7 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
By: Aaron Mehta
WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense has identified $5.7 billion in funding that will be reallocated from current offices towards new priorities such as hypersonic weapons and artificial intelligence, department officials revealed Wednesday.
The money, colloquially referred to as “savings” found through efficiencies, is part of an internal review process of the department's so-called fourth-estate offices, which include all the defense agencies not associated with either a service or a combatant command.
As part of that reallocation, expect a “significant” change in the Missile Defense Agency's R&D investments and changes to an agency monitoring nuclear programs around the world, officials told reporters.
The review process was launched by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper after he took office last summer as part of several attempts to focus the department's energy and dollars on the National Defense Strategy. This effort is largely independent of the review looking at force posture in the combatant commands.
Fourth estate agencies account for roughly $99 billion in funds in the fiscal year 2021 budget, meaning the $5.7 billion in savings represent about 5.8 percent of the overall budget for those offices. Another $2.1 billion was transferred out of the fourth estate and into the services. However, no personnel will be involuntarily terminated from their jobs; any personnel reductions are planned to come from expected retirements.
The funds will be redirected to the following areas:
A trio of senior defense officials, speaking on background ahead of Monday's budget release, briefed reporters on the findings. The officials avoided sharing specific details of where the money was coming from, or how much of the savings are being rolled into specific areas of interest, due to sensitivities with the budget rollout next week. They also declined to say how these savings might reflect over the Future Years Defense Program, a five-year projection included in the department's budget request.
Missile defense changes
The officials said that there were over 130 decisions made that combined for the total; some saved a hundred thousand dollars, and others saved millions. And the officials gave four large-scale examples of the kind of work that has led to the $5.7 billion.
The first is right-sizing 50 medical treatment facilities by studying the workloads and shrinking or growing the capacity at those locations based on what work is actually needed. Another comes from transferring all remaining storage, supply and distribution missions to the Defense Logistics Agency, something that was a left-over requirement from the 2005 BRAC effort which should lead to savings via economies of scale.
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A chart showing the five categories of fourth-estate offices, how much their budget is expected to be, and how much in savings have been found as part of the defense wide review. (DoD)
A third example comes from reducing the number of operations run through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, which was stood up to track and monitor weapons of mass destruction. While CTR will continue to monitor potential threats like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, it was also running a number of programs tracking the work on chemical or nuclear programs from allied nations, one official said — requiring dollars and assets that could be better put to use studying and countering potential threats.
“What we found when we dug into it [is] it had expanded,” the official said. “This has really turned into partnership building, capacity building far beyond the CTR mission. So then we had to ask the question in those areas, is that more impotent than hypersonics? In a lot of those cases we said no, hypersonics is more important than that.”
A fourth example, perhaps the most eye-catching, comes from the Missile Defense Agency, with the official saying a line-by-line review of MDA led to a decision to “divest significant legacy capabilities.”
The review gave MDA an “opportunity to go through and look at some of the investments they are making that are really targeted at things that had either lessened in importance or were declining, and really realign funding to the new threats,” the official said, hinting that a major focus is in changing where MDA dollars are going to R&D as opposed to buying equipment needed now, including on technologies focused on discrimination of threats.
“We could really start to say, what about bringing together some of the things we've been doing at the regional level into a new underlay,” the official added. “And we said, the ability to shoot down actual missiles and putting more capability on the ground to shoot down missiles was a higher priority than some of the advanced R&D work which was really taking us from an already good capability to a really exquisite capability.”
Next steps
Esper has already tasked officials to continue the review in FY22, with a plan of finding more savings.
Part of the plan for finding more savings comes from Esper empowering Lisa Hershman, the department's chief management officer, to take a more active role in shaping the budgets of the fourth estate agencies into something that looks more similar to how the services operate.
When a service puts together its budget, it goes through an internal process, where decisions about tradeoffs between offices and programs are fought over before a service secretary makes a final decision and moves the budget up to the secretary of defense level. However, the fourth estate agencies do not currently go through such a process — they drop their budgets at the same time as the services do, without that broad overview of a service secretary.
