Vulcan Update: New organization features and new calls for capabilities

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  July 24, 2019 | International, Other Defence

  Esper confirmed as new defense secretary, ending Pentagon leadership uncertainty

  By: Joe Gould and Leo Shane III WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved Mark Esper to be the country's 27th defense secretary, ending a wait of more than 200 days for a permanent Pentagon leader. Esper's relatively drama-free confirmation vote — 90-8 — stood in contrast to the seven months of uncertainty in the highest levels of the military's leadership. After former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was forced out of his post early on the first day of 2019, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan helmed the department until he suddenly withdrew from consideration for the full-time job in June amid reports of domestic violence among his family members. Esper, who until then had served as Army secretary for since late 2017, bounced between that job and the acting defense secretary job over the last five weeks. Lawmakers and military officials expressed concerns over the temporary, unclear leadership in recent months, especially as other top military posts were vacated. Tuesday's vote ends the longest period the Defense Department has gone without a permanent, confirmed leader since it became a Cabinet-level agency. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said ahead of the vote Tuesday that Esper is “beyond qualified” for the top military job. "His record of public service is beyond impressive,” McConnell said. “His commitment to serving our service members is beyond obvious. And the need for a Senate-confirmed secretary of defense is beyond urgent.” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., offered similar praise. “It's not very often we have someone that is enthusiastically supported by Republicans, by Democrats, and he is obviously the right person,” he said. “He has the trust of our president, the trust of our military, the trust of Congress and the country to keep our nation safe.” The only sharp opposition to Esper's nomination came from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Senate Armed Services Committee member and 2020 presidential hopeful, who grilled Esper over his ties to his former employer, Raytheon. But since President Donald Trump announced Esper's nomination last month, Democrats and Republicans have mostly offered effusive praise for Esper as the right candidate for the job. At Esper's confirmation hearing last week, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., lauded Esper for hosting him and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., for an unvarnished look at problematic Army housing in Virginia. “That willingness to show personal accountability was very, very impressive,” Kaine said. “He's been proactive and he's been transparent. ... And I think those are trademarks of exceptional leadership.” Work ahead Esper, a West Point graduate and former Army lieutenant colonel, was vice president of government relations for Raytheon — the third-largest defense contractor in the United States — for seven years before becoming Army secretary. His most notable work leading the Army included a shake-up of the service's acquisitions portfolio. He inherits a military charged with following the National Defense Strategy's focus on competition with Russia and China but still grappling with Iran tensions, politically charged troop deployments on America's southern border and pressure from Trump to exit Afghanistan. The American Enterprise Institute's Rick Berger said the leadership vacuum after Mattis has left the Pentagon “adrift.” Esper would be wise to reset relationships with Capitol Hill and the press, who have both grumbled at a lack of engagement, he added. “The department has never been more timid about telling its story to the public or to Capitol Hill, a legacy of Secretary Mattis and his caretaker successor,” Berger said. Loren DeJong Schulman, a deputy director at the Center for a New American Security, said Esper's priorities will be to fill the department's widespread leadership vacancies, to dig into the fiscal 2021 budget process and to assert himself in decisions regarding tension with Iran. "In doing so, he has the opportunity to reorient some troubling trends in the Pentagon, such as the growing absence of transparency with the press, Hill, and American people, and the dominance of the Joint Staff in what should be political-military policy debates," she said. “Esper is also fighting a White House policy process driven by presidential tweet and instinct, without a responsible deliberate process. Like Mattis, Esper can insist on better cross-agency deliberation to develop policy ideas that support the president's objectives.” Senators will move onto the next Pentagon leadership vacancy tomorrow when they hold a confirmation hearing for David Norquist to be deputy secretary of defense. Trump has already nominated Ryan McCarthy to replace Esper as secretary of the Army. https://www.defensenews.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/07/23/esper-confirmed-as-new-defense-secretary-ending-pentagon-leadership-uncertainty/

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  April 17, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Roper Sees Air Force ‘Flying Cars’ In Production By 2023

