going anywhere, and we don’t plan to go anywhere until we’re told to go anywhere,” Hecker told reporters on Friday. “And right now, there’s not a need to go anywhere, so our civilian leadership is just saying, ‘Hey, hang tight, and continue planning in case something happens.’ And we’ll be ready if something happens, but hopefully this thing gets done politically, diplomatically with no bloodshed.”

Hecker spoke during a Defense Writers Group event, which is based at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The U.S. military has two drone bases in Niger: One in the country’s capital of Niamey and the other, Agadez, that cost $110 million to build. After taking power last month in a coup, the military junta now ruling Niger closed the country’s airspace, preventing the U.S. from flying drone missions for now.

Roughly 1,100 U.S. troops are deployed to Niger, which has become an increasingly important partner for counter-terrorism operations in Africa. Several other countries in the region including Mali and Burkina Faso have experienced coups in recent years and become more closely aligned with Russia.

So far, the U.S. government is not calling the overthrow of Niger’s democratically elected president a coup, which would trigger the end of American economic and military assistance to the country.

Meanwhile, the 15-member Economic Community of West African States has threatened to invade Niger if ousted President Mohamed Bazoum is not restored to power, and Mali and Burkina Faso have both said they would consider such an intervention as an act of war against them.

Hecker said on Friday that U.S. Air Forces Europe/Africa has been ordered to conduct planning to evacuate the two drone bases in Niger under both permissive and nonpermissive circumstances.

“We are planning it because it’s prudent planning to be ready for all situations,” Hecker said. “There’s a lot of hypotheticals that we could come up with why and if we should evacuate. We are hoping that we don’t have to evacuate.”

The U.S. government is trying to reach a diplomatic solution to Niger’s current crises so that it does not turn violent, Hecker said.

If U.S. Air Forces Europe/Africa is ordered to conduct a gradual evacuation of the two bases that takes place under peaceful conditions, service members would take all U.S. military equipment with them, Hecker said.

Should the U.S. military be ordered to leave the bases under more dangerous conditions, it would just take sensitive equipment and leave behind housing units and other items deemed non-sensitive, he said.

It’s hard to say whether the U.S. military would make the two bases’ runways unusable before leaving, said Hecker, who noted that the base in Niamey is co-located with a civilian airport.

U.S. military planners are also looking at where else in Africa it could base surveillance aircraft, but that issue would ultimately be handled by the State Department, Hecker said.

Hecker stressed that U.S. Air Forces Europe and Africa would only execute these plans if asked by the U.S. government to evacuate its forces from Niger.

“That decision is not anywhere close to being made here,” Hecker said. “And I think we have weeks if not much longer before civilian leadership is going to give an order to evacuate or not evacuate. There’s no talk right now from our civilian senior leadership that tells us to leave. We are doing prudent planning for anything that they may ask us to do.”

OTHERS:

Niger coup: US military preparing for possible withdrawal from bases | Washington Examiner

Top US Air Force general was surprised that Russia 'gave up' trying to destroy Ukraine's Russian-designed air defenses so quickly (yahoo.com)

Top Ukraine War Lessons From USAF's Commander In Europe (yahoo.com)

US military in Niger drawing up evacuation plans amid coup, air force general says | Stars and Stripes

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Bryant Harris of Defense News

WASHINGTON ― A congressionally mandated commission on Tuesday took its first shot at convincing the Pentagon and Congress to reform its budget planning process.

The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Reform released an interim report detailing 13 improvements that could be implemented now and another 10 suggestions that require additional stakeholder feedback before the final report is due in March.

The Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution, or PPBE, process is the Pentagon’s multiyear system for aligning strategy with funding, which culminates in the president’s annual defense budget request to Congress. In the fiscal 2022 defense policy bill, Congress created a bipartisan commission to review the PPBE process.

“We’re looking at a number of improvements,” Commission Chairman Bob Hale, a former Pentagon comptroller, told reporters at a Defense Writers Group roundtable on Tuesday. “Can we make PPBE better able to foster innovation — because we know how important that is to national security — and to adapt more quickly to changing requirements?”

