US Air Force will buy E-7 Wedgetail in 2022, Boeing exec claims

Sur le même sujet

• 

  7 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Here’s how much money the Pentagon found through internal savings — and where it’s going

  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: Nuclear modernization Space priorities, including the establishment of the U.S. Space Force Missile defense, with funds going towards a “multi-layered approach to homeland missile defense” and the development of the Next Generation Interceptor Hypersonic weapons, with the review providing for a “major increase in this investment” in both FY21 and the following years Artificial intelligence, with review funds “significantly” accelerating investment in AI for “maneuver, intelligent business automation and logistics, war fighter health analysis and intelligence data processing" 5G communications technologies, with money going towards providing test facilities for 5G prototyping Response force readiness, part of Esper's plan to have forces that can rapidly respond to issues around the globe with a flexible posture 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. 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.” https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2020/02/06/heres-how-much-money-the-pentagon-found-through-internal-savings-and-where-its-going/

• 

  22 juin 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Pentagon maps out defense space strategy

  By Ed Adamczyk June 19 (UPI) -- The Pentagon's strategy for defense in space treats the environment as a warfighting domain, a Defense Department report says. The Defense Space Strategy calls for maintenance of space superiority, support to national, joint and combined operations on earth,and assurance of space stability, the Pentagon said this week. The report identified what officials call four priority lines of effort: building a comprehensive military advantage in space; integration of power in space into the military; shaping the strategic environment; and cooperation with allies, partners, and other U.S. government departments and agencies. The 18-page unclassified section of the report was released on Wednesday. "China and Russia have weaponized space and turned it into a war-fighting domain," Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Stephen Kitay told reporters on Wednesday. "Their actions pose the greatest strategic threat with ongoing development, testing and deployment of counter-space systems and the associated military doctrine designed to hold allied and U.S.space systems at risk." "The U.S. space enterprise was not built for the current strategic environment," Kitay added, noting that space has historically been regarded as a supporting domain for satellites to support other efforts, but not as a battleground. The U.S. Space Force, established as the sixth branch of the Armed Forces in 2019, is specifically designated as the country's space warfare service branch. It has previously noted Russia's direct ascent weapons and potential weapons to destroy satellites, as well as threats including electronic warfare, cyberattacks and ground-based lasers capable of blinding satellites. https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2020/06/19/Pentagon-maps-out-defense-space-strategy/3191592594867/

