14 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
By: Robert DuPree
For the past few months, the U.S. federal government has been, quite understandably, totally focused on addressing the enormous health care and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. These efforts will necessarily continue to be front and center in the weeks and even months ahead, no matter how rapidly the curve flattens or declines, as different sectors and regions reopen.
But to move the country forward, Congress must prepare to do its regular business for the year, which largely means tackling appropriations bills. Congressional staff have reportedly been doing the prep work to get spending bills ready for whenever the House and Senate can safely convene to work on them (or to do much of this work remotely).
The American people — including federal contractors large and small, and our employees — are relying on Congress to check its partisan impulses and figure out how to do two things at once in the coming months: Continue to combat the COVID-19 crisis, and develop fiscal 2021 funding bills for all federal departments and agencies to meet our nation's needs.
Unfortunately, there are some who are already taking a simplistic view, saying Congress will be so busy dealing with the pandemic that it will have to just give up and pass a continuing resolution to fund the government beyond the election into next year or even for a full year.
On the contrary, the pandemic is exactly why Congress should be doing its work and completing updated appropriations bills on time.
First of all, in these extraordinary times, the country doesn't need appropriations bills which merely extend the decisions made on spending last December, when Congress finally completed action (over two months late) on FY20 appropriations bills. The COVID-19 pandemic was just a blip on the horizon at that time. For FY21, the country needs updated spending legislation that more accurately reflects the greatly changed world we now face. Moreover, departments and agencies also need the flexibility to enter into new contracts to meet new needs, which is generally prohibited unless expressly provided under a continuing resolution.
Further, Congress and the administration must come to grips with the elephant in the room — the strict annual spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011, as amended. To mix metaphors, this law is no longer just an elephant, it's an emperor who has no clothes.
Congress has modified the BCA's statutory spending caps a number of times over the past decade (thus, the above caveat “as amended”). Now we're about to face the final year of the law's spending caps, and what do we find? The caps are a joke. The caps were meant to limit discretionary spending each year, but Congress has repeatedly found ways around them. This has usually been done in one of two ways.
The first is by including some amount of normal baseline defense spending under the category of overseas contingency operations, or OCO, which is “wartime” funding; this occurs even when unrelated to America's overseas/wartime military efforts. OCO spending is exempt from the BCA caps, so funding part of the base Defense Department budget this way enables the law's defense-spending cap to be technically met while also understating the Pentagon's non-wartime expenditures.
The second way is by designating certain spending as “emergency” expenditures. Yes, these are almost always for valid, unforeseen emergencies, but it is still spending that would otherwise exceed the discretionary caps. Only Congress can wave a wand and say: “No, it doesn't exceed the cap — it's for an emergency.”
To be honest, the caps painted an unrealistic picture of efforts to control federal spending anyway. By only being applied to discretionary spending, exempting massive entitlement expenditures and interest on the debt, the caps presented a partial picture of true federal-spending restraint to begin with.
And now the COVID-19 crisis has resulted in multiple legislative packages being enacted, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates could add over $2.7 trillion to the current year's deficit. But because they are loans or designated as “emergency” spending, they don't violate the caps. They just add to the deficit.
In reality, true federal spending has soared far past the stable level of spending that the caps were purported to achieve when the BCA was first enacted. Yet, the caps are still in place for next year, which will impact the congressional appropriations process by either preventing the spending needed to address current needs, or leading to further contortionist efforts by legislators to circumvent the caps.
So let's quit pretending. Congress and the administration should agree to repeal the final year of the caps as part of the next COVID-19 legislative package so appropriators can be upfront about the spending needed without having to hide so much of that spending behind the “emergency spending” loophole.
Be transparent, and admit the country is, like during World War II, spending a whole lot more than anticipated to meet the crisis.
And most of all, get the job done by acting in a bipartisan fashion to pass appropriations bills by Oct. 1, 2020, that accurately reflect our real needs and expenditures. Admittedly, that may not be easy to do in an election year, but the nation and the federal contracting community are depending on Congress to be able to manage the COVID-19 crisis response, while simultaneously conducting its regular business.
Robert DuPree is manager of government affairs at Telos Corporation. He focuses on political developments in Congress and the executive branch, including the federal budget, appropriations process, national defense and cybersecurity. He previously served as legislative director for a senior member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
14 janvier 2022 | International, Aérospatial
Thailand's cabinet has backed a plan to buy four fighter jets starting in the next fiscal year, an air force spokesman said on Wednesday, with a budget of 13.8 billion baht ($413.67 million) set aside for the procurement.
