17 décembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

Modernization top priority in FY20 budget, Pentagon’s No. 2 official says

WASHINGTON — As the Trump administration and Congress deliberate the Defense Department's top-line budget for fiscal 2020, safeguarding the military's weapons programs and funding technology development is taking precedence over growing the force, the Pentagon's No. 2 official said Thursday.

“At the end of the day, the national defense strategy puts a priority on modernization,” Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters Dec. 13. “The trick then becomes, when you talk about force structure, how much risk do you take given the world's environment?”

Shanahan's comments come at a time of back-and-forth between President Donald Trump, Defense Department leadership and Congress about the size of the FY20 defense budget.

Pentagon budget makers had been planning for a $733 billion budget request — a modest increase over the $716 billion budget for FY19 — when Trump announced in October that the Defense Department's budget would instead be cut to $700 billion. The move surprised many, as Trump had frequently touted his administration's efforts to grow the size of the military and invest in new defense technology.

The announcement raised questions about what the Pentagon would have to cut in order to meet the lower number, but it appears that those concerns may have been premature. Earlier this week, Politico and other outlets reported that congressional Republicans and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had convinced Trump to raise the top line to $750 billion.

Shanahan on Thursday downplayed the reports, saying that a final top line had yet to be determined.

"We're looking at numbers above $733 [billion], and as you know, we looked at numbers below $733 [billion]. I think everybody recognizes that this is a discussion that will go on in terms of what is the right number. The process we have is very robust,” he said.

No matter what the top line ends up looking like, the goal will be “anchor[ing] line items to the National Defense Strategy. That's the rigor we put in place,” he added.

With a top line above $733 billion, it's possible the Defense Department will be able to grow both its modernization accounts as well as funding for improving readiness and increasing force structure.

But Shanahan, who spoke at a National Defense Industrial Association event on hypersonics on Thursday, tried to quell defense contractors' concerns that funding for hypersonic technologies, and science and technology development in general, could suffer under a budget that rings in at $733 billion or below.

Asked by one Lockheed Martin employee whether funding for hypersonics programs would remain reliable in light of budgetary fluctuations, Shanahan said his level of confidence was high it would.

“We've prioritized amortization,” he said.

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2018/12/14/modernization-top-priority-in-fy20-budget-pentagons-no-2-official-says/

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26 mars 2019 | International, Aérospatial

Morocco cleared for massive F-16 fighter buy
By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department has cleared Morocco for a major increase to its F-16 fleet, including both sales of new planes and upgrades to older models. The two potential deals cover the purchase of 25 F-16C/D Block 72 fighters, estimated at $3.787 billion, as well as upgrades to the country's existing 23 F‑16s to the more advanced F‑16V Block 52+ configuration, estimated at $985.2 million. Combined, the two sales could net American contractors roughly $4.8 billion. The new F-16 request represents the single largest notification of fiscal 2019. It is also the second largest purchase requested by Morocco, which in November requested new Abrams tanks. In addition to the 25 new jets, the larger package includes 29 Pratt & Whitney F100-229 engines; 26 APG-83 active electronically scanned array radars; 26 modular mission computers; 26 Link 16 systems; 40 Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing Systems; 30 M61 Al Vulcan 20mm guns; 40 AIM-120C-7 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles; 50 GBU-49 bombs; 60 GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bombs; and assorted other equipment. The upgrade package includes much of the same equipment, with similar quantities of AESA radars, Link 16 systems and weapons. The configuration improves the radars and avionics on the older jets. Per the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the potential sales “will improve interoperability with the United States and other regional allies and enhance Morocco's ability to undertake coalition operations, as it has done in the past in flying sorties against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Morocco already operates an F‑16 fleet and will have no difficulty absorbing this aircraft and services into its armed forces.” Work will be performed primarily by Lockheed Martin, and any industrial offsets “will be defined in negotiations between the purchaser and the contractor.” As with all DSCA announcements, the sale must pass through the Senate, at which point negotiations can begin; total quantities and dollar totals often change from the original DSCA announcement and final sale. https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2019/03/25/morocco-cleared-for-massive-f-16-fighter-buy
22 janvier 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