• 

  4 août 2020 | International, Terrestre

  US weapon sales boss talks China, arms exports and his agency’s future

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — After years of working various jobs related to security cooperation, Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper took over the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency in August 2017. It was an appointment that coincided with a major push by the Trump administration to increase weapon sales as an economic driver. Three years later, as he gets ready to retire, Hooper sat down with Defense News for an exclusive exit interview. This interview was edited for length and clarity. You came in as DSCA director in 2017, when the Trump administration was making a concerted push to increase arms sales abroad. Has that push been successful? Certainly I think the answer to that question is: “Yes, absolutely.” When I assumed responsibility at DSCA, we saw a convergence of three authorities that helped to create conditions that would help us to move forward and to elevate security cooperation. The first one was the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which [gave me] responsibilities in the Department of Defense to reform security cooperation, in ways that would make it more efficient and effective. The second one was the revision and the updating of the administration's arms transfer policies. And the third was the National Defense Strategy with which has three lines of effort, the second of which was strengthen alliances and attract new partners. So those three authorities created by convergence — what I call a perfect storm of authorities — and conditions to allow us to elevate and push for security cooperation and foreign military sales. And I made it my mission to take advantage of those conditions to move it forward. You have talked often about the need to both trim time and cost for partners and allies buying American systems. What are some highlights for you? In 2018, we lowered the admin surcharge rate from 3.5 to 3.2 percent. And since the new rates have gone into effect, our partners have saved $250 million on FMS cases. Next, we reduced the transportation rates in 2018. And since that reduction has gone into effect, since Aug. 15, 2018, our partners saved about $15 million. Then this year, we reduced the FMS contract administration surcharge from 1.2 percent to 1 percent. Although we don't have enough data as of yet to determine actual savings, we estimate that our allies and partners will save about 17 percent on contract administration over the life of each FMS case, which averages about seven or eight years. That perfect storm of authorities allowed us to move forward with many of the initiatives that we've been able to accomplish over my tenure as DSCA director. And then the Defense Security Cooperation University. I'm very proud of that, and we were able to bring that online in less than two years: The establishment of a civilian career field for security cooperation specialists, so that we are able to train and educate a cadre of people specifically focused on security cooperation, and foreign military sales through their mid-career and all the way to their capstone years. We all know one big FMS case can skew an entire year's numbers, but do you feel confident that enough has been done to ensure FMS sales will continue to grow? Although we tell everyone what the total value was of the cases that were implemented in that year, we think a three-year running average is a much more accurate measure of the success of FMS over time. And if you look at the three-year running average, over the past three years we're actually up around 16 percent, I believe. So the answer to your question is, yes, I think that we're still on a very positive trajectory. And I think that's the result of many of the changes that have taken place over the last three years that were made possible by the authorities that we were given. So for example, we looked at those surcharge [changes], we revised our financial collection policies to align collections with the actual anticipated billing requirements. And so by decreasing those early collections, foreign partners will experience less financial strain, aligning FMS procurement with fiscal realities. And we've also introduced new flexible financing options for our allies and partners to fit their own unique national budget and fiscal requirements. I'm very optimistic that we're going to continue to see positive trends in our foreign military sales this year, and in the years to come. The DSCA job is moving from a three-star role to a civilian job, with Heidi Grant taking over. You've often talked about the benefit of having years of relationships, going back to your younger officer days, with officers from other countries. Do you see any downside with the position being civilian? What's most important about this position is the person coming into it, and Heidi Grant has all the qualifications that you would need to be an exceptional DSCA director. She has time in combatant commands; of course time on the Air Force secretary's [staff]; her time as the director of the Defense Technology Security Administration. So it is the right person, with the right skill set, to be an upstanding director of DSCA and, frankly, I'm excited to see all the accomplishments that she's going to have. There is speculation that a potential Biden administration could roll back some of the arms control changes made under the Trump administration. If that were to happen, what would be the impact? I'm not going to hypothesize here about what ifs. What I can say is that we're clearly on a very positive trajectory as a result of the three steps that have taken place. And I think that the results that have come forward — I mean, the results that we've seen today are a reflection of the NDAA, the conventional arms transfer policies and National Defense Strategy. Future administrations will of course consider things as they will consider them. And I wouldn't want to speculate on that. But I think the progress we've made today speaks very, very strongly toward the effectiveness of the measures in place. We hear a lot about Russia and China looking at foreign arms sales as a way to exert influence around the globe. Are they successful in pushing the U.S. out of certain markets? Both of our main strategic competitors are mounting challenges to the United States, and I think we see that in a number of places all over the world. But I would say that the proper characterization of this is that they are challenging us. They are competing with us. Certainly they've mounted challenges around the world and in providing goods and services that are not quite the quality of the United States, trying