10 juillet 2019 | International, Autre défense
By: Kyle Rempfer A new Army Reserve small arms trainer course that teaches gunnery and range operations to soldiers has been launched at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. Still in its pilot program phase, the course is intended to field weapons subject matter experts at the unit level and increase weapons proficiency among the Reserve force, according to the 88th Readiness Division. The new course lasts 12 days and prepares troops to train their fellow reservists as well as develop year-round training calendars for their home units. The Army Reserve Small Arms Trainer Course focuses on six common weapons: the M2 .50 caliber machine gun, MK19 grenade launcher, M240B machine gun, M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, M4 carbine/M16 rifle and the Beretta M9. The effort is also part of Army Reserve Chief Lt. Gen. Charles Luckey's larger push to make his component a more combat-ready force through efforts like Task Force Cold Steel — a series of mounted and ground crew-served weapons qualification events. “This is about building the most capable combat-ready and lethal federal reserve force in the history of the United States,” Luckey said at a Cold Steel training event in February. “This is about building the capacity, the capability, the bench strength of America's Army Reserve to train itself.” At the new course, instructors will teach preliminary marksmanship instruction on each weapon and their optics, as well as teach maintenance for each system. The course will also teach soldiers how to operate weapons ranges and how to procure ammunition through classroom instruction, simulations training and live-fire qualification. “This course is a true train-the-trainers program,” Master Sgt. Howard Griffith, course manager, said in an Army news article. “We take select soldiers from around the entire Army Reserve and provide them with the knowledge and skills to return to their units and educate their fellow soldiers.” An increase in weapons proficiency correlates with an increase in survivability in combat, which ultimately helps win battles, the news article states. The pilot program was designed by instructors from the Army Reserve Competitive Marksmanship Program and will be taught by instructors from Task Force Cold Steel. The Army National Guard and the active-duty force have had similar weapons proficiency courses for many years, and the Reserve component's own version was overdue. If successful, the long-term desire is to keep the new trainer course permanently at Fort McCoy. The installation has state-of-the-art ranges available for year-round training and is conveniently located in the center of the United States, making it easily accessed by vehicle, rail or air, according to the Army. To learn how your unit can take advantage of the Small Arms Trainer Course, contact Task Force Cold Steel at 608-388-4645 or email usarmy.usarc.84-tng-cmd.list.ocs-fy18-s3@mail.mil. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/07/09/new-small-arms-course-launches-to-prepare-army-reserve-for-combat-increase-survivability/
30 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial
by Sandra Erwin The Air Force Visionary Q-Prize competition is set to run from Oct. 29 through Jan. 15, 2019. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force and the Wright Brothers Institute are offering cash prizes for creative visualization tools — such as augmented reality and virtual reality — that can enhance military space operators' understanding and awareness of satellites and other objects in space. The Air Force Visionary Q-Prize Competition, or VQ-Prize, is set to run from Oct. 29 through Jan. 15, 2019. Up to $100,000 in prize money will be distributed in this competition, according to an Air Force news release. There will be multiple awards for different categories and a single VQ-Prize will go to the top overall submission. Specific competition guidelines, prizes, dates, grading criteria, data sets, and submission details will be posted at https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9934120 The VQ-Prize was conceived to encourage nontraditional vendors to engage with the military. The Air Force is aiming this challenge at universities, individuals and small businesses that can help “find solutions for safe and secure operations in space.” No background in space is required. “The need for timely and accurate object tracking is paramount to the defense of space,” said Brig. Gen. William Liquori, Air Force Space Command Strategic Requirements, Architectures and Analysis director. He said the competition is to help “augment existing capabilities with visualization tools that enable operators to intuitively absorb and quickly navigate massive amounts of space object data.” The Air Force wants tools that use existing data, displaying and processing it in a manner that thoroughly captures the space picture, while also facilitating “quick comprehension of changes,” the news release said. Col. Michael Kleppe, Air Force Space Command Space Capabilities Division director said it is “imperative that space operators receive up-to-date information on this rapidly evolving and highly dynamic environment.” They must also be able to “quickly process and interpret the information necessary for decisive action on compressed timelines.” For the competition, specific problems have been scoped and packaged. Contestants may submit traditional user interface solutions, displayed or projected on a flat screen, or AR/VR interfaces. Contestants will need to present new ways of visualizing and understanding the following types of events: Satellite maneuvers, high-speed conjunctions in low Earth orbit, proximity operations and relative orbital activity in geosynchronous Earth orbit, new object discovery, satellite and debris breakups, constellation insertions of multiple satellites on a single launch, and lost or “stale” objects. Submissions will be evaluated by military space operators, space development professionals, and human factors experts. Some considerations include: Clear presentation of information, ability to search for and display specific objects or constellations, support of user recognition rather than recall, ability to monitor all critical information simultaneously, lack of clutter and extraneous information, and lack of over-stimulation of the user. https://spacenews.com/air-force-launches-100k-challenge-for-space-awareness-innovators