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Xavier Vavasseur PMB Defence (PMB) has been assigned the contract to supply submarine batteries to the Canadian Government for its Victoria-class submarines. PMB Defence press release The Royal Canadian Navy operates four Victoria Class conventional submarines which have been active in the service since 2003. PMB will manufacture the lead-acid based battery systems at our new state-of-the art production, research and development and engineering facilities situated adjacent to the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, South Australia. “The contract with Canada builds on the capability grown from the Collins-class Submarine program in Australia and various new technology programs we have with other international customers. This work further endorses our strategic objective to be the world's most credible designer and supplier of submarine battery systems”. PMB Defence' Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Stephen Faulkner Mr Faulkner added that “The Canada contract further demonstrates the trust in PMB's world-class capabilities by an allied country.” This additional contract adds to the recent announcement regarding PMB's purchase of the EnerSys' submarine battery business. PMB looks forward to a collaborative relationship with the Canadian customer, ensuring the Royal Canadian Navy gets the best battery and in turn the best submarine performance. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2020/09/australias-pmb-defence-to-supply-batteries-for-canadian-victoria-class-submarines/

Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― U.S. Army officials told lawmakers Tuesday they are seeking a new 15-year, $16 billion strategy to modernize and automate the military's aging munitions plants following nearly a dozen worker deaths and injuries over recent years. In Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee testimony, Army officials suggested workers who handle dangerous materials could be replaced by robotics and computers as part of their ambitious plan. The testimony came as lawmakers are deliberating over a proposed reshaping of the Pentagon's explosives oversight body, as part of the 2021 defense policy bill. “We're essentially making the explosives in a manner very much like we did in World War I in some cases, World War II in others,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Bruce Jette told lawmakers. “We literally have people standing under machines that are full of 1,500 pounds of molten explosives, drooling it into artillery shells to fill them up, and then they push the carts away. We don't have automation, we don't have robotics.” Lawmakers described the ammunition industrial base as fragile because of its dependence on foreign sources of materials and because its aging facilities need of safety upgrades. (Munitions production facilities are contractor operated, with some owned by the government.) Army officials largely agreed, saying they rely on 55 foreign suppliers for certain equipment and materials ― such as a TNT-replacement 2,4-Dinitroanisole, which comes from India ― because costs, environmental regulations and legal liabilities make many of them harder to develop in the United States. The Army even relies on a small volume of detonators and pyrotechnics from China, Jette said. The Army is studying how to wean itself from foreign suppliers. At the same time, Jette has not ruled out supplies from Canada, Mexico and elsewhere, if a surge is needed, adding that he personally visited a South Korean factory that once supplied the U.S. with bullets at .50 caliber and below. Calling safety a top priority, Army officials said human handling of the energetics, explosives and acids associated with munitions can be replaced with “process automation or other technology solutions, freeing the workforce to focus on technical oversight.” More than 80 percent of major mishaps at munitions facilities were caused by human error, they said. “Three deaths in the last ten years on our facilities, two of them were related to the manufacturing process: We don't need to have that happen anymore,” Jette said. “I do not want to be the ASAALT and get another phone call that there's another death on something I could have provided the improvement to.” Jette said the 2017 death of Lake City Army Ammunition Plant worker Lawrence Bass, 55, “should not have occurred,” and that Bass ― killed while handling an explosive component called tetrazine ― was performing his duties in accordance with procedures. “His death is in fact a catalyst in transforming our approach, as opposed to modernizing under current circumstances. He should never have been in that close proximity where that event could have happened,” Jette said. “Should it happen with a machine, I can buy another machine.” Still, modernizing in the way Army officials seek would require Congress appropriate roughly $1 billion per year for 15 years, which is more than twice what the Army has asked over the last three years. It's an open question whether Congress would be as inclined to support the munitions productions facilities, if they support fewer jobs. “The idea of making it safer for workers, there's no doubt about that, but because these plants have grown up since the '40′s," said Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Donald Norcross, D-N.J. "You eliminate many of those jobs, there's potential of that support also going.” Asked what more industry could do to shoulder the cost of modernizing facilities, Jette suggested it would be better if the government made the investments upfront as industry would only pass the costs on later. “This is the United States military's industrial base for munitions. We need to own that, not have anything beholden IP-wise or any other way to the defense industry or any other supplier," Jette said. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/09/22/after-munition-worker-deaths-army-floats-16-billion-plan-to-modernize-production/

