28 août 2023 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
Pentagon unveils ‘Replicator’ drone program to compete with China
The program will seek to scale unmanned, attritable systems to offset China's bulk capacity, Hicks said.
4 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
BY REBECCA KHEEL - 05/03/20 01:30 PM EDT
Defense budget cuts are looming as the coronavirus pandemic places pressure on the federal budget across various agencies.
The Pentagon had already been expecting relatively flat budgets for the next few years due to economic constraints caused by the widening deficits in the country.
But with the pandemic, the deficit is projected to explode after Congress passed trillions of dollars in coronavirus relief packages, with more aid bills expected. Defense budget analysts are predicting that will mean cuts to defense spending down the line.
Meanwhile, Democrats say the crisis should result in a rethinking of national security that gives less money to the Pentagon and more to areas like public health.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said this past week it's hard to predict where the defense budget will head after the crisis abates, but suggested the entire federal budget will need to be re-examined.
“The economics of this get much more complicated than they were before this, and it's logical to assume that we are going to have to reevaluate our entire budget, both revenue and expenditures,” Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said on a teleconference in response to a question from The Hill. “Beyond that, it would be pure speculation as to what's gonna happen.”
Smith, a long time opponent of the nuclear budget, specifically highlighted nuclear modernization as an area for potential cuts, but said defense portfolios are “all on the table to figure out how to spend the money more wisely.”
In the meantime, defense hawks, progressives and deficit hawks alike are honing their arguments as they brace for defense cuts.
The defense budget battles are already starting to play out as Congress debates further coronavirus relief bills.
The Pentagon has said it expects to request “billions” of dollars in the next bill to help contractors hit by the virus. That funding would follow the $10.5 billion the Pentagon got in the third coronavirus stimulus package for the Defense Production Act, defense health programs, and military deployments related to the crisis and other areas.
Smith, though, said this past week he would not support more Pentagon funding in further coronavirus bills, saying the department can find unused funding in its existing $738 billion-plus budget.
Smith's comments came about a week after dozens of progressive organizations led by Win Without War argued in a letter to Congress that “any arguments that the Pentagon cannot use existing resources to respond to the crisis should be met with considerable skepticism.”
But the Pentagon maintained after Smith's comments it cannot dip into its existing budget for coronavirus relief.
Ellen Lord, the Pentagon's top weapons buyer, said the department may be able to use some operations and maintenance funds for coronavirus needs, but added money still has to be available for “pretty significant needs” in readiness and modernization.
“I am not sure that we have the fiscal flexibility to encompass all of the new demands we have and the inefficiencies that we are seeing and perhaps may see in the future,” Lord said at a briefing. “But I respect what Chairman Smith is saying, and we will obviously do our best.”
Looking further ahead, Pentagon officials have indicated they are preparing to tighten their belts at the other end of the crisis.
In a webinar with the Brookings Institution this past week, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy recalled “compressed budgets” in the wake of recovery bills for the 2008 financial crisis, culminating in the 2011 Budget Control Act that Pentagon officials now blame for readiness shortfalls. The law set budget caps that resulted in sequestration, continuing resolutions or government shutdowns in several years.
“These are challenges we're thinking about now as we look at the [Future Years Defense Program] and whether or not this will pressurize Army budgets in the [fiscal year] 23, 24 timeframe, which are very critical to us and our modernization efforts and increasing our talent management within the force," he said. “We are watching that very closely, and we know that is a challenge that is out in front of us.”
Late last month, the Congressional Budget Office projected that Congress' rescue and stimulus efforts will cause the federal deficit to quadruple to $3.7 trillion, the largest by far in U.S. history.
Defense budget experts say the ballooning deficit likely spells defense cuts in the future, citing trends after previous rising deficits and economic downturns such after the 2008 financial crisis.
“What has historically happened is, when Congress and fiscal conservatives come out and get serious about reducing the debt and reducing spending, defense is almost always part of what they come up with for a solution,” Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a webinar. “So, we could be looking at a deficit-driven defense drawdown coming in the next two or three years. At least history would suggest that that is a real possibility.”
In the same webinar, American Enterprise Institute resident fellow Mackenzie Eaglen predicted the “budget comes down sooner rather than later.”
“There probably will be a total relook even at the [National Defense Strategy] fundamentals and what mission is going to have to go in response to this,” she added.
But defense hawks are arguing the Pentagon should not be used to pay other bills,, saying the country still faces threats from Russia and China.
Fred Bartels, a senior policy analyst for defense budgeting at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the defense budget needs to match the National Defense Strategy, which has not changed despite the pandemic. The strategy calls for the military to be ready for so-called great power competition with China and Russia.
“What you're going to have is likely empty promises, and that's the worst possible outcome for the military,” Bartels said of a budget cut without a strategy change. “If your national strategy tells the world that you're going to do that but you don't follow through, it's going to be harder and harder to operate.”
But the pandemic has intensified calls from progressive lawmakers to rethink what constitutes national security.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told The Hill the crisis shows the definition of national security needs be expanded.
“Lawmakers must view issues like climate change, biosecurity, cybersecurity and this pandemic as serious and real national security threats facing our nation,” Khanna said in a statement to The Hill. “For too long, we were myopically focused and spending trillions on traditional national security issues like terrorism and ‘great power' politics. These new threats impact our health, safety, and economy, requiring new funds to address them.”
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/495762-defense-budget-brawl-looms-after-pandemic
 
					28 août 2023 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
The program will seek to scale unmanned, attritable systems to offset China's bulk capacity, Hicks said.
 
