Back to news

July 25, 2019 | International, Other Defence

Newly installed SecDef: The budget deal provides a ‘good’ number for defense

By:

WASHINGTON – Newly installed U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper says he is happy with the two-year budget deal's recommendation for the Pentagon, despite it being $12 billion less than what the White House requested for fiscal 2020.

Speaking to press just hours after taking office, Esper also said he is focused on filling empty spots at the Pentagon as quickly as possible to “make sure we have that civilian control of the military” firmly in place.

The Trump administration's request for defense in FY20 was $750 billion, a number Democrats in Congress tried to reduce to $733 billion.

The nearly $1.4 trillion spending plan announced Monday — which would prevent a government shutdown this fall and do away with the final two years of budget caps known as sequestration — includes about $738 billion in military funding for FY20. That's a 3 percent increase from current-year levels, which seems fine with the man now running America's military.

“$738 [billion] is a good number. We also have two years. We expect to see two years' worth of numbers. To the degree we have predictability, to the degree we can avoid [continuing resolutions], those things allow us to plan and make more efficient use of our dollars,” Esper said. “So I'm good with those dollars. No complaints.”

Esper is the first confirmed defense secretary since Jim Mattis resigned at the end of last year. But a number of spots — including 14 of 59 political spots, and four of the top six roles in the department — are still filled by acting individuals, something Esper highlighted as an issue he's hoping to quickly address.

“My perspective was from a service secretary and I think it's always challenging — people in acting jobs, when you don't feel the full confidence in the role, sometimes folks tend to maybe not behave as confidently because you're unsure and you also don't want to bind the person-who-may-actually-be-confirmed's hands,” he said, adding he does not think the open spots impacted operations.

“We need to get staffed up quickly,” he said. “We have to get stable leadership.”

One of those empty spots is Army secretary, now vacant with Esper's promotion. Ryan McCarthy, the service undersecretary, has been nominated to fill the full role. Asked about advice for his successor, Esper joked that he hopes McCarthy won't “break anything,” before saying he expects McCarthy's nomination to arrive at the Senate in a “matter of days.”

“His paperwork is at the White House, and everybody we put forth needs to be thoroughly vetted. So I think he should soon be coming out of the process,” Esper said. “The question is if it will be soon enough for the Senate Armed Services Committee to do its due diligence in a timely matter.”

The secretary has also asked for new guidance to be issued to the field to inform service members on the “very important role of media and press” in society.

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2019/07/24/newly-installed-secdef-the-budget-deal-provides-a-good-number-for-defense/