to replace the United States as the partner of choice. Whether it's been successful or not, I think that we have recognized that they've mounted this challenge and we've taken some of the steps that I've articulated for you here that we've done to ensure that we remain the partner of choice and that we complicate their efforts to compete with us. In addition to providing partners with the hardware, our approach ensures that we strengthen these institutions — logistics, doctrine, infrastructure, institutional support, financial management — so that they can learn how to pay the people who will actually fix the equipment. And this is what makes our approach so unique. And this is why we will win this great power competition. Our values set us apart from the other great power competitors. You were the defense attache to the embassy in Beijing for two years, and obviously have a view on China's efforts from your current spot. How do you asses the country's defense export capacity? Certainly, the Chinese are going to look across the spectrum, but certainly they're looking in areas where they think they can challenge us. We know, of course, that the Chinese have marketed UAVs and other things. So they'll look for market niches in areas where they think they can be competitive with the United States. They have economic reasons for doing so, as well as strategic reasons for doing so. But once again, their approach stops at the point of sale. And this is the inherent weakness in their approach and the inherent strength in our approach. Do you think UAVs will be the main area that China targets? No. I used that solely as one example. We've seen attempts by the Chinese to compete across the spectrum, from small arms, small missile sets and others all the way up to more sophisticated equipment such as UAVs and others. We've seen a comprehensive effort by the Chinese to compete across the spectrum of defense articles and services. And I think we've seen a comprehensive effort on their part to try and market systems that replicate U.S. systems and U.S. capabilities across the spectrum, from small arms through artillery systems and other things. So I think we have to be vigilant across the spectrum of defense articles and services to where the Chinese are probing. I think the Chinese will generally try to press forward in areas where they sense that the U.S. position is perhaps a bit weaker, and they will push forward in those areas. And I think rather than having a strategy of competing in any particular sector of defense articles and services, I think that they're more interested in trying to compete across the spectrum, where what they perceive to be potential areas where they might be able to make some advances, and moving forward in those. In what areas is the U.S. potentially vulnerable, and are those where the U.S. needs to increase sales? I don't look at it that way. Defense exports are driven by a rapidly evolving security environment and emerging threats. And so we can't really predict this system or that system, or this category of systems. That said, we know what our military leaders are saying: that [the capabilities] they need in the field to ensure our strategic and operational edge [is what] our allies and partners will want as we move into the more modern areas of conflict. In the past, there was a lag between when the United States would introduce a system and when our allies and partners would ask for us to export it, and those days are behind us. We're in a world where interoperability is the key to success, and we cannot afford to have delays in when we introduce new technology and when we consider exporting them. Now, there are inherent challenges here, between conducting the cost-benefit analysis of risk versus gain, but we have the talent and the ability to rapidly assess these, and to move forward and provide our partners their defense articles and services that they want and that they need, and that will make them better allies and partners for the United States. So rather than predict any particular segment, I would say that the steps that we're taking to improve our overall approach will ensure that whatever the evolution of systems and the evolution of threats is, we will be able to respond and react quickly, and work with our allies and partners to provide them those defense articles and services in a timely fashion. Both the commercial and defense industries are investing heavily in new technologies, including artificial intelligence, which can be tricky to export. How does this work going forward? That's a great question. And I'll tell you, early this year I took a visit out to Silicon Valley and Stanford, and had an opportunity to talk to some of the people out there. Ever since I came back from that trip, I've been thinking about this question and related questions. And, to be honest with you, I think we've yet to determine — we know that this will be one of the principal challenges for security cooperation moving forward. We absolutely know this. And I'm confident that we're thinking deeply about this because I've had this discussion with my colleagues and others. I don't have any solutions for you right now. But I think we've all come to the conclusion that the rapid evolution of technology is going to require us to conduct risk assessments and cost-benefit analysis more quickly, without sacrificing the due diligence necessary to determine the relative cost and benefits of whether or not we want to move forward with [exporting] a certain technology. We all recognize that we have a challenge to come together and determine how we will move forward in the security cooperation realm to address space, cyber, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Should there be a hard and fast rule for whether technology like AI can be exported, given its nature? Listen, never ever forget that security cooperation is a policy function at its core. That's why DSCA resides in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. And policy is a process of adjudicating on a case-by-case basis, based upon a number of economic, diplomatic and political factors, as well as the right steps to take to secure the security of the United States. Just as security cooperation now is a case-by-case consideration of a number of factors, I don't see why, as the technology evolves, it would be any different. All of this, everything we do, is on a case-by-case basis because our national security is predicated on a comprehensive assessment of the situation as it exists, the factors impacted on that situation and the ramifications of a decision for the security of the United States. https://www.defensenews.com/interviews/2020/08/03/us-weapon-sales-boss-talks-china-arms-exports-and-his-agencys-future/