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  March 23, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Pentagon declares defense contractors ‘critical infrastructure,’ must continue work

  By: Aaron Mehta Updated 3/20 at 6:45 PM EST with new comment from Bialos. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department has declared that defense contractors are “critical infrastructure” to national security, a designation that comes with an expectation to maintain a consistent, normal work schedule amid the outbreak of the new coronavirus, COVID-19. In a Friday memo to industry, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord made it clear that she wants defense companies to continue to deliver their products and services to the Pentagon on time. “If you work in a critical infrastructure industry, as designated by the Department of Homeland Security, you have a special responsibility to maintain your normal work schedule,” Lord wrote. “We need your support and dedication in these trying times to ensure the security of this Nation. I understand that this national emergency presents a challenge and we are dedicated to working closely with you to ensure the safety of the workforce and accomplishments of the national security mission.” Lord also spelled out large swaths of the industrial base for which this order applies, including the aerospace sector; mechanical and software engineers; manufacturing/production workers; IT support; security staff; security personnel; intelligence support; aircraft and weapon systems mechanics and maintainers; suppliers of medical suppliers and pharmaceuticals; and critical transportation. Included in the designation are personnel working for companies as well as subcontractors who perform under contract for the department. Contractors who perform tasks such as providing office supplies, recreational support or lawn care are not considered essential. By designating the defense industry in such a way, companies involved may be able to get around state-directed shutdowns such as the one in New York right now. Similarly designated workers include, among many others, law enforcement, health care providers, water and power authorities, and IT support for emergency services — all of whom are still on duty in the current crisis. In the memo, Lord noted, companies involved should “follow guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as State and local government officials regarding strategies to limit disease spread.” Some companies have instituted work-from-home policies where applicable, although in cases such as production of defense equipment or work in secure facilities, that option appears unrealistic. Force of law? Things may not be as cut and dry as Lord's memo makes it seem, warned Jeff Bialos, a partner with the Eversheds-Sutherland law firm and former deputy under secretary of defense for industrial affairs. He notes that Lord's memo is based on guidance, put out the day before by the Department of Homeland Security, which does not carry with it the force of law to override decisions on work stoppage that may come from a state. “These are guidelines only. They do not have the force of effect of law,” Bialos warned. Bialos thinks the memo may be a useful tool for industry to turn to local governments that are eyeing a work shutdown and say they should be given an exemption. But should the local government decide not to grant that exemption, how much force the memo may have is unclear. “Thee's no slam dunk here. Everyone is struggling with these issues. And I think what this memo does is put another arrow in the quiver of a company that wants to keep doing business to meet defense needs. And it also is a document companies can provide to localities and states, and say ‘please give us an exemption.'” In a statement released late Friday, Lt. Col. Mike Andrews, a spokesman for Lord, said the undersecretary met today with Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Ok., on the memo and other issues. Lord “remains committed to daily communication and collaboration with the defense industrial base, especially the defense industry trade associations. In addition, she'll be contacting several state Governors to discuss state-specific critical infrastructure and essential workforce efforts,” Andrews said, adding that a daily call between members of Lord's team and industry associations continues. Jerry McGinn, a longtime official at the department's Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, said the move was the right one to make. “You're essentially trying to keep that workforce engaged and supporting that customer. This is trying to give DoD organizations flexibility to reduce contract disruptions, stop-work orders, and other actions that could impact the contractor workforce” said McGinn, now executive director of the Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. “And that in general is a good thing. It's not something you want to do for six months, because then you might have trouble monitoring performance, but for this critical time it seems like a reasonable kind of thing to do.” https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2020/03/20/pentagon-declares-defense-contractors-critical-infrastructure-must-continue-work/

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  May 14, 2020 | International, Naval

