24 juillet 2019 | International, Autre défense
By: Joe Gould and Leo Shane III
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved Mark Esper to be the country's 27th defense secretary, ending a wait of more than 200 days for a permanent Pentagon leader.
Esper's relatively drama-free confirmation vote — 90-8 — stood in contrast to the seven months of uncertainty in the highest levels of the military's leadership.
After former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was forced out of his post early on the first day of 2019, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan helmed the department until he suddenly withdrew from consideration for the full-time job in June amid reports of domestic violence among his family members.
Esper, who until then had served as Army secretary for since late 2017, bounced between that job and the acting defense secretary job over the last five weeks. Lawmakers and military officials expressed concerns over the temporary, unclear leadership in recent months, especially as other top military posts were vacated.
Tuesday's vote ends the longest period the Defense Department has gone without a permanent, confirmed leader since it became a Cabinet-level agency.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said ahead of the vote Tuesday that Esper is “beyond qualified” for the top military job.
"His record of public service is beyond impressive,” McConnell said. “His commitment to serving our service members is beyond obvious. And the need for a Senate-confirmed secretary of defense is beyond urgent.”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., offered similar praise.
“It's not very often we have someone that is enthusiastically supported by Republicans, by Democrats, and he is obviously the right person,” he said. “He has the trust of our president, the trust of our military, the trust of Congress and the country to keep our nation safe.”
The only sharp opposition to Esper's nomination came from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Senate Armed Services Committee member and 2020 presidential hopeful, who grilled Esper over his ties to his former employer, Raytheon.
But since President Donald Trump announced Esper's nomination last month, Democrats and Republicans have mostly offered effusive praise for Esper as the right candidate for the job.
At Esper's confirmation hearing last week, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., lauded Esper for hosting him and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., for an unvarnished look at problematic Army housing in Virginia.
“That willingness to show personal accountability was very, very impressive,” Kaine said. “He's been proactive and he's been transparent. ... And I think those are trademarks of exceptional leadership.”
Work ahead
Esper, a West Point graduate and former Army lieutenant colonel, was vice president of government relations for Raytheon — the third-largest defense contractor in the United States — for seven years before becoming Army secretary. His most notable work leading the Army included a shake-up of the service's acquisitions portfolio.
He inherits a military charged with following the National Defense Strategy's focus on competition with Russia and China but still grappling with Iran tensions, politically charged troop deployments on America's southern border and pressure from Trump to exit Afghanistan.
The American Enterprise Institute's Rick Berger said the leadership vacuum after Mattis has left the Pentagon “adrift.” Esper would be wise to reset relationships with Capitol Hill and the press, who have both grumbled at a lack of engagement, he added.
“The department has never been more timid about telling its story to the public or to Capitol Hill, a legacy of Secretary Mattis and his caretaker successor,” Berger said.
Loren DeJong Schulman, a deputy director at the Center for a New American Security, said Esper's priorities will be to fill the department's widespread leadership vacancies, to dig into the fiscal 2021 budget process and to assert himself in decisions regarding tension with Iran.
"In doing so, he has the opportunity to reorient some troubling trends in the Pentagon, such as the growing absence of transparency with the press, Hill, and American people, and the dominance of the Joint Staff in what should be political-military policy debates," she said.
“Esper is also fighting a White House policy process driven by presidential tweet and instinct, without a responsible deliberate process. Like Mattis, Esper can insist on better cross-agency deliberation to develop policy ideas that support the president's objectives.”
Senators will move onto the next Pentagon leadership vacancy tomorrow when they hold a confirmation hearing for David Norquist to be deputy secretary of defense.
Trump has already nominated Ryan McCarthy to replace Esper as secretary of the Army.
18 mars 2022 | International, Naval
Over the past three years, the U.S. Navy has tightened its budget and changed its requirements, making the future look far less rosy for a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries.
21 août 2018 | International, C4ISR
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. ARLINGTON: As the Army reboots its battlefield radio networks, it's jettisoning exquisitely custom-made military waveforms and moving to simpler — but more capable — commercial radio protocols. The move is underway on three fronts, Maj. Gen. David Bassett, the two-star Program Executive Officer for command, control & communications – Tactical (PEO C3T), says: The Army's already moving its backpack-mounted tactical radio, the Manpack, from the milspec Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) to the commercial TSM waveform, with both Harris and Rockwell Collins now integrating TSM in their radios. (Special operators already use TSM). They're currently selecting vendors to do the same for their handheld Leader Radio, mainly used by junior and non-commissioned officers on foot. Bassett's staff told me to expect an award sometime in September. They're exploring alternatives to the Wideband Networking Waveform (WNW) as the “backbone” of the Army's tactical network. TSM is one candidate but there are others, including some still in development, Bassett told me in an interview here. It's all part of a wider effort to rebuild the Army's command, control, and communications (C3) networks for war against a high-tech great power. Speaking at a cyber and networks conference held here Aug. 2 by the Association of the US Army, Bassett said the Army will conduct operational testing of new command systems — including two lower-complexity alternatives to complement the current mainstay, JBC-P — and start fielding them, he said, “this fall.” Why the rush? Army systems like WIN-T(Warfighter Information Network – Tactical) worked adequately as long as we had big bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, with plenty of time to set up extensive infrastructure and minimal enemy interference. China and Russia, however, have cutting-edge cyber and electronic warfare attackers to hack the network software, powerful electronic warfare units to jam its transmissions, and long-range precision guided missiles that can easily target large, stationary command posts. So last year Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley ordered a crash program of improvements, cancelling planned WIN-T upgrades in favor of new technologies, many from the thriving commercial IT sector. “It was kind of a shock to the system,” the Army's Chief Information Officer, Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, told the AUSA conference. “The Army came forward and said there were some programs it wanted to halt and some things it fundamentally wanted to do differently.” Appealing To Industry Gen. Milley's announcement met with initial resistance, including on Capitol Hill, but inspired intense interest from industry. Maj. Gen. Bassett himself had come to the AUSA conference from a meeting in Raleigh, one corner of North Carolina's thriving“research triangle,” where he had briefed 400 representatives from some 126 companies. “Down in Raleigh, the challenge that I gave them was learn how you fit into our network design. Propose solutions that will fit into our network,” Bassett said. “We want them to become part of that infrastructure rather than competing with it.” https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/army-takes-its-radio-network-commercial-can-you-hear-me-now
19 novembre 2024 | International, Terrestre
A first-of-its-kind test facility unveiled earlier this month at the University of Notre Dame could improve the Pentagon’s hypersonic research.