DOD official on the road, misleading valuable allies

Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is on the road helping Lockmart sell defective mistake jets.

He spins this fairy tale for Japan:

“It’s the linchpin of tactical aircraft inventories for the United States for decades to come, so we’re completely committed to it.”

Interesting, as it is unlikely to take on Pacific anti-access threats. That and no one knows what it will cost or how many we can afford to field.

The biggest alleged customer of the F-35, the USAF, certainly has worry.

Carter continues perpetuating the Ponzi-scheme.

“I wouldn’t have told you this three years ago, but I can tell you now: I think it’s getting on the path to finishing its development [and] ramping up to full-rate production.”

Add him to the witness list when the lawyers start eating this program alive.

The rest of the article explains how dumb it is to be a JSF Partner Nation member mooching for "best value" while off-sets are handed out to FMS customers.

Key words

Secretary of Defense Mr. Panetta, continues his work performing mistake-jet marketing for Lockheed Martin.

Words mean things.

"The F-35 represents, I believe, the future of tactical aviation for both of our armed services," Panetta said. "This advanced aircraft's air superiority, its precision strike capability will help ensure our dominance of the skies for years to come."

Emphasis added.

Hopefully not forgotten is this:

"Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

-Christopher Hitchens et al-

DOD contract for FMS sale of 10 C-27Js to Australia

DOD Contract...

L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, L.P., Greenville, Texas, is being awarded a $321,770,026 firm-fixed-price contract to purchase 10 C-27J aircraft, 10 option kits, and one lot each production cost and software reports and contractor logistic support cost and software reports for the Commonwealth of Australia by issuing a delivery order. The location of the performance is Greenville, Texas. Work is to be completed May 24, 2012. ASC/WLNJ, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-07-D-0099 0078).

Combat leader's dereliction of duty

Out of uniform (no helmet in a combat-zone) and thus also unsafe, a silly scarf (also out of uniform) to appease idiots. So what happens if an IED hits or a mortar round or whatever, and this person gets injured or killed in a situation where wearing a helmet would have helped?

Also, someone who is injured because they were not wearing a helmet is unsafe to their squad-mates as they are unable to help others in combat and or now take two or three other people to recover their dumb-ass.

I have nothing but contempt for senior leadership that allows something like this to happen.

Caption for linked photo: "U.S. Army Pfc. Kristina Batty dons a headscarf to meet with female Afghan villagers in Afghanistan's southern Ghazni province, May 5, 2012. Batty, a medic for a female engagement team, is assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod"

LulzDef

Ashton Carter. In it for the LOL's.

Earlier in today's conference hosted by Credit Suisse, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said, "we want the Joint Strike Fighter. We need the Joint Strike Fighter. It is key to all three of our services tactical air programs. We don't want it to be a casualty of this budget environment."

Predator/Reaper program not so awesome as DOD would like us to think

Battleland blog in coordination with CDI's Winslow Wheeler have a great series about the challenges of the Predator/Reaper program.

For me, they do have a use, but besides being media darlings, they have some significant limitations. One wonders if Congress is up to speed with the realism factor for these platforms. The following should be required reading:

1. Revisiting the Reaper Revolution
2. The MQ-9′s Cost and Performance
3. Finding the Right Targets
4. Keeping Track of the Drones

Part 5 should show up Friday, U.S. time.

DOD future strategy

A few points on DODs strategy statement.

Pretty thin on details. What would I do; considering the dire budget problems?

I think for the Army, the Regiment in the Active/Guard/Reserve has to be the core unit. It is smallish, and can be scaled as needed. Brigades? Divisions? Sure, when there is a need to form up several Regiments as needed for exercises and contingencies. Other than that, Brigades and Divisions (their footprint) becomes a small number of headquarters that are themselves small.  Stressing the Regiment as the key player is important also be cause it is commanded by a Colonel. This means there is no general left behind act. We have too many flag officers.

The Guard Regiments would be very light and do the basics; provide homeland security and provide manpower for expeditionary Brigades and Divisions. Given that we have some small as well as large manpower states, I figure you could raise/reorg 30~40 Guard Regiments not counting aviation.

The Navy, like the USAF has to shed useless weapons systems. For starters, get rid of two systems that provide no real worth yet consume resources we can ill afford. That is: cruisers and the Littoral Combat Ship.  Like it or not, carriers will have to be cut. We don't have the money to do everything. With that, the Navy should start on some new initiatives.