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/

Ed Adamczyk Sept. 21 (UPI) -- BAE Systems announced a contract Monday worth up to $111 million to supply the U.S. Navy with Archerfish mine neutralizers. Archerfish is used by the US Navy's MH-60S Helicopter squadrons as part of their Airborne Mine Neutralization System capability, and reduces the need to put diving personnel in the water for clearance missions, according to the company. The system is a remote-controlled, torpedo-like device that can be launched and operated from a surface ship, helicopter or an unmanned underwater vehicle. Using fiber optic data link relays, Archerfish can provide real-time sonar pictures of potential targets through on-board sensors, a BAE statement on Monday said. "Archerfish not only keeps sailors safer, it also reduces the number and cost of mine clearance missions," said Brooke Hoskins, director of products and training for BAE's maritime services business. Each AMNS device consists of a Launch and Handling System for all data processing during a mission, and up to four elements called destructors, which handle target acquisition and demolition. The Navy established a requirement for rapid neutralization of bottom and moored sea mines to support operations in littoral zones, confined straits, choke points and the amphibious objective area. This is the fourth Navy contract awarded to BAE since 2003 to build AMNS devices, which will be manufactured at the company's facilities in Britain. The number of devices ordered by the Navy was not reported. https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2020/09/21/BAE-awarded-111M-contract-for-Navys-Archerfish-mine-neutralizers/3721600703371/

Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Army Futures Command has given the green light to the Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate to move forward on developing a plan to equip tactical and combat vehicles with electric power, according to a Sept. 21 statement. The directorate will begin drafting a requirements document for Tactical and Combat Vehicle Electrification (TaCVE) and will host an industry day Oct. 20 to share its electrification initiatives with industry. CALSTART, an organization that focuses on clean technology transportation, and the Ground Vehicles Systems Center will cohost the event. The electrification effort aims to decrease the Army's reliance on fossil fuels. “The requirement also aims to increase operational reach across all maneuver formations through electric propulsion, which offers a variety of operational and tactical benefits,” a statement from the directorate read. “These include the potential to double operational duration, implement silent mobility, increase silent watch, and potentially reduce the Army's logistical burden by nearly half when fully implemented,” it stated. The Army launched an earnest effort into electrifying the brigade earlier this spring. Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley, then-director of the Futures and Concepts Center within AFC, told Defense News at the time that the effort is easier said than done and doesn't just just focus on simply powering a vehicle electrically. Instead, it would attempt to work out how an entire enterprise that would support those electric vehicle fleets and other capabilities could work. “Let's be clear. We're behind. We're late to meet on this thing,” Wesley said. “If you look at all of the analysis, all of the various nations that we work with, they're all going to electric power with their automotive fleet, and right now, although we do [science and technology] and we've got some research and development going on and we can build prototypes, in terms of a transition plan, we are not there.” Army officials know there will likely be a time where vehicles that use fossil fuel and ones that are all-electric share the battlefield. “What is the distribution plan that enables that?” Wesley wondered. “That is much more complex when you look at the implications for an entire enterprise.” Wesley was preparing a proposal for the head of Futures Command on how the service might accomplish such an endeavor that could change the paradigm of the logistics and sustainment tails as well as enhance force mobility. The proposal was intended to make a business case for the Army electrifying the formation, discuss the technical feasibility and describe a transition process. The MCDID requirements development process gives the overall effort traction to move out quickly. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/09/21/army-gives-green-light-to-shape-vehicle-electrification-requirements/

Mark Pomerleau WASHINGTON — The Army has signed a cooperative research and development deal with Estonia focused on cyber defense and other technologies. The Sept. 14th agreement, signed by the Army Futures Command's Combat Capabilities Development Command's Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR) Center and the ministry of defense, will establish a working group to identify new technologies mutually beneficial to each nation, mostly in the multidomain operations sphere. “This is part of Army Futures Command's' mission: to discover and deliver technology. We're reaching out to pretty much any source that we can find something innovative, whether it's innovative thoughts and ways of doing business or if it's potentially altering a product or modifying it for use by government and by the military,” Brian Lyttle, division chief for cybersecurity at the C5ISR Center, told C4ISRNET in an interview. Under the agreement, the two nations will identify technological areas of mutual interest and share researchers to develop them, Robert Kimball, senior research scientist for cybersecurity at the C5ISR Center, told C4ISRNET. He noted the agreement is in preliminary stages and