The recommendations for immediate implementation include:

• Improved Pentagon information sharing with Congress
• Consolidating budget line items
• Bolstering the Pentagon’s budget management workforce
• Modernizing information systems
• Streamlining disparate budget data sets within Pentagon budget offices

The commission is still seeking feedback from the Defense Department and Capitol Hill on its pending recommendations, which include:

• Making congressional appropriations available for two years, instead of one
• More flexibility for the Pentagon to reprogram certain funds
• Allowing new initiatives to begin even when Congress only passes short-term funding bills instead of a full budget

As part of its research, the commission has conducted 560 interviews so far with Pentagon and congressional staffers and compared the Pentagon’s PPBE system with the budget process in other federal agencies. It has also compared the U.S. defense budget process with equivalent systems in China and Russia as well as other allied countries with parliamentary systems.

“We want to make sure that we have stakeholder engagement so that when that final report comes out, it’s not a surprise to anyone and it is actionable,” said commission vice chairwoman Ellen Lord, who previously served as the Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. “There are some things in our interim report that can be acted on now. And we think there are many potential recommendations that will begin a dialogue.”

Immediate recommendations

To improve information sharing with Congress, the interim report recommends the Pentagon comptroller provide an annual midyear briefing to lawmakers to coincide with the yearly reprogramming request the Defense Department typically submits on June 30.

It also recommends moving from paper to electronic documents via classified and unclassified “enclaves” that would “include the electronic transmission of budget justification books that makes them searchable, sortable and able to be updated electronically.”

Hale noted Congress receives “an avalanche of information” when the president submits the defense budget request, but that the Pentagon is slower to provide updates later in the year “and sometimes it’s not consistent with information[lawmakers have] gotten before.”

Another recommendation calls on the Pentagon and Congress to collaborate to consolidate budget line items and accounts “where appropriate,” noting the current structure sometimes makes it “difficult for [the Defense Department] to manage defense programs and for Congress to clearly track and understand them.”

Additionally, it recommends standardizing the department’s detailed budget justification books in a common format while creating training courses for the staff who produce them.

The report also recommends improving recruiting and retention in the comptroller’s office while familiarizing them with private sector practices and improving analytic capabilities to reduce personnel workload. This pairs with another possible recommendation, pending feedback, that would call for increased staff levels in the comptroller’s office and the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation Office, or CAPE.

Another immediate recommendation would modernize and streamline Defense Department information, allowing for better budget analysis. That includes accelerating consolidation of the data sets used by the comptroller’s office and CAPE, which “have historically used separate databases and separate tracking systems,” resulting in duplicative entries in different formats.

Notably, the fiscal 2024 defense policy bill the House narrowly passed 219-210 in July includes a provision that would abolish CAPE and direct the defense secretary to move its functions elsewhere — without specifying exactly where.

“If they just abolished CAPE and didn’t provide those functions, it would be a disaster,” Hale told Defense News. “The commission report says both CAPE and the program budget organization within the comptroller provided strong support to the PPBE. I think the commission agrees with that.”

Possible recommendations

The commission is also considering some more significant changes to the PBBE process. These possible recommendations are contingent on stakeholder feedback.

Notably, the interim report says the commission “feels strongly that changes should be made” to provide congressional funds beyond a one-year basis.

One potential recommendation suggests a “two-year minimum availabilityfor all appropriations accounts, which would reduce use-it-or-lose it pressure and allow for reprogramming of expiring funds, particularly [operation and maintenance], reducing lost buying power due to expiration and cancellation.”

The report notes other agencies like NASA and the Department of Homeland Security run on two-year appropriations for some accounts and activities.

Other possiblerecommendations would have the Pentagon streamline its procedures to reprogram funds while allowing reprogramming under certain dollar thresholds for some accounts without advance congressional approval.

Finally, the commission is looking at how to help the Pentagon cope with Congress constantly forcing it to operate on short-term funding bills past the end of the fiscal year, which inhibit the Defense Department’s ability to launch new initiatives.

Hale said one potential recommendation “would be to allow new starts under a [continuing resolution] but with the provisio that all four defense committees had acted on the budget, passed a bill and none of them had prohibited that new start.”

