Analysis: UK defence spend hike will have to plug MoD’s fiscal black hole - Army Technology

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  28 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR

  Storm clouds await Pentagon’s request for defense industry cash injection

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Though the Pentagon is hunting for billions of dollars in a future package to combat the coronavirus pandemic, it looks like the next massive relief bill will be swamped in a partisan fight. The Pentagon announced it's seeking the funds to prop up the military's network of suppliers following $3 billion in new “progress payments" to increase cash flow to primary contractors and more vulnerable, smaller subcontractors. The details have yet to be disclosed as the Defense Department works through them with the White House budget office. But last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he wants to “push the pause button” on the next aid package and, because Democrats aim to center it on bailouts for states hit hard by the pandemic, “move “cautiously.” “You've seen the talk from both sides about acting, but my goal from the beginning of this, given the extraordinary numbers that we're racking up to the national debt, is that we need to be as cautious as we can be,” McConnell told reporters on April 21. The Senate will reconvene in full on May 4 to work on coronavirus aid legislation, McConnell said Monday. It would mark the first time the chamber has been back in full since late March. The prospects for a speedy compromise looked dim when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., set herself at odds with McConnell last week, saying, “There will not be a bill without state and local” aid. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other congressional Democrats have added pressure on McConnell by pillorying the majority leader's suggestion that states declare bankruptcy. “Republican Senators: Raise your hand if you think your state should go bankrupt,” Schumer said in a tweet. McConnell's negotiating stance comes as the Congressional Budget Office projected Friday that the federal budget deficit would quadruple to $3.7 trillion, driven by the coronavirus pandemic and a government spending spree on testing, health care, and aid to businesses and households. According to the report, the 2020 budget deficit will explode after Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed four coronavirus aid bills that promise to pile more than $2 trillion onto the $24.6 trillion national debt in the remaining six months of the current fiscal year. Meanwhile, defense hawks are warm to a defense spending boost. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., has voiced support for an additional cash infusion for the defense industry. “The federal government can play a vital role in keeping military suppliers afloat,” Wicker, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in his weekly newsletter to supporters. “Already the Department of Defense has announced it is spending $3 billion to reimburse contractors affected by work delays and breaks in the supply chain. “As Congress considers new relief measures, I will work to include targeted funding to ensure that suppliers get the stable cash flow and contracts they need to endure this crisis. These awards should go toward projects the military has already identified as priorities and should not break the bank." Also last week, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced legislation last week that calls for $43 billion for military infrastructure and weapons as part of a larger effort to confront China in the Indo-Pacific region. That bill also calls for $11 billion to mitigate pandemic-related cost overruns on weapons programs and $3.3 billion to mitigate COVID-19 impacts to the defense-industrial base. But Cotton's proposal is also loaded with new weapons purchases that would prove a boon to defense firms, albeit at a slower pace than a direct cash infusion. There's an added General Dynamics/Huntington Ingalls Industries-built Virginia-class submarine; more Lockheed Martin-built F-35A jets; Boeing-built F-15EX fighter aircraft; a battery for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense air defense system; and anti-ship/strike weapons. Cotton's bill follows a $6.1 billion China deterrence package from the influential ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. That bill would fund an Indo-Pacific Deterrence Initiative, also favored in principal by HASC Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash. Observers predicted the added funding might find a way through any deadlock on a stimulus bill. “We don't foresee stand-alone adoption but do think elements of it could be spread across different spending bills,” analyst Roman Schweizer of the Cowen Group said of Cotton's bill in a note to investors. “With Congress in full-bore debt-spending mode, defense proponents might be able to bury this money in larger packages. The American Enterprise Institute's Mackenzie Eaglen proposed in a Defense News on Monday that the next package for the Pentagon should avoid submitting unfunded procurement priorities and also “focus on the health, safety and continuity of all the Pentagon's workforce.” “Democrats want another stimulus, ideally on ‘shovel ready' infrastructure jobs. DoD is absolutely going to need more help in some sort of bill to keep the defense supply chain from going to the unemployed lines, or worse, gobbled up by China,” Eaglen said in an email. “Most of defense stimulus is to prop up jobs and employment so I'd like to be optimistic and think Democrats would be very supportive.” Democratic leaders haven't yet signaled how they're predisposed toward added defense spending in a stimulus package. However, a House Democratic aide said that scenario would invite serious opposition from the progressive wing. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a member of HASC and the House Progressive Caucus leadership team, previewed the messaging in this fight in a tweet on April 21 saying: “The Pentagon shouldn't get any more COVID relief money." “A single F-35 could pay for 2,200 ventilators. 1 nuclear warhead could pay for 17 million masks,” Khanna said, adding that the Pentagon budget dwarfs the combined budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and U.S. contributions to the World Health Organization. In the Senate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., “will strongly oppose no-strings-attached giveaways to the arms industry, as news reports seem to indicate are the Pentagon's likely request of Congress," said his spokesman, Keane Bhatt. "This is the time to put ordinary workers and small businesses first — not prioritize the profits of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.” https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/04/27/storm-clouds-await-pentagons-request-for-defense-industry-cash/