researchers haven't identified specific projects yet. Andri Rebane, director of the Cyber Defense Department at the Estonian Ministry of Defense, also told C4SIRNET in an emailed response that the joint working group will hold regular meetings to identify those technologies and explore experimentation on those they both agree to. “The ambition is to develop long term research and development projects in cyber defense to encounter the threats from disruptive technologies,” he said. Estonia is considered one of the most digitally connected nations in the world and has continued to up its game in the digital realm following a 2007 cyberattack, largely attributed to Russia. The Army's research and development community wants to chase new technology that can better serve soldiers. “Our mission in the R&D area is to identify those technologies that will benefit the Army as a whole. Our ability to identify those technologies extends far beyond what's available in our own government labs, in research institutions in the United States,” Kimball said. “We're interested in new cyber technologies from wherever they exist. The Estonians have deep capabilities because of their past that they've spent a lot of time working on.” Rebane explained this agreement is part of a larger partnership between the two NATO nations. “In a more practical view the two parties can leverage their vast experience to invest into new research and development to mitigate cyber threats across the spectrum of conflict. In the long term this agreement will benefit also our other allies countering the threats emerging from the shared cyberspace,” he said. Lyttle noted that the Army – and Department of Defense – will never fight alone and thus agreements like this help to foster greater interoperability with coalition partners. https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2020/09/21/army-mints-new-cyber-research-and-development-agreement-with-estonia/

Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — A longtime industry executive, Ellen Lord was confirmed as the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment in August 2017. In that role, Lord — who is now the longest serving political appointee at the department from the Trump administration — oversees billions of dollars in weapons procurement and sustainment, while also overseeing the health of the defense industrial base, a particularly important role in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Lord was a keynote speaker at this year's Defense News Conference, where she touched on a number of issues affecting the Department of Defense. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. We're about six months after COVID-19 first hit the defense industry. How do you judge the health of the defense industrial base? We use the Defense Contract Management Agency and the Defense Logistics Agency to track about 22,000 key companies that the department works with. And going back over the last six months, we did have hundreds of companies shut down, but now we're down to only about 30. So that's very, very good news. We monitor them on a daily basis; we look at on-time deliveries, deliveries missed and, most importantly, we listen to what the issues are, really leveraging the industry associations to do a lot of listening. What we are looking for is whether or not we're maintaining war-fighter readiness for our production programs, and then relative to modernization, whether we are hitting key milestones relative to development programs. We have seen some slowdowns. We are carefully monitoring, using monthly metrics, where we are. That's something that I'm actually extremely proud of the team over the last few years — we have developed a very data-driven way of doing business. The Pentagon is seeking billions of dollars from Congress to help fund reimbursements for the defense industry's pandemic-related costs. But we've heard criticism of this from a number of sectors, with some saying financial reports last quarter were not so bad. Why is that funding needed, and why now? All the [quarterly] reports that have come out in large part don't reflect the hits that were taken by business. I would contend that most of the effects of COVID-19 haven't yet been seen because most companies gave their employees time off, they stretched out production, paid a lot of people for working 100 percent when perhaps they were only getting 50 percent of the hours in and so forth. So I think the system has absorbed it up to this point in time. Now when we get to the point where we're having payments and incentive fees and award fees earned, and if we haven't done the deliveries, that's where you're going to see the hit. So I believe there's a bit of a delayed response. We want to make sure that we have a one-time accounting for these major COVID hits — very, very well defined in terms of a period of time, March 15-Sept. 15, that we take a very, very data driven approach [saying]: “Send us a proposal showing what the impact was; we will assess them all at once and get back.” However, we can't do that at this point in time because we have an authorization through Section 3610 [of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act] and so forth, but we don't have an appropriation. We believe we need that appropriation to maintain readiness because if we do not get that, what we are going to find is we are not going to get the number of units delivered, we are not going to maintain war-fighter readiness, we're not going to move forward in modernization. We would like to take the one-time hit and then see where we go from there. Assuming you get the appropriation, much money is needed? When will industry see it? We think it's somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion. We think it would take five to six months because once we got an appropriation, we would go out for a request for proposals, and the larger companies