On the same subject

  • Army’s Shift To FVL Poses Big Risks For Small Suppliers

    May 7, 2020 | International, Aerospace

    Army’s Shift To FVL Poses Big Risks For Small Suppliers

    After decades of building traditional helicopters in traditional ways, contractors must get ready for the Army's new high-speed Future Vertical Lift aircraft. Small makers of key parts need help. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on May 06, 2020 at 2:14 PM WASHINGTON: What worries the Army's aviation acquisition chief as he helps industry get ready to build a revolutionary new generation of aircraft in the midst of a global pandemic? “It's the mom and pop shops,” Patrick Mason said today. “It's the Tier 3 suppliers, typically on the hardware side.” “Those are the ones we remain focused on, because those are those are the ones that can end up in a single point failure,” the program executive officer for Army aviation continued. “That's what we're doing right now through COVID and we're going to continue to do that as we look ...to Future Vertical Lift.” While the big Tier 1 prime contractors should be fine, they depend on smaller Tier 2 suppliers for key components, and they depend on yet smaller Tier 3 suppliers. As you trace the provenance of a crucial component down that supply chain, you all too often find a single point of failure. That's some tiny, easily overlooked company that happens to have the only people who know how to build a particular part, like an actuator or a valve, or the only one who can apply a particular heat treatment or protective coating to someone else's part so it can survive the stresses of flight. It would be easier if the Army was just winding down production of one kind of traditional helicopter and ramping up another. Then industry could build any new parts required in the old way. But Future Vertical Lift is about building new kinds of aircraft in new ways. Even the most traditional-looking competitor, Bell's proposal for the FARA scout helicopter, is being designed, built, and tested using new digital tools. Those tools allow much greater precision and efficiency than traditional blueprints, but only for facilities that have the necessary technology installed. Bell and its rivals, Sikorsky and Boeing, are also all eager to use 3D printing and other advanced manufacturing techniques to improve the performance and reliability of key parts while reducing their cost. That's another set of new technologies that small firms can't easily afford. Will increasing sales of drones help make up the revenue? In addition to the optionally manned FARA scout and FLRAA transport, which will have human crews aboard for most missions, FVL is also building a whole family of completely unmanned aircraft. The major companies can get in on much of that business, Mason said, but some of their smaller suppliers can't. If you build electronics or write flight control software, then. you can work on either manned or unmanned aircraft. But, Mason said, if you specialize in building a particular kind of hardware for manned aircraft, most drones are so much smaller that they use entirely different systems, such electric actuators instead of hydraulics. So for small manufacturing shops, he said, “there's less synergy.” Mason's concerns were well supported by a study of the FVL industrial base by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, released today. “The primes are all in,” said Andrew Hunter, director of defense industrial studies at CSIS, who hosted yesterday's call, “[but] it's a big challenge for those Tier 3 and lower suppliers to make this transition.” During months of workshops with industry, “the concern that we heard expressed repeatedly was lower down the supply chain, [with] Tier 3 and lower suppliers,” Hunter said. “It's an expensive investment that they may be challenged to raise the capital to do, [and] it certainly will involve retraining their workforce to use these new manufacturing techniques.” “Industry has to see they're going to get a return on that investment,” he said. “Even optimistic management who are true believers and think they are definitely going to get a return on this investment because they're going to win [FVL contracts], they've still got to justify it to the banks. They've still got to justify it to their corporate boards.” Changing The Rules What complicates the business case for contractors is that the Army wants a new approach, not just to building the new aircraft, but also to how it keeps them flying. Over an aircraft's decades in service, the long tail of operations, maintenance, and upgrades dwarfs the up-front cost of research, development, and acquisition. While the CSIS study calculated that the Army could afford to build the Future Vertical Lift if budgets remain near historical averages – not guaranteed in the wake of the pandemic – the bigger risk is whether or not the service can control those Operations & Sustainment costs in the long term. Army Futures Command's director for aviation modernization, Brig. Gen. Walter Rugen, said he was confident that extensive physical prototyping and digital modeling would help the service get a handle on those costs. “Our requirements... are still in draft form, so if we need to trade one away to maintain our budgets, we will do that,” he said. “We are going to understand to the greatest degree possible what our O&S costs are and make sure that it's within our budget.” For helicopters, Hunter said, O&S is typically 65 percent of the total cost over the lifetime of a program. Now, not all that money goes to aerospace contractors, since sizable chunk goes to pay military maintenance personnel, buy fuel, and so on. But contracts to sustain existing aircraft are a more important revenue stream for most contractors than actually building new ones. While projected spending on R&D (blue) and procurement (red) rise and fall, remaining under $2.5 billion a year, Operations & Sustainment costs (green) remain largely constant at over $7.5 billion — a crucial source of cash for industry. (CSIS graphic) So any Army effort to economize on operations & sustainment hits contractors where they live. What's more, the Army isn't just trying to squeeze savings out of the existing process; it's changing the rules of the game. Historically, companies could bid low to build a new weapons system because, once they got the contract, they had a de facto monopoly on maintaining and upgrading that system for decades. Now the Defense Department is pushing hard to break this “vendor lock” in two main ways: It's increasingly requiring companies to hand over their intellectual property and technical data. The government can then give that data to potential competitors trying to build cheaper alternatives, as on the Army-run Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program. Second, it's requiring companies to make their products compatible with government standards for how different components fit together physically and connect electronically, with the aim of creating Modular Open System Architectures where you can swap out one company's component and replace it with another vendor's. Developing a common MOSA for all manned and unmanned aircraft is a top priority for the Army's Future Vertical Lift initiative. “Part of what we're doing [over] the next year, year and a half, is the strategy associated with the operational availability, that we want out of these platforms, the intellectual property we want to obtain,” Mason said. “What's the valuation of the IP, the intellectual property? Because intellectual property drives their ability to control the aftermarket, and the aftermarket is where you see the year over year cash flow [that's] critical to most of their business models.” “As you look at Modular Open System Architecture...the business case and the business model associated with it is something that we're working through with industry right now,” Mason said. “It is critical that we have the right incentive structure, it is critical that we provide the right framework so that industry continues to invest and they continue to see a return on that invested capital.” To prevail in future conflicts, “we can't afford not to do Future Vertical Lift,” Brig. Gen. Rugen said. “What this report talks to is national interest we have in preserving the rotorcraft industrial base as we go forward.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/armys-shift-to-fvl-poses-big-risks-for-small-suppliers/

  • Romania set to choose four new corvettes, frigate upgrade

    October 25, 2018 | International, Naval

    Romania set to choose four new corvettes, frigate upgrade

    Richard Scott, London and Luca Peruzzi, Genoa - Jane's Navy International Romania's Ministry of Defence is nearing a decision on the procurement of new multirole corvettes after receiving final bids at the beginning of October from Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding of the Netherlands, Italy's Fincantieri, and France's Naval Group. The EUR1.6 billion (USD1.85 billion) programme covers the acquisition of four corvettes, as well as the combat system modernisation of the Romanian Navy's two ex-UK Royal Navy Type 22 frigates Regina Maria and Regele Ferdinand . A source selection is scheduled for 26 October, although industry sources suggest this could slip by a number of weeks. Romania's requirement calls for a 2,500-tonne class multipurpose ship with capabilities across anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, anti-air warfare, electronic warfare, naval gunfire support, and search and rescue. The design is also required to provide aviation facilities suitable for an IAR 330 Puma 10-tonne helicopter and a shipborne unmanned aircraft system. In line with Romanian stipulations for local industry participation, all three contenders are proposing build and in-service support in conjunction with subsidiaries or partners based in country. Romania has asked for the first corvette to be delivered inside three years, with the programme to be completed in seven years. Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding is bidding a variant of its SIGMA 10514 design with sister yard Damen Shipyards Galati. To meet the Romanian requirement, Daman has specified a Thales Nederland combat management system (CMS)/sensor fit, the Raytheon Evolved SeaSparrow Missile System and Boeing Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles. The underwater warfare suite would be provided by General Dynamics Mission Systems-Canada. Fincantieri, which owns the Vard Braila and Tulcea shipyards in Romania, is offering a customised variant of the Abu Dhabi corvette previously built for the United Arab Emirates. It is likely that Vard Braila would be the focal point for both construction and in-service support if Fincantieri is selected. https://www.janes.com/article/83937/romania-set-to-choose-four-new-corvettes-frigate-upgrade

  • Landing Ship Medium requirements in final approvals with Navy, Marines

    April 4, 2023 | International, Naval

    Landing Ship Medium requirements in final approvals with Navy, Marines

    The Navy and Marines are back on the same page about a low-cost Landing Ship Medium, following negotiations over survivability and capability of the craft.

All news