-New nuclear weapons to replace the old ones
-A new affordable no-frills Frigate
-A small armed transport. It will look like a small cargo ship, yet have a helipad and a hanger, small hold with crane.
-Keep building attack submarines
-Fund a new light carrier design which is nuclear powered
-Stop large carriers. The Ford will be the last one.
-Fund a new nuclear destroyer for the nuclear light carrier
-Continue to fund land-based ISR
-Cancel the F-35C, continue to by Super Hornets, fund FA-XX

Disband the USMC--we can no longer afford a second land Army.

Dramatically cut the USAF
-The Air National Guard will provide home air defense.
-Replace old nuclear weapons with new ones
-Continue upgrades of the C-5,  F-22, and A-10.
-Cull the F-15E fleet and upgrade a smaller number of aircraft.
-Remove the F-15C-D
-Keep only F-16 Block 5X
-Fund Wedgetail as an AWACs replacement
-Fund other 737 types as manned ISR including a JSTARs replacement
-Join with the Navy on UCAS-N
-Continue to test Avenger
-Low rate buys of F-16s and F-15E
-Upgrade a smaller number of B-1s
-Remove nuke capability from the B-52
-Fund long range hyper-sonic strike from the B-52
-Fund a new ICBM
-Fund a small number of 777-200LR transports. Light transport to keep the aircraft's range. Will not have refueling capability.
-Fighters, Bombers and Tanker/Transport will be reorganized into single and dual squadron GROUPS. Like the Army's Regiment, this kills star growth yet is still doable.
-Cancel the F-35A

DOD wide--
Remove all air assets from Europe. Remove all land forces. We deploy and exercise there. Not garrison there.
Fund facilities and agreements with Australia for additional exercising of tanker, transport, F-22, F-15E and large bombers.
Change the retirement system into a 401k setup. Scaleable with years served. This also keeps people from chasing high-year tenure.

There is more but that is a start.

Unhappy letters

Here, here and here.

Via Pogo article, "Influential Senators Want Safe Joint Strike Fighter Flight Training."

.

Satire

Where the best satire has strong truth backing it up.

DOD cuts might not be so bad

Most of this isn't so terrible. Stuff I like in bold.

Reductions of 20 percent (or about $390 billion over ten years) in investment accounts (procurement plus research, development, testing, and evaluation) could lead to cutbacks in many programs, large and small. Decisions relating to major programs could include:

-Terminate Joint Strike Fighter; minimal life extensions and upgrades to existing forces ($80B);

- Terminate bomber; restart new program in mid 2020s ($18B);

- Delay next generation ballistic missile submarine; cut force to 10 subs ($7B);

- Terminate littoral combat ship and associated mission modules ($22B);

- Terminate all ground combat vehicle modernization programs; minimal life extensions and upgrades to existing forces ($17B);

- Terminate all Army helicopter modernization programs.

There are some other efficiencies to be reduced; such as the second land army.

In other news, re: the F-35, production capability still is not there. Congress is right not to boost production. It isn't mature yet.

That phased line making 30 or so a year is starting to look good. That is me being generous because the F-35 is already a failed program.

The Fort Hood Shooting--Two years later and still no conviction for a slam-dunk case

I completely understand this.

Worse, the charges against the criminal are a slam-dunk which should lead to an execution.

Two years later and there is still no complete trial. The facts behind the event are not that complex. A conviction should have happened by now.

Shameful.

.

What cyber-security?

From DR.

Officials at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada knew for two weeks about a virus infecting the drone “cockpits” there. But they kept the information about the infection to themselves — leaving the unit that’s supposed to serve as the Air Force’s cybersecurity specialists in the dark. The network defenders at the 24th Air Force learned of the virus by reading about it in Danger Room.

DOD Acquisition Lessons from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

DOD Acquisition Lessons from a Galaxy Far, Far Away (PDF)

This is a great read, fun and practical.

"Consider the implications of pop culture’s most notorious schedule overrun. In the Star Wars universe, robots are selfaware, every ship has its own gravity, Jedi Knights use the Force, tiny green Muppets are formidable warriors and a piece of junk like the Millennium Falcon can make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. But even the florid imagination of George Lucas could not envision a project like the Death Star coming in on time, on budget. He knew it would take a Jedi mind trick beyond the skill of Master Yoda to make an audience suspend that much disbelief."

DOD F-35 program office 2009--Baffle the U.S. Navy with bullshit

Here is some odd F-35 history for the day. It is odd because the office giving the briefing should know better. It is a summary brief from the Office of Naval Research.

On the one slide addressing the F-35 it has some wild assumptions of F-35 progress with nothing to back it up.

Some could say that the program is restructured now and that this should be fixed. Yet, if you look around today, there still the blue-sky briefings wondering various locations within the DOD.