are going to have to flow down those RFPs through their supply chain, gather the data — because again, this has to be a very data-driven drill. So we would get all of that back; we think that would take two to three months. Then we want to look at all of the proposals at once. It isn't going to be a first-in, first-out [situation], and we have to rationalize using the rules we've put in place, what would be reimbursable and what's not. So overall we think five to six months, in terms of a process. We're at about the two-year mark from the executive order 13806 study, which assessed the health of the defense industrial base and included some dire warnings about the supply chain. How has work on fixing those issues gone? We had several areas that we pointed out were problematic, that we were concerned that the U.S. had too great of a dependency on non-friendly nations and that we just didn't have the security and resiliency that we were looking for. In fiscal 2019, we actually had 14 presidential determinations, which is the process you go through to actually say: “Yes, these are areas that are worthy of looking at.” Then we go to get the appropriation to be able to use [the Defense Production Act's Title III authorities]. A number of the areas we looked at were small unmanned aerial systems, rare earth [minerals], that type of thing. When COVID-19 hit, it shone a spotlight on the concern we had with this fragility and helped us tell the story. Because of another executive order coming in declaring a federal emergency, we no longer had to go through the presidential determination route, which is a bit time consuming, to identify areas where we needed to invest. Then [with the pandemic] we had new areas bubble up, probably the most significant of which was aviation propulsion, where we have a number of our key suppliers who are extremely dependent on commercial aviation that was grinding almost to a halt for a while — huge impacts there. So what we did was we were now able to move a little bit more quickly, which is always helpful. And we made a number of awards to aviation companies that literally kept those companies in business, which allowed us to continue to support the war fighter. COVID-19 has helped us accelerate some of those areas. Others are perhaps not getting as much attention as they were pre-COVID-19, looking at our defense industrial base for nuclear modernization for instance, also for hypersonics. But overall, the team is working very hard, and we have put out almost a billion dollars in DPA Title III over the last six months. It sounds like the pandemic may have been beneficial in addressing these long-term issues. What it did was allow us to really put speed in the system, peel away all of what I would call the non-value-added bureaucracy. COVID-19 gave us a burning platform to really demonstrate we could be very responsible in terms of taxpayer dollars, very responsible in terms of security of the war fighter, but move at the speed of relevance to get things done. So I don't want to backslide there. And I want to make sure we really take advantage of all of that. Companies are concerned about being in compliance with the Section 889 rules, which prohibit the government from buying a system that might have Chinese equipment in it from the telecommunications supply chain. Are more waivers for companies possible? We are incredibly supportive of making sure that we don't have Chinese technology in a lot of our telecom systems, which has proven to be a problem in terms of exfiltration of data. So what we did is we got a waiver from [the Office of the Director of National Intelligence] for noncritical weapon systems. We continue to discuss an extension beyond September of that with them. We are getting waivers on a case-by-case basis, we will look at those. However, we are encouraging industry and we are very, very pleased at how we see industry still stepping up to really get these systems out of their supply chains. So it will be by exception that we will do waivers, and we are looking to really have a clean path through everything. There have been significant mergers and acquisitions during your tenure at the Pentagon. Are you seeing a downside for the department, given the desire for more competition on programs? I actually put a process in place early on, when we are notified of M&A deals, that we go out very formally to all the services and agencies and ask for objective evidence as to whether or not these mergers or acquisitions will constrain competition in any way. We then work very, very closely with either [the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department] on those deals to make sure there are divestitures if needed. Where I'm really focused, and the team is focused, is really getting the small companies going. That's where the predominance of our innovation comes from. That's what bubbles up to these larger companies. So we are holding all kinds of webinars and meetings connecting not only our traditional defense industrial base, small company partners, but nontraditional [firms] with our DoD efforts. We're partnering with the services to get more of that activity. So we want that diverse group coming in, and I'm really excited about what I see coming up through. That doesn't sound like you have many concerns about what you've seen. We watch very carefully. And at this point, we think we've made some smart divestitures on some of those. And we like competition. It's our friend. https://www.defensenews.com/interviews/2020/09/21/pentagon-acquisition-boss-talks-industry-mergers-and-coronavirus/