Interservice rivalries: A force for good
By: Susanna V. Blume and Molly Parrish It's no secret that the military services fight hard to protect their shares of the defense budget. Just last week, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday made his case for a greater share of the defense budget. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy quickly answered, making the same claim on behalf of his service. What if the Department of Defense were able to use these rivalries as a force for good? The secretary of defense should pit the services against each other in a healthy competition for solutions to real operational challenges. The reward? More funding in their budgets to implement the best solutions. It is by now old news that the 2018 National Defense Strategy solidified a shift in priorities from long-term counterinsurgency and stabilization operations in the Middle East to strategic competition with China and Russia. This shift represents a significant change in what the country will require of the joint force in the future. As a result, to fully embrace this shift in priorities, it follows that the services must accept additional risk in some areas in order to invest in the capabilities required to sustain U.S. military advantage over aspiring great powers. In other words, in order to implement the NDS, the DoD must shift resources. But shifting resource around with the defense budget is really hard. For the most part, defense budgets are built from the bottom up, with each program having strong institutional champions, regardless of how relevant that program is to the current strategy. In this environment, it's difficult to take money away from something to give it to something else. The result is budgets that largely reflect the status quo. While the DoD should of course avoid capricious and destabilizing swings in funding for defense programs, there are times when deliberate, strategy-driven shifts in resources are necessary. To make it a little easier to move money around the DoD in these cases, we recommend in our latest report that the secretary of defense harness interservice rivalry as a force for good. The secretary should give the services specific operational challenges to solve at the outset of the budget cycle, and reward the service or services with the best solutions at the end of the cycle with the funds to implement them. The DoD competition would start at the beginning of the budget cycle, with the operational challenge given alongside the usual strategic, planning and fiscal guidance. Over the course of the budget cycle, the services would each work to come up with solutions to the operational challenges posed by the secretary. During program review, the services would present their solutions to defense leadership. The service or services with the best solution to the secretary's challenges would then receive the funds to implement them. To fund this competition, the secretary would have to hold back some resources at the start of the process, effectively giving less to each of the services to begin with. This decision will be extremely unpopular with the services, but it will also ensure that the secretary has easily accessible funding available to him or her at the end of program review with which to ensure that the services are implementing his or her top priorities. The idea of spurring innovation through competition is not new. The DoD already uses competitions to drive innovative solutions to a wide variety of technical challenges. Take the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Launch Challenge, which aims to improve resiliency in space by tasking participants to “launch payloads to orbit on extremely short notice.” DARPA will give the team who is able to complete both launches a prize of $10 million to continue their work. In addition, this past September, the DoD's Joint Artificial intelligence Center, along with the National Security Innovation Network, hosted a Hackathon at the University of Michigan. Participants came from both academia and the commercial industry to find artificial intelligence-enabled solutions. The hackers were given a specific problem and then tasked with finding a solution. The winners of the Hackathon are rewarded with — surprise — money! The services like money just as much as the average citizen, and the Department of Defense needs to take this concept and use these persistent and unavoidable interservice rivalries as a force for good. A healthy competition between the services, incentivized by funding, could be the next step toward implementing and addressing the challenges inherent in implementing the National Defense Strategy. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/01/21/interservice-rivalries-a-force-for-good/
16 janvier 2020 | International, Naval

L3Harris to deliver Iver4 underwater drone to Navy
By: Chiara Vercellone WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit has selected L3Harris Technologies to provide the Navy with an underwater drone for use in expeditionary undersea missions, according to a Jan. 14 news release from the company. As part of the contract, L3Harris will deliver for testing an Iver4-900 PW unmanned undersea vehicle, as well as two field swappable modular payload sections, which, along with additional sensors, will allow the vehicle to detect, classify, localize and identify targets on the ocean floor, the release said. An earlier version of the drone was already sent to the Navy, but under this contract, the company will deliver a version modified to fit the Navy's requirements, a company spokeswoman told Defense News. She would not share the value of the contract. “The Iver4 is leading the next generation of small class UUVs,” said Daryl Slocum, vice president of unmanned maritime systems at L3Harris Technologies. “This platform has been custom-built to address the needs of the Expeditionary Mine Countermeasures and Explosive Ordnance Disposal communities.” The contract award comes as the Navy seeks to bolster its unmanned inventory. Congress recently approved the purchase of two large unmanned surface vessels for the service. In 2019, L3Harris received a contract from the University of Southern Mississippi for an older version of the underwater drone to be used by the university's school of ocean science and engineering. https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2020/01/15/l3harris-to-deliver-iver4-underwater-drone-to-us-navy

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