					3 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial
By: Richard Matlock Over the past five years, missile threats have evolved far more rapidly than conventional wisdom had predicted. Best known is North Korea's accelerated development and testing of sophisticated, road-mobile ballistic missiles. But the U.S. National Defense Strategy requires renewed focus on greater powers. China has adopted an anti-access strategy consisting of new offensive missiles, operational tactics and fortifications in the South China Sea. Russia, too, has developed highly maneuverable hypersonic missiles specifically designed to defeat today's defenses. Grappling with these sobering realities demands change. The 2019 Missile Defense Review called for a comprehensive approach to countering regional missiles of all kinds and from whatever source, as well as the increasingly complex intercontinental ballistic missiles from rogue states. But programs and budgets have not yet aligned with the policy. The upcoming defense budget submission presents an important opportunity to address these new and complex challenges. The Missile Defense Agency's current top three goals are sustaining the existing force, increasing capacity and capability, and addressing more advanced threats. The first two are necessary but insufficient. The third goal must be elevated to adapt U.S. missile defense efforts to the geopolitical and technological realities of our time. For the last decade, less than 2 percent of MDA's annual funding has been dedicated to developing advanced technology, during which time our adversaries have begun outpacing us. As President Donald Trump said last January, we “cannot simply build more of the same, or make incremental improvements.” Adapting our missile defense architecture will require rebalance, discipline and difficult choices. Realigning resources to develop advanced technologies and operational concepts means investing less in single-purpose systems incapable against the broader threat. It also requires we accept and manage new kinds of risk. Indeed, meeting the advanced threat may, in the short term, require accepting some strategic risk with North Korea. The beginning of this rebalance requires more distributed, elevated and survivable sensors capable of tracking advanced threats. The most important component here is a proliferated, globally persistent space layer in low-Earth orbit consisting of both passive and active sensors. MDA may be the missile defense-centric organization best suited to developing and integrating this capability into the architecture, but there is considerable opportunity for partnering with others to move out smartly, as recently urged by Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten. Partnerships with the Space Development Agency and the Air Force can be supplemented by collaborative efforts with commercial space companies. We need not do this all at once. Space assets could be fielded in phases, with numbers, capability (sensors, interceptors, lasers), missions, and orbits evolving over time. MDA demonstrated a similar paradigm with the Delta experiments, Miniature Sensor Technology Integration series and the Near Field Infrared Experiment in the past. Meanwhile, other sensors could alleviate the cost of building new, billion-dollar radar on islands in the Pacific Ocean — efforts which continue to suffer delay. Adding infrared tracking sensors to high-altitude drones, for instance, has already been demonstrated experimentally in the Indo-Pacific theater with modified Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles. These need not be dedicated assets. Sensor pod kits could be stored in theater to be deployed aboard Reapers or other platforms during heightened tensions. We must revisit boost-phase defenses and directed energy. In 2010, the Airborne Laser program demonstrated that lasers could destroy missiles in the boost phase, but deploying toxic chemical lasers aboard large commercial aircraft was fiscally and operationally untenable. Fortunately, considerable operational promise exists with recently developed solid-state lasers (the cost of which is around $2 of electricity per shot). We must move these systems out of the laboratory and build and test operational prototypes. Near-term actions to better manage risk against the rogue-state ballistic missile threat must not overtake the pursuit of these larger goals. Although the Pentagon is currently considering a 10-year, $12 billion program for a next-generation interceptor, nearer-term, cheaper options are available. Replacing each existing kill vehicle on the Ground-Based Interceptors with several smaller kill vehicles would multiply each interceptor's effectiveness dramatically. The U.S. has been developing this technology since 2006, including a “hover” flight test in 2009. Affordable solutions like this must be found. Missile defense cannot do it all. Denying, degrading and destroying enemy missile systems prior to launch must be part of the mix. But left-of-launch activities can be expensive and difficult, and reliance on a cyber magic wand carries risk, too. We need to broaden our approach to attack all parts of our adversary's kill chain. The National Defense Strategy urges that we contend with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be — or as it previously was. To meet the threats of today and tomorrow, we must radically transform our U.S. missile defenses. It falls to the 2021 budget to do so. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/01/31/the-drive-to-advance-missile-defense-is-there-but-there-must-be-funding/
 
					9 juin 2024 | International, Sécurité
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