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  24 octobre 2023 | International, Terrestre

  NATO urges common standards and curbs on protectionism to boost artillery output | Reuters

  NATO is pushing its members to overcome protectionist tendencies and agree on a single standard for artillery ammunition to boost production of urgently needed 155mm shells while driving down prices that have soared since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

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  16 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Germany sets up European defense agenda with a waning US footprint in mind

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — The European Union should prepare for the possibility of a gradual disengagement by the United States from the continent, even if Democratic challenger Joe Biden beats President Donald Trump in the November election, according to Germany's defense minister. Speaking before the European parliament on Tuesday, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said she believes only the “tone” in trans-Atlantic relations would change following a Biden win. The reorientation of America's foreign policy toward China as a global rival would remain a key driving force in Washington, possibly at the expense of Europe, she said. “If that is the case, it means we Europeans must become able to act more so than is the case today,“ she said in testimony meant to lay out Germany's defense agenda during a six-month turn at the helm of the European Council of the EU that began July 1. To be sure, Kramp-Karrenbauer stressed that Europe remains dependent on U.S. and NATO support, and that there's no sign of that equation changing anytime soon. German leaders have consistently held up the trans-Atlantic alliance as a cornerstone of their geopolitical calculus, even as Trump took shots at Berlin for the its lackluster defense spending. But the defense minister's assessment that nothing other than the style of discourse would change with Trump's exit — he is trailing Biden in recent polls — may be a sign that Germans suspect bigger forces at play on the other side of the Atlantic. In that light, the Defence Ministry's defense agenda for the EU reads as something of a toolkit to avoid getting caught flat-footed. Creating a “strategic compass“ for the bloc, as Kramp-Karrenbauer called it, would be a key step in ensuring all member states back a common foreign and defense policy. An EU-wide threat assessment is the first step in that process, overseen by the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre and supported by member nations‘ intelligence services, she said. The assessment is slated to be “far along“ and will ideally be finished by the end of the year, when Germany hands the presidency baton to Slovenia, Kramp-Karrenbauer said. Also needed is a bloc-wide “operational understanding“ for whenever there is actual fighting to be done, according to the defense minister. Even peacekeeping and training missions, which tend to dominate the EU mission roster, always come with more kinetic, force-protection elements, for example, and there should be a process in place for setting up those types of operations, she argued. “You could approach it with the idea that this would fall to the same few countries in Europe, or you could develop a method as part of the strategic compass that this would become a matter for all members,“ Kramp-Karrenbauer said. West Africa could be a first test case of waning U.S. concerns about European interests. An American counterterrorism mission there has been crucial in supporting a U.N. peacekeeping force of EU and African troops. European leaders consider the region a hotbed for terrorism, fearing the possibility of fighters making their way to Europe. But the mission is controversial in the United States, and an American withdrawal could be in the offing at some point, Kramp-Karrenbauer said. “That is a scenario that we could find ourselves confronted with in the future.“ There is also the question of a withdrawal of almost 10,000 U.S. forces from Germany, the details of which are still somewhat shrouded in mystery. Hashed out by Trump and a small circle of White House advisers, military leaders are still figuring out the details for implementing the decision, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said in a phone call with reporters Wednesday. McCarthy said he discussed the matter with U.S. Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, NATO's top general for Europe, earlier that day. But he had little to share about the process, saying only that Pentagon officials would release more details in the coming weeks. The “repositioning,“ as McCarthy called the move, is controversial among defense analysts on both sides of the Atlantic because it could simultaneously hurt America's and Europe's defense posture. Germany is a hub for U.S. troop training and logistics that would be difficult to quickly recreate elsewhere, the argument goes. The fact that military officials are only now doing the analytic legwork for a possible redeployment shows that no such examinations took place before Trump's announcement, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, told Defense News. Hodges said he was encouraged to see U.S. lawmakers question the decision, forcing a say on the issue by way of legislation. “Congressional support for NATO and for the German-U.S. relationship remains very strong,“ he said. Meanwhile, opinions differ on how much of a change a Biden presidency would bring to the trans-Atlantic alliance. “If you look at everything that Joe Biden has said, you certainly get the impression that he is interested in restoring alliances, including in Europe,“ said Jeffrey Rathke, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “Of course there would be a different tone,“ he added. “But the substance would be different as well.“ For now, the German Defence Ministry's apparent trajectory of planning for a future where U.S. commitment may be iffy at best can bring more good than harm, he argued. Fears of an increasingly belligerent Russia and Trump's overt questioning of international alliances as key to keeping the peace have driven a wave of increased defense spending on the continent in recent years. “The things that Europe needs to do for its own security are precisely the things that improve the trans-Atlantic security relationship,“ Rathke said. When it comes to Washington's focus on China versus Europe, paying attention to different regions of the world should be possible simultaneously, he argued. “This is not an either-or situation. That's not how the United States should look at it.“ https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/07/15/germany-sets-up-a-european-defense-agenda-with-a-waning-us-footprint-in-mind/