Going forward, Esper has ordered Hershman to act as, essentially, a service secretary for the fourth estate offices, overseeing their budget development process before presenting a unified budget alongside the services. Doing so should provide better oversight on the process and ensure savings going forward, the officials said.
“We can make the defense wide account balanced, so we're not getting a bill from MDA and passing it to the services or taking a bill from MDA and saying [others] have to pony up,” the first official said.
However, to find more savings down the road, actual reductions may have to happen. Asked if personnel reductions could come during the FY22 review, all three officials used some version of this phrase: “All options are on the table.” Similarly, a second official said that while no agencies were limited to this round, that could not be ruled out in FY22.
And asked whether there is another $5.7 billion to be found in the remaining parts of the fourth estate, the first official carefully said “I think the secretary thinks it's repeatable.”
4 mars 2024 | International, Terrestre
These subsystems build on more than 25 years of test and training technology from the Mercury Processing Platform to bring the most advanced, near-peer jamming and electronic warfare capabilities to...
19 juin 2019 | International, Aérospatial
By: Valerie Insinna LE BOURGET, France — Things are looking up for Kratos Defense's XQ-58A Valkyrie drone. Fresh off its second flight, the U.S. Air Force is considering buying 20-30 aircraft for further experimentation, the service's acquisition executive said Monday. “I'm now looking at ways to do that and what the cost will be,” Will Roper told reporters on the sidelines of Paris Air Show, saying that the Air Force is looking for prototyping funds that it can access for a rapid procurement of those aircraft. The XQ-5A Valkyrie is an “attritable” drone, the word the military uses for an asset that can be reused but is cheap enough that a commander could use them aggressively and would expect — and be comfortable with — some losses in combat. What sets Valkyrie apart is not only its low price point, which Kratos estimates will be $2 million per copy in a production run of 100 jets or more, but also the aircraft's near supersonic speed, long endurance and maneuverability, which could make it a formidable partner for manned fighter jets. Once the Air Force buys additional Valkyrie drones, the idea would be to pair those unmanned aircraft with manned fighter jets. “Depending on what comes out of that campaign, the idea would be to look and do a program of record. You'd want to start spiraling the development,” Roper said. A decision on starting a program could be made as soon as fiscal 2021, and from there it would be only two to three years to begin production and fielding aircraft, he said. “I am really pleased we're getting strong buy-in, strong appetite at the pointy end for attritable systems by our pilots.” Roper's comments come after another milestone for the Valkyrie — the second flight demo, held June 11 at Yuma Proving Grounds. According to a Kratos release, the aircraft completed unspecified objectives over a 71 minute test. “With this most recent milestone, the readiness of the XQ-58A is accelerating and increasing the near-term application opportunities for the system,” said Steve Fendley, the company's president of its unmanned systems division. “I am extremely proud of our development, production, and test teams who continue to deliver successful results, in record time, on our comprehensive system level efforts — rare within the aerospace and defense industry." The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnered with Kratos to develop Valkyrie through the Low Cost Attritable Strike Demonstrator program, the service's effort to field a “Loyal Wingman”-style drone that can be flown alongside a fighter jet or other combat aircraft in manned-unmanned teams. But Roper has alluded to even more ambitious plans for Valkyrie or other attritable drones like it. Not only does the Air Force want to add sensors and weapons to Valkyrie, but it wants to implant artificial intelligence in the drone so that it can train and learn alongside pilots, eventually growing in skill and becoming able to respond independently to threats. Roper calls that effort “Skyborg” and in May told Defense News that the service was considering how to incorporate it with manned fighters like the F-35 and the F-15EX. “I don't want this to just be a laboratory project that lives and dies there in a petri dish. I want this to become a program,” he told reporters in March. “I want to see real, operational demonstrations within a couple years. And I will push them to be faster than that.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/paris-air-show/2019/06/17/us-air-force-looking-to-fast-track-cash-to-kratos-defense-for-additional-valkyrie-drones/
24 avril 2020 | International, Terrestre