  "We are going to accelerate this market for domestic use in a way that also helps our military," Roper stressed. "The Air Force is all in." By THERESA HITCHENSon April 16, 2020 at 7:15 PM WASHINGTON: ‘Flying cars' using electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) technology could be in full-up production for Air Force use in moving cargo and people within three years, says Air Force acquisition head Will Roper. Such a capability, Roper enthused, would give the US military the ability to undertake missions “in three dimensions that we normally do in two,” giving the services “much greater agility.” This is why the Air Force program for investing in commercial firms now pursuing eVTOL vehicles is called “Agility Prime,” he noted. The Air Force will take a first look at vendor offerings in a virtual pitch event at the end of the month, with a focus on small eVTOL vehicles that could be used for missions involving transport of only a few people. Roper told reporters today that the size of any future Air Force vehicle buys would depend on what missions eVTOL vehicles prove capable of carrying out. “If it's helping us to do logistics at the edge, we could end up buying these in higher quantities. If it's things like security and rescue, it will be smaller quantities,” he explained. Roper has previously said he envisions large flying cars for carrying cargo, as well as smaller vehicles for Special Operations-type missions. But no matter what, Roper added that he expects that granting commercial producers Air Force safety certifications and allowing them to rack up flying hours under Agility Prime “will really help accelerate domestic use of these vehicles and [allow some companies to] get FAA certification sooner that it would have come if we had not interjected ourselves into the market.” The Agility Prime program will hold a “virtual launch event” April 27 to allow vendors to showcase their capabilities and interact with potential investors from both the private sector and the military, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) announced earlier this week. Roper, who will give a keynote, said the event originally had been planned as a live demonstration of capabilities by chosen vendors at the annual South By Southwest music festival in Austin that was scheduled for March 13-22, but cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The objective of the event is to reinforce the Air Force commitment to partnering with industry, investors, and the interagency to help ensure there is a robust domestic capability in this new aerospace sector,” AFLCMC explained. Agility Prime is designed as a “challenge” where eVTOL vehicle makers compete in a series of demonstration that ultimately could result in a contract for full-scale production. According to documents provided for potential competitors on the program website, the Air Force is asking potential vendors to be able to complete a flight test by Dec. 17. In the first round, companies will need to demonstrate the following specifications: Payload: 3-8 personnel Range: Greater than 100 miles Speed: Greater than 100 mph Endurance: Greater than 60 minutes Roper said the second round of the competition would be dedicated to larger vehicles for cargo, and multiple people. Agility Prime is a unique effort that involves a number of service entities working together, including AFLCMC, the Program Executive Office for Mobility, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability (AFWIC) office, AFWERX, and the new AFVentures office that serves as an intermediary between vendors and venture capital providers. Roper said that besides helping to move the US into a prime spot in an emerging marketplace, he intends Agility Prime to also serve as an example to the commercial sector that the Air Force is serious about being “a good innovation partner.” One of the hallmarks of Roper's term as Air Force acquisition chief has been his focus on figuring out how to leverage commercial research and development to help DoD ensure that it can stay ahead of China in the pursuit of new technology — arguing that innovation is the new battlefield. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/roper-sees-air-force-flying-cars-in-production-by-2023

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  November 24, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Pentagon expected to increase Space Force funding in coming years

  Nathan Strout WASHINGTON — U.S. Space Force leadership is confident the new service's budget will increase in the coming years as the Pentagon continues to prioritize spending on space systems, according to the head of the Space Force's main acquisitions body. “If you thought space was going to be a priority in a kind of one-and-done way, that's not clearly what's been happening, right?” Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, said during the virtual 6th annual Schriever Space Futures Forum. “So three years in a row budgets have gone to the Hill with foundational changes to the space budget.” That's despite the fact that space systems and their supporting equipment are very expensive. “ Everybody knows the space enterprise is a really expensive one, even with the reductions in cost that we've seen over the past couple decades. Launch services, space vehicles, ground segments — everybody knows they ain't cheap, right?” Thompson said. The real shift in prioritizing spending on space came with the fiscal 2019 budget request, with the Pentagon declaring space a war-fighting domain. “I think we made some real progress. As we acknowledged space as a war-fighting domain, we had some really strong shifts in the budget,” Thompson said. For fiscal 2021, the Department of the Air Force requested $15.4 billion for the new Space Force. That's $800 million more than the $14.6 billion the department requested for that same enterprise in fiscal 2020, according to the Air Force's own calculations. “The '21 [Program Objective Memorandum] was another landmark event. It was not only the first POM approved by the Chief of Space Operations ... but during the cycle the Deputy's Management Action Group, [or DMAG] ... the folks that advise the secretary of defense on investment, continued to label space as one of the big strategic areas that DoD needs to address,” Thompson explained. And while the fiscal 2022 request has not been finalized or released yet, Thompson said it will include a marked increase in spending on space. “We plused up the space portfolio significantly to address users' needs,” he explained. “I can't give you the exact dollars and obviously it's all pre-decisional. But the DMAG and many other DoD leaders are clearly sending a message that across the [Future Years Defense Program], the importance of the space enterprise is growing and needs to grow further.” Even further out, Thompson noted the fiscal 2023 request will continue the military's trend of prioritizing space in the budget. “For the '23 POM, which many of you know we're already working, we're trying to take an unprecedented enterprise approach to where we take the force design that we need along with the operational requirements associated with it, and we pair that up with the acquisition programs that are required to deliver the war-fighting capability that Gen. [John] Raymond and our combatant command, Gen. [John] Dickinson, are absolutely demanding,” Thompson said. He added that the Space Force's funding strategy will balance innovation, international and commercial partnerships, and the need to rapidly provide capabilities to troops. Thompson pointed to the Space Force's recently released planning guidance as shaping that strategy. Thompson credited the Space Force's flexibility to maneuver within budget discussions to the service's lean staff, something that's been one of Raymond's top priorities in establishing the new branch of the armed services. “That collaboration, as many of you know, within the Department of the Air Force or in any large service, is really, really hard because so much of the budget is set,” he explained. “We as a service, though, have a little bit more trade space. The chief of space operations has a smaller, more nimble team. There's not as many spoons banging on highchairs demanding something that they've always been given. And so determining where to spend the next space dollar is really, really exciting, and it's a team effort between operators, acquirers and the entire small, nimble team that is Space Force.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/11/20/pentagon-expected-to-increase-space-force-funding-in-coming-years/