October 19, 2022 | International, Naval
The CEOs of Naviris, Fincantieri, Naval Group and Navantia signed a preliminary consortium agreement at Euronaval, whose objective is to rule the execution of the Modular and Multirole Patrol Corvette...
February 1, 2022 | International, Naval
About 25,000 people work at Newport News Shipbuilding, which builds and refuels all the Navy's aircraft carriers and builds nuclear-powered submarines.
September 23, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence
Mark Gunzinger Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten recently announced a new U.S. Department of Defense joint war-fighting concept will summarize capabilities needed for future all-domain operations and eliminate artificial lines on the battlefield used to deconflict U.S. operations in the past. Hyten also noted the concept will seamlessly integrate “fires from all domains, including space and cyber,” to overwhelm an enemy. While these aspirations are laudable, there are indications the concept could fall short of what is needed to inform cross-service trade-offs that must be made in an era of flat or declining defense budgets. The DoD creates operating concepts to define preferred approaches to perform specific missions or execute a campaign to defeat an enemy. They also provide a foundation for the services to assess new technologies, force alternatives and resource priorities. Said another way, they are the tissue that connects top-level National Defense Strategy guidance to actual plans and programs. While a joint all-domain war-fighting concept is urgently needed, Hyten has not made it clear the one in development will lead to trade-offs that maximize the DoD's war-fighting potential. For instance, Hyten has said it will call for every service to conduct long-range strikes: “A naval force can defend itself or strike deep. An air force can defend itself or strike deep. The Marines can defend itself or strike deep. ... Everybody.” This could mean the concept will support a degree of redundancy across the services that has never existed. Setting aside tough trade-offs that eliminate excessively redundant programs will waste defense dollars and reduce capabilities available to U.S. commanders. More specifically, the concept might endorse the Army's plan to buy 1,000-mile-plus, surface-to-surface missiles that cost millions of dollars each. Doing so would ignore analyses that have determined using large numbers of these weapons would be far more expensive than employing bombers that can strike any target on the planet for a fraction of the cost, then regenerate and fly more sorties. Furthermore, the Army's long-range missile investments could be at the expense of its ability to defend U.S. theater air bases against missile attacks. Not only has air base missile defense long been an Army mission — it has long neglected and underfunded the mission. Chinese or Russian strikes against under-defended air bases could cripple the United States' primary combat sortie-generation operations. If the concept does not consider these kinds of trade-offs, it could be due to the approach used to create it. The Joint Staff's doctrine development process is notorious for seeking consensus instead of making cross-service trade-offs necessary to maximize the DoD's war-fighting potential. Assuring bureaucratic service equities versus optimizing combat lethality can lead to operating concepts that fail to create clear priorities or — worse yet — declare everything a priority. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. Moreover, each service was asked to develop a subordinate concept that will be integrated into the whole. This piece-part approach could result in the services ladening their subordinate concepts with their own equities instead of working together to develop the most effective, decisive options. In short, a bottom-up, consensus-driven concept for all-domain warfare would not be an effective baseline to compare the DoD's force structure and capability alternatives. Three things could help to avoid this mistake. First, the secretary of defense should approve a new all-domain war-fighting concept, and the secretary's staff should be deeply involved in its development. Some say the latter is inappropriate, believing the military, not DoD civilians, should create war-fighting concepts. However, it is entirely appropriate for the secretary's staff to be part of the concept's creation if its purpose is to shape the DoD's plans and programs. Second, DoD leaders should rigorously examine the services' existing roles and missions during the concept's development, and make changes to reduce excessively redundant responsibilities, forces and capabilities. This may need to be driven by congressional language. Finally, the DoD should jettison the word “joint” as part of the concept's title. This would stress the concept is focused on integrating operations across all domains, not on the services that provide forces to combatant commanders. The point is not for all to participate, but