While some prototype deliveries and field tests are being delayed, Army leaders said, there's enough slack in the schedule that combat units will still get the new tech on time. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on April 23, 2020 at 2:40 PM WASHINGTON: The Army and its contractors are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic so well that the service expects no delay in the fielding of future weapons, the Army Secretary and his two top modernization officials told reporters today. The “rigorous” review of acquisition programs for the 2022 budget request is also still on schedule, Sec. Ryan McCarthy said. “It's just amazing how quickly they've adapted, kept their workforce engaged, and are protecting cost, schedule, and performance on these weapons systems,” said McCarthy, recently returned from a visit to BAE and General Dynamics facilities in Detroit. “Also I'm very proud of Dr. Jette's and Gen. Murray's performance during this crisis, working on things like progress payments for manufacturers, trying to help them get access to small business loans, the managing of second- and third-tier suppliers.” “Right now, all the companies that were closed for any period of time are reopened,” said Assistant Secretary Bruce Jette, the service's civilian acquisition chief. One BAE worker was infected, resulting in a week-long shutdown of a combat vehicle assembly line – you can't weld armor plate over your telephone, Jette noted – but the company has now restarted production with new precautions in place. The company and the union have agreed to give up their traditional week-long shutdown for summer vacation to catch up. The Boeing CH-47 helicopter plant in Philadelphia also shut down for 10 days, Jette reported, but they're back up and running as well. He's most worried about smaller subcontractors, where a single COVID-19 case can force the entire workforce to be quarantined for 14 days, so he's tracking that closely. “I keep track on a daily basis of 63 pages of supply chain [data],” Jette said. “Our industry partners have been really good about opening their books all the way down to their sub-suppliers and keeping us well-informed — they contractually don't have to do that but they have.” Some deliveries of prototypes have been delayed, said Gen. John “Mike” Murray, chief of Army Futures Command. But, so far, those delays are measured in weeks and there's sufficient slack in schedules to catch up later this year, he said, which means programs will proceed to production and fielding on time. What's particularly tricky for the Army is that, after decades of dumping “good ideas” on soldiers only to find they didn't actually work, it's now systematically letting soldiers try out prototypes hands-on. These soldier touchpoints require troops to work together in the field, often side-by-side with contractors who record their feedback and make some fixes on the spot. That's difficult given pandemic precautions – but not impossible. Other types of testing allow a little more social distance, and work from engineering design to budget reviews can take place entirely online. Gen. Murray gave a rundown of key programs: The next flight test of Lockheed Martin's Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) will take place as scheduled on April 30th, Gen. Murray said. “I'm very confident,” he declared, to the point he's already planned his flight to go observe. On the other hand, the third big soldier touchpoint test for the IVAS targeting goggles, scheduled for this summer, has been delayed to the fall. That's not just because of social distancing, Murray said, but also because a Microsoft subcontractor ran into COVID-19 problems (they'll be back in operation this week). Because this would have been the first test of a fully militarized and ruggedized “form factor” of IVAS, which began life as a modified Microsoft HoloLens, it's too important to cut corners, he said. The program will be able to make up the lost time and deliver the final production version to troops on schedule, he said. There's been a six week delay in delivery of the three competiting prototypes for Next Generation Squad Weapon, meant to replace the M249 SAW. Once the weapons arrive, however, the Army will now get them into soldiers' hands in just two weeks, a month faster than originally planned, making up for most of that lost time. Field-testing of one contender for the new FTUAS drone is already underway at Fort Riley, as we've previously reported. Testing of another drone design at Fort Campbell is “a little bit delayed,” Murray said, but should start by the end of the month. The Limited User Test of the IBCS missile defense network has been postponed (again, as we've reported). But the equipment remains in place at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Murray said, software updates continue, and the soldiers who spent months training to operate it will be back to do the test “this summer or early fall.” (The Army also previously announced it would postpone field tests of promising new Robotic Combat Vehicles). “In general,” Jette said, “we don't see any FUEs changing”: That's military jargon for “First Unit Equipped,” the crucial moment when enough of a weapon has been built to equip a significant combat unit. “We are tracking each program,” Jette said, not just the service's top priorities “but all of our over 600 programs, [and] none of them are at risk” of a delay so severe they can't recover. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/covid-19-wont-slow-new-army-weapons-mccarthy-murray-jette/