July 23, 2024 | International, Land
NATO’s newfound knack for hefty bulk buys has arms maker RTX perked up
Company executive Tom Laliberty believes the alliance's joint purchasing model could also work in areas other than air-defense interceptors.
February 11, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Pentagon budget request increases R&D funding, cuts legacy planes
By: Aaron Mehta
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump's defense budget request for fiscal 2021 includes major investments in research and development portfolios as well as “crucial” technologies as part of what the Pentagon is branding an “irreversible implementation” of the National Defense Strategy.
However, the budget also features overall cuts to the Army and Navy top lines, as well as the divestment of legacy platforms from the Air Force.
The president is requesting $705 billion for the Defense Department, including $69 billion in overseas contingency operations, or OCO, wartime funds. Total national security spending, including for the National Nuclear Security Administration and other outside agencies, is $740 billion, as set by a congressional budget agreement last year.
Although not included in the budget documents, total top-line projections over the Future Years Defense Program, or FYDP, are $722 billion in FY22, $737 billion in FY23, $753 billion in FY24 and $768 billion in FY25, according to a senior defense official.
Service budget top lines are $178 billion for the Army, a drop by $462 million from FY20 enacted levels; $207 billion for the Navy, down $1.9 billion from FY20; and $207 billion for the Air Force, up $1.7 billion from FY20. The budget also requests $113 billion for defensewide efforts, which includes the so-called fourth estate agencies, down $6.5 billion from FY20. Overall procurement funding sits at $136.9 billion.
The OCO request of $69 billion is down dramatically from last year's $164 billion, and it comes in three flavors:
- $20.5 billion in “direct war requirements,” or funding for combat operations that will end at some point in locations like Iraq and Syria.
- $32.5 billion in “enduring requirements,” which covers funding for the sustainment of bases, as well as pots of money like the European Deterrence Initiative.
- $16 billion in “OCO for base,” a funding mechanism for money that could be in the base budget but is classified as OCO for the purpose of skirting budget caps imposed by Congress.
Projection for OCO funding falls $20 billion in FY22 and FY23, and then to $10 billion for FY24 and FY25, as “certain OCO costs” are absorbed by the base budget, according to the White House's summary tables. There's no nondefense discretionary OCO proposed for FY21 or the out years.
“This is a budget that makes difficult choices but they are actually choices that support the National Defense Strategy,” a senior defense official said on condition of anonymity ahead the budget rollout.
“We can't have the best of everything in all areas,” the official added. “The low-hanging fruit is gone.”
Among the tough choices: retiring 17 B-1 bombers, 44 A-10 planes, 24 Global Hawk drones, as well as 16 KC-10 and 13 KC-135 tankers from the Air Force.
“When you look at these aircraft, they disproportionately take too much of the readiness account. That's where we've got to go,” the official said. “Those are really the tough choices we had to make. Because we can now take the additional manpower, the [spare parts], all those things we need to make those other aircraft more operationally available and have more flight hours available in the mission we need them to do.”
Congress usually revises presidential budget submissions substantially before passing them into law. A prime target for lawmakers this year will be the Trump administration's favoritism for defense spending over nondefense, which contradicts the rough parity between two that's characterized bipartisan budget deals in recent years.
Congress will also likely upend the administration's FY21 proposal to cut the nondefense base budget by 5.1 percent while adding 0.08 percent to the base defense budget. There are slim odds for Trump's proposal extending budget caps — set to expire next year — through 2025, wherein defense would increase by roughly 2 percent each year as nondefense discretionary decreases 2 percent each year.
‘Irreversible'
Budget documents were branded with the phrase “irreversible implementation of the National Defense Strategy,” a notable signal in an election year that, should Trump not be reelected, could result in major changes to the national budget and American strategy come January.
The branding in support of the NDS can be found throughout the document, even at lower levels. For instance, the Pentagon's security cooperation account has been rebranded the “NDS Implementation (NDS-I) account.”
Missing from the budget request are funds for Trump's border wall with Mexico. However, CNN reported this weekend that “billions” of defense dollars will be going toward the wall effort, with an announcement expected later this week.
Key defense spending accounts break down like this:
- Mission-support activities: $66.8 billion
- Aircraft and related systems: $56.9 billion
- Shipbuilding and maritime systems: $32.2 billion
- Missiles and munitions: $21.3 billion
- Space-based systems: $15.5 billion
- Ground systems: $13 billion
- C4I systems: $11.9 billion
- Missile defeat and defense programs: $11.6 billion
The department is requesting $106.6 billion to fund research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) efforts, an increase of $2 billion over the FY20 enacted figures — something another senior defense official called the “largest [RDT&E] request in over 70 years.” Funding for that came from savings from the defensewide review, which found $5.7 billion in money to reprogram in FY21, as well as the retirement of older platforms.
Four “crucial” technologies are now bunched together under a new acronym — ACE, which stands for advanced capability enablers: hypersonics at $3.2 billion, microelectronics/5G at $1.5 billion, autonomy at $1.7 billion, and artificial intelligence at $800 million.
