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  30 juillet 2020 | International, Naval

  To keep up with our competitors, America must boost shipbuilding

  By: Sen. David Perdue Right now, the world is more dangerous than any time in my lifetime. The United States faces five major threats: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and terrorism. We face those threats across five domains: air, land, sea, cyberspace and space. The U.S. Navy is one of the most effective tools we as a country have to maintain peace and stability around the world. Today, however, the Navy is in danger of being surpassed in capability by our near-peer competitors. On top of that, our competitors are becoming even more brazen in their attempts to challenge our Navy every day. To address this, the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act called for a 355-ship Navy to be built as soon as possible. This effort is extremely expensive: $31 billion per year for 30 years. This can't be funded by new debt. We must reallocate resources to fund this priority. It is unclear at this time whether we will be able to achieve this goal, however, because Washington politicians have failed to provide consistent funding to our shipbuilding enterprise over the years. The last two Democratic presidents reduced military spending by 25 percent. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did it. Also, since 1975, Congress has only funded the government on time on four occasions due to our broken budget process. As a result, Congress forces the military in most years to operate under continuing resolutions, which further restricts the Navy's efforts to rebuild. These shortsighted decisions by Washington have had draconian effects on our military readiness. They have decimated our industrial supplier base and severely damaged critical supply chains. According to a 2018 report from the Pentagon, the entire Department of Defense lost over 20,000 U.S.-based industrial suppliers from 2000 to 2018. This means that, today, many shipbuilding components have just one U.S.-based supplier, and others are entirely outsourced to other countries. This is one of the reasons why it is doubtful that we can reach 355 ships unless major changes are made immediately. If we don't strengthen our industrial supplier base, there is simply no way to scale up ship production and maintenance capabilities to meet the requirements of a 355-ship fleet. The Department of Defense has not yet released this year's 30-year shipbuilding plan as required by law, and time is running out to reach the Navy's most recent projection of a 355-ship fleet by 2034. However, even if the Department of Defense has a solid, achievable plan to only reach 355 ships, I am skeptical that it will be enough. I am skeptical because America's biggest long-term challenge, China, is already running laps around us on shipbuilding. The Chinese Navy has 350 ships today, compared to our 300. By 2034, China is projected to have more than 425 ships. Even if we reached 355 ships, we would still have a 70-ship disadvantage, at the least. On top of that, because of the range restrictions in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which just ended in 2019, China has surpassed, or “out-sticked,” us in some missile capabilities as well. There are several steps we can take to respond to these developments. For starters, we need to place greater emphasis on funding our shipbuilding enterprise. Also, we need to rebuild our industrial supply chains through consistent, robust funding and by eliminating continuing resolutions. This year's NDAA takes critical steps to ensure we can keep up with our near-peer competitors and keep our country safe. It authorizes an increase of more than $1 billion for the construction of new submarines, destroyers and amphibious dock ships. It invests hundreds of millions of dollars to support our industrial supplier base. However, more work remains to be done in the coming years. We need to dramatically build up our Navy beyond 355 ships to ensure that the American-led free world can continue. President Teddy Roosevelt once said that “a good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guarantee of peace.” If we don't continue ramping up our shipbuilding enterprise right now, the world that we will be passing on to our children and grandchildren will only continue to grow more dangerous. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., is the chairman of the Seapower Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/07/29/to-keep-up-with-our-competitors-america-must-boost-shipbuilding/