instead for all options to be considered, and those that provide best combat value be prioritized. Otherwise, it becomes a case analogous to all the kids chasing a soccer ball. The 2018 National Defense Strategy was the beginning of the effort to shift the DoD toward preparing for peer conflict. Given that dollars and time are short, the DoD must now get a concept for all-domain warfare right. Like the National Defense Strategy, the concept must be top-down driven, not a bottom-up, consensus-driven product that fails to make trade-offs across the services and provides a rationale that supports what each service desires to buy. Rather, its ultimate objective should be to seek best-value capabilities and expand theater commander options to defeat peer adversaries. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/09/22/a-consensus-driven-joint-concept-for-all-domain-warfare-will-fall-short/
June 8, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security
Overall, costs of major DoD acquisition programs have grown by 54 percent over their lifetimes and schedule delays average two years, GAO's annual report finds. By THERESA HITCHENS WASHINGTON: Five years after the Pentagon demanded every weapon system include the requirement that it be able to fight through Russian and Chinese cyber attacks expected on future battlefields, DoD “does not often include cybersecurity” in key performance parameters (KPP) for major programs, says GAO in its annual defense acquisition review. Of the three services, the Air Force is the worst at fulfilling two of the three best cybersecurity practices, the report says. The congressional watchdog found “inconsistent implementation of leading software practices and cybersecurity measures” among high-dollar “major defense acquisition programs” (MDAPs) — 85 programs worth $1.80 trillion at the end of 2019. “This included longer-than-expected delivery times for software and delays completing cybersecurity assessments— outcomes disruptive to DOD's efforts to keep pace with warfighters' needs for enhanced, software-dependent capabilities and protect weapon systems from increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats,” GAO said in the June 3 report. Cybersecurity KPPs Left Out The GAO report explains that KPP “are considered the most critical requirements by the sponsor military organization, while key system attributes (KSA) and other performance attributes are considered essential for an effective military capability.” In 2015, DOD modified its main requirements policy—the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System Manual (JCIDS) rules on “survivability” requirements to include the ability to operate in a “degraded cyber environment.” Yet, GAO found that, at the end of 2019, 25 of the 42 major acquisition programs reviewed regarding cybersecurity practices failed to include cybersecurity as a parameter in their KPPs; “even more programs reported that their KSAs did not address cybersecurity.” GAO has targeted cybersecurity, software development and DoD-wide information technology (IT) improvement programs in its recent annual reviews because DoD weapon systems “are more networked than ever before — a change that while providing benefits for the warfighter also “has come at a cost” because “more weapon components can now be attacked using cybersecurity capabilities,” GAO explains. “Further, networks can be used as a pathway to attack other systems.” The watchdog has found consistently that failing to bake in cybersecurity requirements to system design and development ends up costing more money and time when program offices struggle to re-engineer systems once they hit production. This is a problem that affects most types of software development; and similarly trying to upgrade or replace software to improve cybersecurity often proves impossible. The 2019 report thus “looked at DOD's progress with developing: (1) strategies that help ensure that programs are planning for and documenting cybersecurity risk management efforts (cybersecurity strategies), (2) evaluations that allow testers to identify systems' weaknesses that are susceptible to cybersecurity attacks and that could potentially jeopardize mission execution (cybersecurity vulnerability evaluations), and (3) assessments that evaluate the ability of a unit equipped with a system to support assigned missions (cybersecurity assessments).” Most of the 38 MDAPs reviewed reported creation of cybersecurity strategies. However, of the 19 major programs that require cybersecurity vulnerability evaluations — under regulations set by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord — 11 have not completed them or failed to do so on time. Another three said they didn't have a schedule yet for doing so; and one — an unnamed Air Force program — told GAO it actually didn't know if it had undertaken the required evaluation. Indeed, the Air Force had the worst record on the evaluations, with none of its six programs having completed the evaluation processes. Of the 42 programs, 14 