However, for the second straight year, science and technology funding for early technology development (the Pentagon's 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 accounts) is requested at $14.1 billion; that includes $3.5 billion for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Congress plussed that funding to $16.1 billion in FY20 enacted levels, meaning the request here is $2 billion less than what the Pentagon received this current year.
Cyber activates total $9.8 billion, including $5.4 billion for cybersecurity-focused projects. The rest of the funding goes toward supporting defensive cyber operations.
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November 9, 2018 | International, Land
From crowd control to ‘wireless energy beaming,' the Army’s new vehicles must have more power but use less fuel
By: Todd South As Army leadership looks to transform ground operations and logistics experts shave supply requirements such as fuel, work being done to generate more electric power with less fuel is at the heart of the land fight in the next wave of warfare. The two paths converge at work being done to “electrify” the future vehicle fleet at the Army's center for vehicle research – the Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center. A November forum at TARDEC focused on advances in vehicle electrical power as service leaders, industry experts and researchers pursue ways to give more soldiers more power to run complex systems of the future. The first such forum took place in June and laid out an overview of what will need to happen to reach Army goals. Over the next year, participants will refine their plans to build a complex fleet of vehicles capable of a host of tasks not yet fielded. Vehicles have come a long way from moving forward and backward and carrying troops and ammo. “The electrical demands on the Army's vehicles today are growing far beyond anything we've seen before,” said George Hamilton, TARDEC's lead for Vehicle Electronics Architecture. “Our focus is on developing and providing a modular, flexible and adaptable vehicle architecture that can expand to meet future demands of all kinds.” And the goals are ambitious. The Army wants most of the electrification infrastructure in place or ready for testing by mid-2024 and a working, all-electric power train for the fleet by 2027. The systems and capabilities that the electrification project is pursuing are aimed at enabling seamless Multi-Domain Operations in which forces can access limited windows in the fight at various domains, from the traditional air-land-sea to cyber-electronic warfare-space domains. But, power demands on legacy vehicles only grow as more systems are added, experts said. Over time, that's meant entirely new wiring, amplifiers and other electronics architecture for the same vehicles that have been in service for decades. For example, in 2001, the standard vehicle only required a 150 amp alternator to power its onboard systems. Today, that same vehicle needs 10 times the amperage to run all of the weapon systems, computers, radios, monitors and cameras on current vehicles. At a recent talk at the Association of the U.S. Army, Lt. Gen. Aundre Piggee, the Army G-4, said that future combat operations will not be able to rely on forward operating bases. Logisticians will need to find expeditionary ways to move supplies, especially fuel, to combat units. Current brigade combat teams are able to operate for about three days before a full resupply. But Piggee said that the goal is to stretch that to seven days. To meet that end, a variety of options are being explored, but the main supply saver is reducing demand, specifically fuel. BCTs will need to use at least one-third less fuel to keep their standalone abilities at the one-week mark, he said. That extends beyond petroleum and to battery life, power consumption on smart grids, and anywhere else that technology procedures and advancements can make the formation lethal as long with less fuel or power consumption. So, at the same time that larger formations must be more self-sustaining and use less fuel, the systems that enable their fighting might will need more power. Tomorrow's vehicles will need to do much more than what's being demanded now. On the Army wish list are energy weapon systems to counter rockets, missiles and drones, wireless energy beaming to help with running unmanned ground vehicles and aerial drones with remote power, non-lethal energy weapons for crowd disbursement, silent modes for vehicle movement, high-power electronic jamming, electronic armor to deflect electromagnetic spectrum and projectile attacks, and long-range electromagnetic guns for multiple uses. And the backbone of those capabilities is an open architecture powering system on the next wave of ground vehicles that nearly any system built today or decades from now can plug into, and it will provide the power needed to run. Part of that, the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Electrical Power Architecture, has been in development at TARDEC since 2012. Once implemented, the system is expected to provide fuel efficiency that will reduce fuel consumption by more than 10 percent and provide 20 percent more efficient power generation and energy transfer. That will put less strain on the vehicle systems while using less fuel and providing more power. And, it can take powerful hybrid vehicles, those using both petroleum-based fuels and battery or fuel cell power. This effort is coupled with a recent partnership between TARDEC and the U.S. Department of Energy into hydrogen fuel cell technology. “We think hydrogen as a fuel source, and the fuel cells that generate electricity from the hydrogen, will enable enormous capability for our warfighters,” Paul Rogers, director of TARDEC, said in a release. The applications go beyond fuel efficiency and reducing fuel logistics burdens. “Vehicles using hydrogen run on electric motor propulsion, giving very low noise and thermal signatures while in operation,” Rogers said. “Additionally, we can generate valuable electrical power using hydrogen fuel cells that currently requires noisy and heavy generators.” Both of those efforts could help not only operational forces in the tactical fight but the surrounding support that brings them their supplies. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/11/08/from-crowd-control-to-wireless-energy-beaming-the-armys-new-vehicles-must-have-more-power-but-use-less-fuel
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September 1, 2024 | International, C4ISR, Security
Iranian Hackers Set Up New Network to Target U.S. Political Campaigns
Iranian hackers linked to GreenCharlie deploy sophisticated phishing campaigns targeting U.S. political campaigns.