  DoD asks Congress for a two-sub Columbia-class buy

  By: Joe Gould , David B. Larter , and Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon is asking Congress for authority to buy two of its new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, a potential mega-deal worth as much as $17.7 billion with far-reaching implications for the ailing submarine industrial base. If approved, the proposal would potentially lower the price by promising General Dynamics a steady stream of work at its shipyard as the Pentagon and its network of suppliers grapple with COVID-19's economic shocks. General Dynamics and the Navy have been negotiating the terms of a two-ship purchase, but nothing can be finalized until Congress authorizes the block buy. As the House and Senate Armed Services committees ready their drafts of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, it's customary for the Defense Department to send legislative proposals for the annual policy bill. It was unclear how Congress will ultimately react to this one, but at least one key lawmaker would “seriously consider” the proposal. Senate Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee Chairman David Perdue, R-Ga., “certainly supports and has been working toward better business practices in the Department of Defense. He would seriously consider any proposal that achieves cost savings or increases efficiency,” said his spokesperson, Jenni Sweat. The Columbia-class program is meant to design and build 12 new ballistic missile submarines to replace the Navy's current force of 14 aging Ohio-class boats. The president's budget estimated the cost of the lead Columbia-class sub at $14 billion, the second at $9.3 billion, and total procurement costs for all 12 at $110 billion. The Navy wants to procure the first Columbia-class boat in fiscal 2021, the second in fiscal 2024, and the remaining 10 at a rate of one per year from 2026 through 2035. The Navy has already spent about $6.2 billion in advanced procurement for the Columbia, which leaves about $8.2 billion remaining for the first boat. A summary of its new legislative proposal, obtained by Defense News, said the move is intended to “permit the Navy to enter into one block buy contract for up to two Columbia-class submarines (SSBN 826 and SSBN 827), providing industrial base stability, production efficiencies, and cost savings when compared to an annual procurement with options cost estimate.” Complicating matters is the potential for the coronavirus pandemic to create construction or funding issues that delay SSBN 826's first scheduled patrol in 2031, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report. To boot, it was unclear whether the Navy had accurately projected costs or whether stable funding would be available across the Navy's procurement portfolio. The Navy is confident the program is on track and negotiations are ongoing in line with what the Navy has previously disclosed, said Capt. Danny Hernandez, spokesman for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. “The Columbia program is on track, it is our top acquisition priority,” Hernandez said in an email. "Per the Navy's Budget Submission, the Navy plans to award a contract modification for construction of the first two Columbia-Class ships as a priced option in FY20. "Formal option exercise and SSBN 826 construction start are planned for October 2020, following required Congressional authorizations and appropriation of funds.” This week, the Navy and General Dynamics were still negotiating on the terms of the two-ship buy, but what the ultimate savings would be for contracting for two together was not clear yet, according to a source familiar with the talks. No final deal can be negotiated until Congress has authorized the contract. Also unclear is how perturbations in the system from the COVID-19 outbreak might impact the supply and labor system, the source said. Indeed, the potential impact of COVID-19 on an already stressed submarine industrial base is one reason the strategy could be important, said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer a senior fellow at the Conservative Hudson Institute think tank. “There has already been advanced procurement money provided by Congress that has been used to build missile tubes, nuclear reactors and propulsion plants,” Clark said. "But there is a bunch of other equipment on the ship that you would like to buy in quantities: Pumps, valves, fans, a lot of habitability systems. “If you double the number of ships, you double the number that you buy and maybe you reduce your costs, but more importantly you support your industrial base.” To date, disruptions to the submarine supplier base and the Electric Boat shipyard have been comparatively mild, two sources familiar with the situation said. General Dynamics is interested in locking in a larger block buy for the remaining ten boats, and a source familiar with the company's thinking said the precise savings would be clear once the company gets further along with construction of the first boat. The third ship will officially be procured in 2026, so it gives the parties time to understand the program better. The Navy has been public about its desire to buy the first two submarines as a block but given that it's a new start program, that seemed premature, said Project On Government Oversight military analyst Dan Grazier. He noted that a multi-year procurement, under the law, would require a stable design, while a block buy would not. “The Navy claims the Columbia's design is much further along in the process than the Ohio was at this point, but the Navy's track record of designing and building ships recently is quite poor," Grazier said. "The Zumwalts, LCSs, and the Ford-class ships were designed using similar methods and the results have proven to be both costly and disappointing. It would be better to build the first boat and make sure the design actually works as intended because if it doesn't, then the money we save now will actually cost us much more in the future.” Clark, on the other hand, argued that while early multi-ship buys on new classes of ships are usually a bad idea, Columbia might be a special case where the risks associated with early block buys are sufficiently offset. “You wouldn't want to do a block buy if you thought the design was going to change significantly, as in you were going to buy one or two hulls and then revise it based on the results of testing or production issues,” Clark said. “On this one, more of the design is more complete so they are confident it is mature. "And with the experience General Dynamics has with submarine construction, they are confident in their path to build it without significant design changes.” The Navy is aiming to have more than 80 percent of the Columbia's design complete prior to construction starting later this Fall, double where they were at the start of construction on the lead boat of the Virginia class. The Columbia class is not the only big-ticket weapons program where the Pentagon is seeking latitude from Congress in pursuit of savings. For the Lockheed-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, DoD has separately proposed to use department funds to again bulk buy F-35 components ― “material and equipment” in “economic order quantities,” the proposal synopsis says ― for Lot 15 in fiscal 2021 through Lot 17 in 2023. Lawmakers have historically been supportive of such moves, and Congress authorized the purchase of F-35 economic order quantity buys in the fiscal 2020 defense policy bill. In October, the Defense Department and Lockheed finalized a deal for F-35 lots 12, 13 and 14, but the order is structured so that lot 13 and 14 fall under separate contract options, differentiating it from a block buy. Lt. Gen. Eric Fick, who leads the F-35 program on behalf of the government, has said that arrangement would likely continue over the next several production lots. "To date, we are pursuing a base-plus-options production contract vehicle for [lots] 15 to 17,” Fick said in March at the McAleese and Associates conference. “The business case that supports a three year multi year has not been there. We have not seen from Lockheed a business case that merits tying up three years of appropriated funds.” Clarification: The story has been updated to clarify the specific transaction for which the Navy is seeking authority from Congress. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/05/13/dod-asks-congress-for-columbia-submarine-block-buy/