OTHERS:

US DoD needs better budget communication with Congress, commission says (janes.com)

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/08/pentagon-may-be-too-busy-fix-its-half-century-old-budget-process-reform-group-says/389439/

New report calls for a reconsideration of the way the Department of Defense presents the budget to Congress - LatestFinance.News

'Wake up call': Panel identifies 5 'key' ways Pentagon can reform budget process now - Breaking Defense

Capitol Hill commission urges overhaul of Pentagon budget planning (yahoo.com)

Aug. 1, 2023

Chris Gordon, Air & Space Forces Magazine

Though a parade of senior American officials have visited China as of late to try to encourage a working relationship with Beijing, the Pentagon has yet to make significant progress in establishing substantive communications between the American and Chinese militaries—a tool for avoiding miscommunication and escalation during a potential crisis.

“Escalation management in the Indo-Pacific is so incredibly important, and we would be delighted to have increasing communication channels and connectivity with the [People’s Republic of China],” Mara Karlin Mara Karlin, a senior policy official at the Pentagon, told reporters Aug. 1 at a Defense Writers Group event.

But so far, that has yet to happen. Beijing has repeatedly rebuffed attempts by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to establish a channel for talking with his Chinese counterpart. 

“Secretary Austin has requested multiple times to have communication channels, particularly crisis communication,” said Karlin, who is performing the duties of deputy under secretary of defense for policy. “It’s really important that the most senior folks can talk to each other as quickly as possible when something happens. So Secretary Austin keeps asking for that.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for “reunifying” Taiwan with China, perhaps by force if need be, and objected to U.S. efforts to improve Taiwan’s defenses with military aid. The Chinese have ramped up military drills near the island in recent years, including sending warplanes into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone.

Tensions between the U.S. and China in the region have also grown. A Chinese jet came within a few yards of U.S. Air Force RC-135 over the South China Sea in December. In February, an F-22 Raptor shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon that transited the continental U.S. And in May, the Pentagon released video of another “unnecessarily aggressive” maneuver by a Chinese fighter intercepting a U.S. RC-135.

Heightening the potential for miscalculation is the often opaque nature of China’s decision-making. That tendency was highlighted by dramatic moves in late July when Xi sacked the head of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, which is in charge of China’s land-based nuclear missiles, and his foreign minister in short order.

The reason for the moves are not clear. But it comes as China is engaged in a substantial nuclear buildup that could leave it with a stockpile of 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, according to a Pentagon report released last year on China’s military power. 

In recent weeks the U.S. has attempted to stabilize the U.S.-China relationship. On July 12, Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Xie Feng met with Ely Ratner, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs. 

So far, however, the establishment of a military-to-military channel remains stalled despite recent visits to China by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and climate envoy John Kerry.

“We have been trying really hard to set up communication channels and they have not been enthusiastic about those,” Karlin said. “That’s really problematic. When we look at history, it is usually quite helpful for us to be able to sit down and speak with those whom we disagree, not least so we can get an understanding of what they’re doing, what we’re doing, what we all think is escalatory, and how we might understand it in different ways.”

Austin shook hands with his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu in June at a Singapore security meeting but did not have a substantial exchange, Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said in a statement at the time. Li is under U.S. sanctions, though the Pentagon says those would not prevent talks between the two defense chiefs.

Austin met with the Chinese minister’s predecessor, Wei Fenghe, in November 2022. 

Karlin pointed to how the U.S. has tried to manage the risk of escalation with Russia despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

She highlighted the example of the U.S. postponing a routine test of a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile that had been scheduled for March.  

“Now, this was just a regular old ICBM test,” Karlin said. “But understanding in that context was critical because the context was, of course, Russia’s military had just attempted this massive invasion. It wasn’t doing terribly well. Ukraine’s military was fighting a lot harder than perhaps some folks had expected. And so what would appear to be just a traditional old here’s what we do, not interesting, actually might be meaningful for escalation management.”

Others:

Pentagon’s strategy planner wants China crisis channels (yahoo.com)

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