(click on images to make them larger)

Poor computer security with U.S. drones

If this article is correct it is disturbing in that they seem to have no solid and tested disaster recovery process (DR).

They don't appear to know about how to reimage computers quickly to put them back in action (also part of a tested and documented DR process).

They don't seem to know process of how to deal with these kinds of threats properly. And still let the virus reside on the system even though they do not know what it does and including the fact that the feed that they use is not always encrypted?

I will save the best for last; it makes no sense to use Windows systems (no matter what a contractor says )for this kind of work when there are very good Unix and Linux systems that can be built from scratch including of course good security behaviour you want built into the kernel.

Unreal. I hope the article is an exaggeration.

DOD budget decay increasing

The decay is starting to increase. As the DOD budget fear becomes more real, traditional must-haves are going away.

"Under heavy pressure to find real cuts, U.S. Navy officials are considering decommissioning a nuclear aircraft carrier halfway through its planned lifespan, two Pentagon sources said.


The USS George Washington's three-year-long refueling overhaul, scheduled to begin in 2016, would be canceled under the scheme, and the ship would be decommissioned as its reactor fuel ran out."

As things become worse, expect to see more. So if we don't have money to refurb a ship that is expected to have a 50 year service life, why in the hell are we wasting $15B on a new Ford class nuke carrier?

DOD mission is politics first

The U.S. Marine Corps are crying (again) over their budget woes. How will they equip their forces with new equipment?

It is a problem of their very own making simply for trying to get gold-plated and high-risk stuff; EFV, F-35, MV-22.

Then there is this:

"The Corps draws off less than 8 percent of Pentagon spending, including Marine aviation funded through the Navy, Robling said. “For that piece of the budget, the nation gets 19 percent of its tactical helicopter force, 12 percent of its tactical fixed-wing aviation and 30 percent of its maneuver battalions,” he said, in a speech before the national sea services advocacy group."

Easy solution. Roll those resources into the other services. Yet again: we do not need a second land Army. Also; USMC-air existed and performed its mission before the Harrier came along.

In any event, I would say that The Hill and DOD will end up creating more of a hollow force because of political graft instead of doing a major reorganization (based on logic) of roles and missions throughout the military.

We will have a very expensive military without much capability. Politics first.

USMC rethink of force structure

The U.S. Marine Corps is rethinking their plans of how to secure and hold that beach...er... I mean budget.

They are trying to work out their reason to exist in a post-Iraq/Afghanistan world where they have been used like a second land army.

Still it takes some aggressive spin and sophistry take Gold beach simply because Red beach has to be taken first.

"A humanitarian mission is a [amphibious operation]."

It is interesting because some years ago, during a Haiti remove and replace the DOD took the air wings off of two carriers; loaded them up with U.S. Army (elements of the 82nd Airborne and 10th Mountain) and minimized the USMC for other than war operations.

In the 20th century the USMC grew. In the 21st century the challenge will be how to shrink it.

Too many GOFOs and SES

The U.S. military has become significantly smaller since the end of the Cold War.

So why do we have a significant increase in General Officer/Flag Officer (GOFO) slots in the DOD? Why do we have a significant increase in civilian Senior Executive Service (SES) slots the DOD?

Take a look at the chart.

80% are oxygen thieves.

Indeed. That is a lot of money wasted on spiffy office furniture, staff and other trappings. It reminds me at the end of the Cold War where USAF developed a "no general left behind act". For instance, the USAF at the prime of Strategic Air Command (SAC) had bomber wing commanders as full colonels. Full nuke alert; lots of responsibility. After the Cold War (where there was no longer any nuke alert for bombers), you started to see Wings commanded by 1-star generals with less responsibility.

I saw the SES world at a major depot. Some were worth it. Others? Well, the third leg of the waste triad was endless reorganization. No one could stop. You had to look like you were doing something even if the solution would be better served by a little bit more supervision and training. No. Reorganize. Fire up the PowerPoint. Get the message out. Rinse and repeat.

Yes, the military can suffer some cuts; if they are in the right place.

Chicom appeasement crowd--DOD report no big deal

"Even with big defense cuts on the horizon, the U.S. has an overwhelming advantage, whether in the refueling tankers that make the U.S. Air Force dominant over Planet Earth."

Yeah, sure.

This is more of a façade each and everyday as USAF/DOD management continues to decline. This is helped by the Chinese communist appeasement crowd, and the fact that many in DC don't want to see the phoney U.S. dollar value get worse.

As our intrepid Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "How do you deal toughly with your banker?"

.