David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps is moving as fast as it can to field a new class of light amphibious warship, but it remains unclear what it will do, where it will be based or what capabilities it will bring to the fight. The idea behind the ship is to take a commercial design or adapt a historic design to make a vessel capable of accommodating up to 40 sailors and at least 75 Marines to transport Marine kit over a range of about 3,500 nautical miles, according to a recent industry day presentation. While the presentation noted that the ship should have few tailored Navy requirements, that also creates a problem: If the Navy is going to pay tens of millions to develop, build, crew and operate them, should it not provide some additional value to the fleet? Analysts, experts and sources with knowledge of internal discussions who spoke to Defense News say the answer to that question is a source of friction inside the Pentagon. The idea of the warship arrived on the scene in 2019 with the ascension of Gen. David Berger as commandant of the Marine Corps. His planning guidance called for a smaller, more agile amphibious force that could operate inside the Chinese anti-access, area denial window in the South China Sea. In a recent virtual meeting of the Surface Navy Association, the chief of naval operations' director of expeditionary warfare, Maj. Gen. Tracy King, emphasized that above all, the platform must be cheap and come online quickly. “I see the efficacy of this [light amphibious warship] is really to help us in the phases and stages we're in right now,” King said Aug. 27. “We need to start doing things differently, as an extension of the fleet, under the watchful eye of our Navy, engaging with our partners and allies and building partner capacity: We ought to be doing that right now. I think we're late to need with building the light amphibious warship, which is why we're trying to go so quickly.” When asked whether the ship should contribute to a more distributed sensor architecture to align with the Navy's desire to be more spread out over a large area during a fight, King answered in the affirmative. "[But] I really see it benefiting from [that architecture] more,” he said. “We need to build an affordable ship that can get after the ability to do maritime campaigning in the littorals.” The unstated implication appeared to be that if the ship is loaded up with sensors and requirements, it will slow down the process and increase the cost. Analysts who spoke to Defense News agreed with that, saying the Navy is likely trying to put more systems on the platform that will make it more complex and more expensive. The Navy has said it wants to keep the price under $100 million per platform and begin purchasing them as early as the latter half of 2022. “The hardest part is going to be appetite suppression, especially on the part of the Navy,” said Dakota Wood, a retired Marine officer and analyst with The Heritage Foundation. "This is what we saw in the littoral combat ship: It started out as a very light, near-shore, small and inexpensive street fighter. And then people started adding on requirements. You had ballooning costs, increasing complexity of the platform, and you get into all kinds of problems. “The Marine Corps wants this quickly. It needs it to be inexpensive so you can have 28-30 of them over a three- to four-year period.” There is the additional challenge of where the ships will be based, since they will probably not be built to the kinds of standards of normal Navy vessels built to last for 30-40 years in service. The minimum service life for the light amphibious warship will be about 10 years, according to the industry day presentation. Wood said that would be a challenge for the Marines and the State Department to work out in parallel with the effort to get the hulls quickly built. Jerry Hendrix, a retied Navy captain and analyst with the Telemus Group, agreed with that assessment, saying the Marines are eager to move forward to get something fielded, in part to make sure this transition to a lighter, more distributed force being pushed by Berger actually happens. "The commandant can't divest of some of the legacy platforms he's building — these big, expensive and vulnerable platforms — until he has something that replaces it in the water. And so he's anxious to get going with something else so he then has a reason to move away from what he has. “The commandant is well aware he has a four-year clock and its ticking. So if he's going to make changes, he's got to get moving to get those changes in place and commit the Marine Corps to them to make sure it's going to last. And right now I'm not sure there's a lot of high confidence that they are going to last.” Hendrix acknowledged that the Navy has good reason to want the light amphibious warship to have more capability, but added that the Corps is more interested in something simple than something costly and elaborate. “What that does,” Hendrix said, “is drive up unit cost and drive down the numbers that can be purchased.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/09/21/us-marines-wants-to-move-fast-on-a-light-amphibious-warship-but-what-is-it/

Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — Time is ticking for Germany to find a compromise on letting American, British and other non-European Union countries tap into the bloc's emerging defense cooperation scheme. The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken on the task of sorting out the issue by the end of the year, when Germany's six-month term at the helm of the European Council concludes. “It is an important issue to solve, particularly for close NATO partners,” Karl-Heinz Kamp, special envoy of the political director at the German Ministry of Defence, said during a panel discussion at the annual Defense News Conference this month. The challenge is to find common ground between two camps within the EU: member states seeking ties with outsiders, and those countries who prefer treating the nascent defense agenda as a members-only affair. