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  25 juin 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Senate wants better threat sharing between Pentagon and industry

  Andrew Eversden The Department of Defense would be required to establish a threat intelligence sharing program with the defense industrial base under the Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the annual defense policy bill. The committee's version of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, released June 23, also includes other several other provisions designed to give the department increased insight into the cyber hygiene of its contractors. For example, the legislation would direct the Secretary of Defense to establish a threat intelligence program “to share threat intelligence with, and obtain threat intelligence from, the defense industrial base.” This program would be required to include a mechanism for developing shared and real-time insight into the threat environment, as well as a “joint, collaborative, and co-located analytics.” The program would also direct the DoD to invest in technology to advance automated threat detection and analysis capabilities for defense contractors. The program proposed in the Senate NDAA stems from a similar recommendation made by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission's final report, a congressionally mandated document that suggested a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. cyber strategy. That group recommended the DoD force contractors to participate in a threat intelligence sharing program. “The program's ideal end state is to leverage U.S. government intelligence collection to create a better understanding of adversaries' intelligence collection requirements,” the report read. “This action would help DoD and the intelligence community anticipate where adversaries will seek to collect against DIB targets, and then communicate that information to DIB network owners and operators so that they can proactively defend against impending adversary activities.” Under the Senate bill, participation in the program would be based on cybersecurity levels assigned to contractors under the Pentagon's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification initiative, a new program pushing new cybersecurity requirements on contractors. To increase the participation in the program, the DoD would also have to “prioritize” available funding and support to help affect organizations participate. The department would be required to produce a report on the program by March 2022. The Senate bill also included language that would direct the DoD's principal cyber adviser to develop a plan to deploy commercial-off-the-shelf sensors to DIB networks to monitor the cybersecurity of their public-facing websites by February 2021. In addition, the bill directs the department to assess the feasibility of threat hunting on DIB networks by December 2021. https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2020/06/24/senate-wants-better-threat-sharing-between-pentagon-and-industry/

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  20 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Don’t Use COVID As Excuse to Slash Defense Spending

  Opponents of defense spending may cite the economic consequences of COVID-19 — huge deficits and ballooning national debt— in an effort to slash the Department of Defense's budget. If they succeed, American military supremacy will erode further, inviting aggression from adversaries and decisively undermining American security. By BRADLEY BOWMANon May 20, 2020 at 4:01 AM Even as many Americans huddle in their homes to avoid the coronavirus, our adversaries have continued to use military power to test and undermine the United States. Since the crisis began, Moscow has sent bombers to probe American air defenses near Alaska. China escalated its belligerent activity in the South China Sea. Iran has harassed U.S. naval vessels in international waters. North Korea launched a barrage of missiles. Hackers have pummeled defense networks and suppliers with cyberattacks. All the while, terrorists have continued attacking U.S. and partner forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Authoritarians and terrorists apparently did not get the memo that they were supposed to play nice during the pandemic. They clearly still believe they can advance their interests and undermine ours with the employment of cyber and kinetic military power. Despite this, opponents of defense spending may cite the economic consequences of COVID-19 — huge deficits and ballooning national debt— in an effort to slash the Department of Defense's budget. If they succeed, American military supremacy will erode further, inviting aggression from adversaries and decisively undermining American security. To be clear, the United States did not find itself in this tenuous position overnight. America's military edge has been eroding for years. For many years after 9/11, Washington repeatedly failed to provide the Pentagon with the timely, predictable and sufficient funding necessary to maintain current readiness and modernize its forces. When confronted with this difficult choice, defense leaders were often forced to postpone vital weapon modernization research and development programs to resource and support the next units to deploy. Meanwhile, Beijing and Moscow studied how the United States fights wars and undertook comprehensive efforts to modernize their weapons and revamp their operational concepts. So, by 2018, the military balance of power had shifted so significantly that the National Defense Strategy (NDS) Commission — a group of bipartisan national security experts not prone to hyperbole — sounded the alarm. “The security and wellbeing of the United States are at greater risk than at any time in decades,” they warned. “America's military superiority—the hard-power backbone of its global influence and national security—has eroded to a dangerous degree.” Thankfully, the U.S. has now emerged from what the 2018 National Defense Strategy called a “period of strategic atrophy” and taken concerted action. With increased defense funding in the last few years and a focus on great power competition, the Department of Defense is undertaking the most significant U.S. military modernization effort in decades. In order to win the intense military technology competition with Beijing and others, the Pentagon is focusing its research and development on artificial intelligence, biotechnology, autonomy, cyber, directed energy, hypersonics, space and 5G. Simultaneously, the Pentagon and combatant commands are working to develop a new joint concept to employ these new weapons. Despite these positive efforts, U.S. military supremacy has continued to erode. Consider Indo-Pacific Command's report submitted in March warning that the military balance of power with China continues to become “more unfavorable.” The United States, it said, is accumulating “additional risk that may embolden our adversaries to attempt to unilaterally change the status quo before the U.S. could muster an effective response.” This is because America has not yet deployed most of the weapons and capabilities it has been developing and is still crafting its new joint warfighting concept. To be sure, each of the U.S. military services are sprinting to field key systems, weapons, and capabilities in the next few years. But the Chinese Communist Party and its People's Liberation Army are sprinting too, and there is no time to waste. The bipartisan experts on the NDS Commission recommended that “Congress increase the base defense budget at an average rate of three to five percent above inflation” in the coming years. If Congress ignores its own commission and slashes defense spending, U.S. military supremacy will continue to erode and could eventually disappear. The far left and libertarians often respond to such arguments by emphasizing the size of the U.S. defense budget. What they fail to mention is that U.S. defense spending, measured either as a percentage of gross domestic product or a percentage of federal outlays, is near post-World War II lows. That doesn't mean assertive congressional oversight is not needed; there is certainly room for improvement at the Pentagon. Indeed, defense leaders must continue to ruthlessly establish priorities, eliminate waste, and implement efficiencies—while credibly demonstrating tangible stewardship to Congress and taxpayers. One should not dismiss the severe economic impacts of the coronavirus. The Congressional Budget Office has highlighted the potentially dire consequences for the federal deficit and debt. But Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security's mandatory spending — not discretionary defense spending — is the primary driver, by far, of fiscal unsustainability. If the American people and their representatives in Congress provide the Department of Defense sufficient resources over the next few years, the U.S. military will be able to complete and field vital modernization programs. This will ensure U.S. troops have what they need and will enable the United States to re-assert the military superiority that has been so beneficial to peace, prosperity, and security. The coronavirus has certainly demonstrated the need for better domestic health security programs and has delivered a body blow to the U.S. economy. But if political leaders respond by slashing the Department of Defense's budget, Washington risks making American military superiority yet another casualty of the coronavirus. Bradley Bowman, former advisor to Sens. Todd Young and Kelly Ayotte, is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/dont-let-the-covid-deficit-hurt-defense-spending