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  April 14, 2020 | International, Naval

  US Navy should turn to unmanned systems to track and destroy submarines

  By: Bryan Clark Anti-submarine warfare, or ASW, is one of a navy's most difficult missions. Sonars detect submarines with only a fraction of the range and precision possible using radars or visual sensors against ships above the water. Submarines can carry missiles able to hit targets hundreds of miles away, requiring searches to cover potentially vast areas. And the torpedoes that aircraft and surface ships use to sink submarines need to be dropped right on the submarine to have any chance of sinking it. These challenges led the Cold War-era U.S. Navy to rely on a sequential approach for tracking enemy submarines. Electronic or visual intelligence sources would report when an opposing sub was leaving port, and it would hopefully get picked up by sound surveillance, or SOSUS — sonar arrays on the sea floor — as it entered chokepoints, like that between Iceland and the United Kingdom. Patrol aircraft would then attempt to track the submarine using sonar-equipped buoys, or sonobuoys, and eventually turn it over to a U.S. nuclear attack submarine, or SSN, for long-term trail. The U.S. ASW model broke down, however, in the decades following the Cold War as U.S. submarine and patrol aircraft fleets shrank, the Chinese submarine fleet grew, and Russian submarines became quieter. Today, the U.S. Navy devotes enormous effort to tracking each modern Russian submarine in the western Atlantic. During the 2000s, the strategy of full-spectrum ASW started an essential shift in goals, from being able to sink submarines when needed to being able to defeat submarines by preventing them from accomplishing their mission. Full-spectrum ASW and other current concepts, however, still rely on aircraft, ships and submarines for sensing, tracking and attacking enemy submarines to bottle them up near their own coasts or sink them in the open ocean. Although SOSUS has improved since the Cold War and is joined by a family of new deployable seabed arrays, the next link in the U.S. ASW chain is still a P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, or a U.S. SSN. These platforms are in short supply around the world, cost hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to buy and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day to operate. With defense budgets flattening and likely to decrease in a post-COVID-19 environment, the U.S. Navy cannot afford to continue playing “little kid soccer” in ASW, with multiple aircraft or ships converging to track and destroy submarines before they can get within missile range of targets like aircraft carriers or bases ashore. The Navy should instead increase the use of unmanned systems in ASW across the board, which cost a fraction to buy and operate compared to their manned counterparts. Unmanned aircraft could deploy sonobuoys or stationary sonar arrays, and unmanned undersea or surface vehicles could tow passive sonar arrays. Unmanned surface vehicles could also deploy low-frequency active sonars like those carried by U.S. undersea surveillance ships that can detect or drive off submarines from dozens of miles away. Although autonomous platforms will not have the onboard operators of a destroyer or patrol aircraft, improved processing is enabling small autonomous sensors to rapidly identify contacts of interest. Line-of-sight or satellite communications can connect unmanned vehicles and sensors with operators ashore or on manned ASW platforms. A significant shortfall of today's ASW concepts is “closing the kill chain” by attacking enemy submarines. Air- or surface-launched weapons have short ranges and small warheads that reduce their ability to sink a submarine, but their cost and size prevents them from being purchased and fielded in large numbers. Unmanned systems could address this shortfall in concert with a new approach to ASW that suppresses enemy submarines rather than destroying them. During World War II and the Cold War, allied navies largely kept submarines at bay through aggressive tracking and harassing attacks, or by forcing opposing SSNs to protect ballistic missile submarines. The modern version of submarine suppression would include overt sensing operations combined with frequent torpedo or depth-bomb attacks. Although unmanned vehicles frequently launch lethal weapons today under human supervision, the small weapons that would be most useful for submarine suppression could be carried in operationally relevant numbers by medium-altitude, long-endurance UAVs or medium unmanned surface vessels. Moreover, the large number and long endurance of unmanned vehicles would enable the tracking and suppressing of many submarines over a wide area at lower risk than using patrol aircraft or destroyers. Today the U.S. Navy uses unmanned systems in ASW primarily to detect submarines. To affordably conduct peacetime surveillance and effectively defeat submarines in wartime, the Navy should increase the role of unmanned systems. Using manned platforms to conduct command and control, and unmanned vehicles to track, deter and engage submarines, could significantly reduce the costs of ASW operations and enable the Navy to scale its ASW efforts to match the growing threat posed by submarine fleets. Bryan Clark is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He is an expert in naval operations, electronic warfare, autonomous systems, military competitions and war gaming. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/13/us-navy-should-turn-to-unmanned-systems-to-track-and-destroy-submarines/