told GAO they had not finished their cybersecurity assessments. GAO also “found variation among the military departments in the rates they had completed these assessments. Specifically, among the three military departments, the Army reported the best rate for programs conducting cybersecurity assessments, while the Air Force had the lowest rate.” IT and Software Problems Plague Programs “Over the years, weapon acquisition program officials, through their responses to our questionnaires, have consistently acknowledged software development as a risk item in their efforts to develop and field capabilities to the warfighter, and this year is no different,” GAO reported somewhat wryly. GAO found that more than a quarter of the 42 MDAPs reviewed reported cost growth from software changes but admitted that “details are limited” in DoD reporting. Part of that uncertainty might be due to the fact that GAO found a number of major programs are transitioning to commercial approaches to software development, such as “agile development” that involves introducing incremental improvements over time. However, GAO found, “deliveries often lag behind industry standards.” Indeed, Air Force acquisition czar Will Roper told a webinar yesterday sponsored by Dcode, a tech innovation hub connecting commercial industry to government agencies, that while the Air Force can't go back and re-do old programs, “every new contract we do has to include DevSecOps.” “We are all in,” he added, “it's going to change the world.” DevSecOps stands for “development, security and operations,” and is a framework and tools for “designing in” software and cybersecurity. Roper long has been a key champion within DoD for moving to commercial practices and has repeatedly said he wants the Air Force to become a “software company.” GAO said that officials from 26 of the MDAPs regarding software development reported that software concerns had created risks at some point during their program's history. The biggest problem faced was — you guessed it — changes necessitated to ensure cybersecurity. The second biggest program was that the software development simply was “more difficult than expected.” Hardware design changes also played a big role in creating software problems, requiring subsequent changes in software configurations. Interestingly, while often bemoaned as a cause for program delays, requirements changes came in at the low of end of the reported issues troubling software development. Of the 15 major DoD IT programs reviewed, worth $15.1 million, 10 had delays in their original baseline schedules. But on the bright side, 11 showed decreased life cycle cost estimates. Further, all 15 have cybersecurity strategies as required by DoD regulations, and most reported having undertaken in 2019 at least one operational cybersecurity test. That said, “less than half reported conducting developmental cybersecurity testing,” GAO found. And according to DoD's own “Cybersecurity Testing and Evaluation Guidebook,” GAO scolds, “not conducting developmental cybersecurity testing puts programs at an increased risk of cost and schedule growth and poor program performance. Cost and Schedule Growth Stabilizes As it does every year, GAO also reviewed all 85 MDAPs for cost and schedule growth, and on that front the news is good: GAO found that the programs DoD Overview “have generally stabilized non-quantity related — (i.e. meaning not related to buy more stuff) — cost growth and schedule growth.” “Between 2018 and 2019, total acquisition cost estimates for DoD's 85 current MDAPs grew by a combined $64 billion (a 4 percent increase), growth that was driven by decisions to increase planned quantities of some weapon systems,” GAO found. “For example, DoD more than doubled in the past year the total number of missiles it plans to acquire through the Air Force's Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile program.” And some programs actually lowered their year-average costs. GAO found that 55 MDAPs (more than half) “had lower average procurement unit costs since last year. Examples of programs with lower unit costs include the Navy's Joint Precision Approach and Landing System (16 percent decrease) and the Air Force's F-22 Increment 3.2B Modernization (15 percent decrease).” “Also between 2018 and 2019, capability delivery schedules for MDAPs increased, on average, by just over 1 month (a 1 percent increase),” GAO said. However, the report cautioned that cost/schedule performance looks “less encouraging as measured against their original approved program baselines.” The report found that the major acquisition programs “have accumulated over $628 billion (or 54%) in total cost growth since program start, most of which is unrelated to the increase in quantities purchased. Additionally, over the same time period, time required to deliver initial capabilities has increased by 30%, resulting in an average delay of more than two years. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/06/major-dod-acquisition-programs-flounder-on-cybersecurity-gao