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/09/21/germany-tries-to-forge-a-deal-on-who-can-play-ball-in-europe/ Poland, Sweden and the Netherlands are leading a group of nations advocating for openness. But France, for example, is pursuing a more restrictive stance, especially toward Turkey and the United States. From the beginning, the Trump administration has eyed the EU's creation of a defense cooperation mechanism, dubbed PESCO, and the proposed multibillion-dollar European Defence Fund with a degree of mistrust. The efforts run the risk of undermining NATO if America and its powerful defense companies are kept out, Washington claims. The tone has softened more recently, however, as officials on both sides of the Atlantic try to broker a compromise. “One of the things that COVID-19 has really brought into sharp focus is the significance of our integrated defense industrial base,” said Gregory Kausner, executive director for international cooperation, who works in the Pentagon for acquisition chief Ellen Lord. At NATO headquarters in Brussels, leaders are striking a similar chord. “We welcome the EU's effort to invest in defense, and I think altogether this is a good-news story. In a way, the more money put into defense, including by EU institutions, the better,” said Camille Grand, the alliance's assistant secretary general for defense investment. “Then there is a second point: that it is important those projects are allowed as full as possible [the] involvement of non-EU allies. Because the reality is indeed that those non-EU allies have strong connections with the European defense market, with the European defense industry,” Grand added. German officials have been optimistic about reaching a compromise since they took on the third-country challenge this summer. That is because their proposal piggybacks on a paper by the previous, Finnish-run presidency that was only narrowly rejected last year. A few modifications would be enough to clinch a deal. According to a German MoD spokesman, officials aim to present a workable solution to defense ministers at an EU foreign affairs council meeting slated for Nov. 20. Poisoned politics The current political context hasn't exactly been helpful for forging a deal. For one, there is the frosty climate between Germany and United States that stems from President Donald Trump's testy relationship with the country, and his assertion that the EU is taking advantage of American taxpayers on trade and defense. That rift makes the proposition of importing the powerful American defense industrial base into the bloc's defense cooperation calculus an uphill battle, especially in the European Parliament, a Brussels-based analyst argued. And Turkey, which is part of NATO but not the EU, is creating the perfect case study against allowing nonmembers into the inner workings of European defense cooperation because of its dispute with Greece and Cyprus over gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. “The German government is fairly optimistic that we will be able to find a compromise. The problem is that currently neither the Turkish policy nor the U.S. policy terribly helps to find such a consensus,” Kamp said. “We have a severe problem in NATO with its internal cohesion because some allies have issues with other allies,” he added. “We have a Turkish-French dispute in the Mediterranean and we have a Greek-Turkish dispute. Turkey is not always behaving in — let me say — in the way of an ideal NATO ally, and that just makes things a little bit more difficult.” At the same time, the flareup has yet to touch the ongoing third-party access negotiations, according to officials and analysts. “Concerns over dependencies, intellectual property and security predate the standoff between Greece and Turkey," said Yvonni-Stefania Efstathiou, a Greece-based defense analyst. Meanwhile, Pentagon officials have begun diving into a set of case studies designed to help them think through the nitty-gritty involved in setting up future cooperative programs under an EU umbrella, according to Kausner. “Those case studies illuminate the potential challenges on things such as intellectual property and re-transfer that we feel are still problematic,” the Defense Department official said. Another avenue to glean lessons for a wider EU application lies in the so-called European Defence Industrial Development Programme, or EDIDP, which aims to boost the bloc's defense industry cooperation through all manners of military technology. In June, the European Commission announced 16 projects eligible for funding from a two-year, €500 million (U.S. $593 million) pot. The selection includes “four participants controlled by entities from Canada, Japan and the United States,” the commission statement read. In theory, those projects “demonstrate the possibility to involve EU-based subsidiaries controlled by third countries or third country entities provided they fulfill appropriate security-based guarantees approved by Member States,” the statement noted. The commission has yet to say which participants hail from North America and Japan, and what roles they play, which suggests their integration into the project structure remains unfinished. As officials continue to sort out the details on intellectual property rights, liabilities and consortium structures, for example, a few principles are beginning to take shape. For one, the four non-EU countries in the European Free Trade Association — Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland — stand to get rights to partake in EU defense projects similar to member states. In addition, officials consider it easier to include British or American companies in projects when they are removed from immediate funding through the European Defence Fund. While European companies have their eyes on possible subsidies from the fund whenever they enter into PESCO agreements, there may not be an automatic funding eligibility for outside participants. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/09/21/germany-tries-to-forge-a-deal-on-who-can-play-ball-in-europe/