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

  DoD Budget Cuts Likely As $4 Trillion Deficit Looms

  By THERESA HITCHENSon April 27, 2020 at 5:02 PM WASHINGTON: With the federal deficit expected to balloon to over $4 trillion in fiscal 2020 due to spending to pump the economy in the face of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, downward pressure on the US defense budget is inevitable, several experts believe. “I think the budget comes down sooner rather than later,” Mackenzie Eaglen, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said bluntly in a webinar today. The best-case scenario is for flat defense budgets for the foreseeable future, but if history is a guide, the smart money is on defense budget cuts, explained Todd Harrison, DoD budget guru at the Center for Strategic and International Security (CSIS). “What has historically happened is, when Congress's fiscal conservatives come out and get serious about reducing the debt, reducing spending defense is almost always part of what they come up with for a solution,” he said. “So, we could be looking at a deficit-driven defense drawdown coming. ... At least history would suggest that that is a real possibility.” Indeed, even as Congress is pulling out all the stops trying to assist DoD and the defense industrial base to weather the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, DoD already is being eyed as the future deficit bill-payer, Eaglen told the webinar. “DoD is at the top of the list,” she said. Eaglen added that, at a more macro-level, the budget crunch could force DoD to re-look the goals of the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) with an eye to downsizing. “There's going to be an impact across the board,” she said. “There probably will be a total relook — at even the NDS fundamentals, and what mission is going to have to go — in response to this.” Harrison noted that already DoD has been looking at flat budgets through 2021, which has caused it to have to take some risks as it tries to juggle divesting in high-maintenance legacy systems with investing in future programs while maintaining readiness to handle a possible peer conflict with Russia and/or China. “Just to divest legacy systems and invest in new ones and try to maintain, or slightly grow, force structure, DoD was already saying that it would need three to five percent real growth each year in the defense budget, going forward, just to fully execute that,” he said. This means that DoD leadership is going to face even more difficult decisions in the future, Harrison explained. “Now we're looking at an environment where the budget might be flat at the best case or trending down over time. Something's gonna have to give. And so, if DoD really wants to protect these key modernization programs, not only is it going to have to divest legacy systems, it's going to have to divest them faster, and it's going to have to make some reductions in force structure that's going to incur risk.” More immediately, Harrison said, as Congress moves over the next few months to pass a fourth, or even a fifth, economic stimulus package DoD already is signaling that it hopes to see a number of its “unfunded requirements” stuffed into those bills. “DoD is saying: ‘hey, if you want to fund more things for DoD to help stimulate the economy, and help the defense industry, well, here's a list you already have that you can pick from.” DoD's unfunded priorities list — the annual wish list of programs it would like to fund if only there was more money in the top-line — for 2021 includes a total of $35.9 billion for programs across the military services and the combatant commands. The Pentagon might also petition Congress for greater authority to use operations and maintenance funds appropriated but not spent due to work slowdowns to short up programs facing cost overruns because DoD paid contractors for work supposed to be done, but not actually done, while employees are home-bound due to the pandemic, Harrison said. “DoD has implemented the CARES Act implementation, saying that they would pay for paid leave for employees of defense industry firms that are unable to report to work. And so that cost is covered,” Andrew Hunter, who works on defense industrial base issues at CSIS, explained. “Those folks aren't necessarily going to be laid off; they will be kept on the payroll and paid. And again, that will create some costs down the road to then pay those folks to do the actual work that they're originally scheduled to do.” Most of the nearly $10.5 billion in the CARES Act, signed by President Donald Trump on March 27 to help DoD protect itself from the impacts of the pandemic goes into O&M accounts, according to CSIS. That said, some $1 billion goes to procurement funding, with an eye on health-related equipment. Further, it includes some $1.5 billion in the Defense Working Capital Fund, which allows DoD to make investments in things like depot maintenance, transportation and supply management in the near term and recoup the costs through future year pricing deals. However, the bill grants DoD a good deal of flexibility to move money around — with the exception of banning any funding for Trump's southern border wall construction. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/dod-budget-cuts-likely-as-4-trillion-deficit-looms/

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  10 juillet 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Autre défense

  To develop hypersonic missile launcher, Pentagon seeks funding transfer

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is looking to transfer $50 million within its fiscal 2019 budget to cover the cost of the design and development of a prototype mobile launcher for its Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, or LRHW. The Defense Department submitted an omnibus reprogramming requestto Capitol Hill on June 25, which congressional defense committees must approve. The department wants the additional funding for the mobile launch capability in order to reach “residual” operational capability by FY23. Developing hypersonic weapons, capable of flying five times the speed of sound, is a part of the Army's top modernization priority — Long-Range Precision Fires —because of the added capability it would bring in eliminating enemy systems in contested battlespace. There is also a need in the U.S> to develop an offensive hypersonic capability to stay ahead of similar weapon development underway by Russia and China. The mobile LRHW will bring online “a new class of ultra-fast, maneuverable, long-range missiles to neutralize enemy defensive weapons with rockets launched from trucks with Transporter Erector Launchers (TELs),” the reprogramming document states. Follow-on efforts will be funded through the Army's research, development, test and evaluation account in future budget years, the document adds. The Army is leading the Pentagon's effort — Conventional Prompt Strike — but is teamed with the Navy to develop a booster for the hypersonic missile and is building a common glide body internally with both the Navy and Air Force. The service is finishing design work for the prototypes and plans to conduct flight tests focused on range, environmental factors and contested environments. The plan is to field a battery-sized hypersonic weapon to soldiers by 2023. The service will use the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System and M870 trailers to make the system road-mobile. The Army still needs to build a transporter-erector-launcher to simultaneously accommodate two hypersonic missiles, which is where the extra $50 million comes in. The service plans to spend $1.2 billion over the next five years beginning in FY20 on its hypersonic effort. In FY20 alone, the Army has budgeted $228 million. A total of $181 million is requested in FY21 to move through the preliminary design review, which will end in the first quarter of FY22. In FY22, the Army will conduct a critical design review and then begin testing all-up rounds at the end of the fiscal year into FY23. The service has budgeted $137 million in FY22 to accomplish those tasks. The Army will then move into full-system flight tests in FY23 using a $359 million budget. The service plans to outfit the Multi-Domain Operations Task Force's strategic fires battalion with the battery to field early combat capability to the force, but to also learn how to use the equipment; to develop possible tactics, techniques and procedures that might be used in combat; and to learn how to train to use the weapons. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/07/09/to-get-hypersonic-launcher-off-ground-dod-seeks-funding-transfer/