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  5 mars 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  McCarthy: Without budget growth, Army heads toward ‘collision course’

  Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Without top-line growth in the U.S. Army's future budgets, the service is headed toward a “collision course,” Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said March 4 at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference. The Army has already gone through two-and-a-half years of deep budget scrubs through its “night court” process, which seeks to find funding areas in the budget that don't align with the National Defense Strategy and the service's modernization efforts, and moves those dollars into accounts that meet its priorities. In the Army's first night court, the chief, secretary, vice chief and undersecretary presided over decisions — big and small, easy and tough — for roughly 600 programs, shifting $33 billion from programs across the fiscal 2020 through FY24 five-year plan. In FY20, the Army is investing $8.6 billion in modernization efforts and, across the next five years, investing a total of $57 billion, a 137 percent increase from the previous year's five-year plan. The Army found another roughly 80 programs to scale back or cancel in order to free up funding in FY21, but Army leadership has admitted it's getting harder and harder to find low-hanging fruit in the process. The Army is now in the process of conducting its night court for FY22 in order to try to find more money to align with its modernization goals. Officials will have to start making choices in terms of restructuring procurement accounts to begin the divestiture of current capabilities in the force to make room for future programs that will enter Low-Rate Initial Production (LRIP) in the comings years. But that may not be enough if the Army doesn't get an increased top line of 3 to 5 percent in future budget years, McCarthy said. “What is going to be a challenge for us in ‘22 and ‘23 when [modernization programs] start to mature, we have to make choices in this milestone process, you start buying LRIP tranches,” he said. At the same time the Army has to grow the force because its current ratio of dwell time to deployment time is 1:1 worldwide, McCarthy said. “If we don't get 3 to 5 percent growth in the out-years, there is a collision course if you keep growing the force and starting bringing in all these capabilities,” he said. “Choices will have to be made if we can't increase the top line in ‘22 and ‘23, so will that mean will we have to flatten end-strength? Do we tier the weapon systems that we bring into the formations,” McCarthy asked. “These are the choices that we are talking about, we are looking at and we are going to be prepared to make.” McCarthy referenced recent comments from Defense Secretary Mark Esper regarding the need to review combatant command demands and asked, “Can we reduce demand worldwide? ... Are we being efficient with every soldier, sailor, airman and marine that we send forward? Can the allies do better? Can we increase their capabilities that do more of the burden that is everything from investing as well as putting more boots forward in the form of deterrence?” McCarthy told reporters following his speech that if the demand doesn't come down there, "there is no trade space left even if you are going to kill weapon systems that we've had for 40 to 50 years and if you are successful with Congress in getting that done.” The Army is discussing the numbers it needs with the White House, McCarthy added, but noted that “this is an election year. This is tough. This is going to be a march for the next couple of months.” But McCarthy stressed, the Army will “continue to grow until we are forced with a really difficult, really another inflection point, if you will, downstream.” https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/03/04/mccarthy-without-budget-growth-army-heads-toward-collision-course/