Navy Phone Bill: $4 Billion

And you thought your phone bill was high. The Navy is paying about $4 billion a year for calls, according to Defense News. And not surprisingly, there is a whole lot of padding in that tab.

A check of telephone bills in the Jacksonville, Fla., area �€œfound that when we have a digital receipt for a phone bill in the area�€�we are being overcharged 30 percent,�€ deputy chief of naval operations Vice Adm. Mark Edwards told a group of military-industrial insiders at a recent conference.

Telephone service with no digital receipt showed overcharges of 18 percent, he added.

The Navy�€™s top IT official said he wasn�€™t accusing telephone companies, but he just might not let it slide. �€œWhat I�€™m saying is: It�€™s my money and I want it back. And we�€™re going to get it back,�€ he said, to some chuckles.

By recouping 30 percent of the $4 billion tab over the five-year defense plan, �€œwe could build another carrier, just on the phone bill,�€ noted Edwards, a former ship and carrier battle group commander. �€œIt won�€™t be quite that easy, but we�€™re working it.�€
And it might not end there. Edwards wants the Navy to change course by replacing traditional landlines for VOIP, or �€œvoice over IP,�€ communications, he said. �€œIt would save us over 24 percent the first year�€ and 24 percent the second year, he estimated.

Amphibious Vehicle Leaks Cash

"After 10 years and $1.7 billion, this is what the Marines Corps got for its investment in a new amphibious vehicle: A craft that breaks down about an average of once every 4 1/2 hours, leaks and sometimes veers off course. And for that, the contractor, General Dynamics of Falls Church, received $80 million in bonuses," the Washington Post's Renae Merle reports in a brutal front page story.

The amphibious vehicle, which can be launched from a ship and then driven on land, is so unreliable that the Pentagon is ditching plans to begin building the first of more than 1,000 and wants to start over with seven new prototypes, which will take nearly two years to deliver, at a cost of $22 million each.

The Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle is one of the Pentagon's largest weapons programs and exemplifies the agency's struggle to afford a cadre of new mega-systems that are larger and more complex, but also more trouble, than their predecessors.

Despite reforms meant to rein in costs, it is not unusual for weapons programs to go 20 to 50 percent over budget, the Government Accountability Office recently found. Among the offenders is the Army's sprawling modernization program, which aims to update everything from tanks to drones and is now expected to cost $160 billion [or much more -- ed.], up from $90 billion, and a Lockheed Martin missile-warning satellite program, which is projected to cost more than $10 billion, up from $4 billion...

The overruns are eating away at the Pentagon's buying power but not its appetite. The amount the Pentagon plans to spend on major weapons systems has doubled in the past five years, to $1.4 trillion from $700 billion, according to the GAO...

When it was launched in 1996, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle was promoted as an example of acquisition reform... But the program has struggled with repeated delays, cost increases, budget cuts and dashed expectations, according to military officials and government reports. Problems range from leaks in hydraulics systems to software glitches, according to the reports. Last year, the vehicles completed just two of 14 planned tests.

"They started out really well, and I was really pleased," said Philip Coyle, the Defense Department's former director of operational test and evaluation. "But gradually the complexity of the program has overcome the contractor, so they are years behind schedule."

General Dynamics defends its progress, noting that the vehicle has met many goals, including being able to reach speeds of 30 knots on the water. The vehicle is fast enough to keep up with the Abrams tank on land, it can carry 17 Marines, and its systems can communicate with other ships and tanks, all key performance criteria, the company says...

An independent review released in December by the Navy's acquisition office questioned the company's commitment to solving the development problems that plagued the vehicle. The report said General Dynamics appeared more interested in starting production than trouble-shooting and didn't manage the groups making many of the decisions. The production phase is typically more profitable for a contractor and often marks a point at which a program becomes more difficult to cancel.

General Dynamics "seems to be focused on production rather than on solving significant design and engineering problems," the Navy report said. "This must be changed if the Program is to move ahead successfully."

Undead "Warrior" (Updated)

As expected, the Army has eliminated funding for its high tech soldier ensemble, Land Warrior, in its budget for 2008. The gear -- a collection of radios, electronic maps, and next-gen rifle scopes -- was finally supposed to connect the average infantryman into the growing network for combat. But the Army never could figure out the seemingly-endless weight and usability issues.

Robot Economist is almost delirious over the program's demise:

DOD planners dream up expensive systems... while ignoring the obvious success of modern digital device formats, such as cellphones, PDAs and even iPods. You may not be able to tap out a text message on a cellphone during a firefight as easily as with the Land Warrior, but what are you doing text messaging anyways? That's what the radio is for!

But Land Warrior isn't quite dead, yet. The 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry will still be taking more than 200 Land Warrior uniforms to Iraq, later on this year. The systems were already bought and paid for, in earlier budgets. And the hope is that Land Warrior performs so well under fire that the Army's chiefs have no choice but to turn the program's cash spigot back on. "It's kind of a Hail Mary pass," one Pentagon insider tells me.

The Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II, a new rocket for Apache and Cobra copters, and the Army Tactical Missile System have been wiped out, too.

Also, as expected, the Army will trim its mongo modernization project, Future Combat Systems, by cutting "two classes of unmanned aerial systems, one unmanned ground system and remov[ing] the Intelligent Munition System [a sort of smart landmine] from the program," Inside Defense reports. Army budget director Lt. Gen. Dave Melcher says the changes will save $3.3 billion over five years. FCS will still cost taxpayers $10.6 billion in fiscal year 2008 alone, if the Pentagon's budget goes through. Plus, there will be another $222 million for the Warfighter Information Network - Tactical, which is designed to help troops on the battlefield plug into info networks through satellite, airborne and terrestrial links. That's a nearly 100% increase over the previous year.

Defense News lists some of the other items that the Army is buying this year with its $27.8 billion procurement budget:

�€� $473 million to buy Patriot PAC-3 missiles.
�€� $596 million to buy 7,000 Humvees.
�€� $828 million to buy 2,862 trucks in the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles.
�€� $483 million to buy trucks in the Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles.
�€� $172 million to buy mortars rounds.
�€� $222 million to buy artillery rounds.
�€� $167 million to buy rockets.
�€� $132 million to buy combat service support equipment.
�€� $712 million to modernize AH-64 Apache helicopters.
�€� $705 million to buy UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.
�€� $191 million to buy Chinook CH-47 cargo helicopters.
�€� $468 million to buy Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters to replace OH-58D Kiowa Warriors.
�€� $230 million to buy Light Utility Helicopters.
�€� $98 million to buy 5,900 M4 carbines.

�€œWe are trying to procure M4s for all soldiers in theater; the shorter weapon gives a lot more potential,�€ the service�€™s budget director, Lt. Gen. Dave Melcher said.

UPDATE 7:44 PM: "The 4th Brigade was also scheduled to test Land Warrior at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., but now that has also been canceled," Federal Computer Week notes. "NTC is a common final stop for realistic training before Iraq deployments."

The unit will be fully supported throughout its Iraq deployment, Atherton said. The Army has funding for unit support and repair parts through 2007 and is confident they will find procurement or operating money to keep the unit alive in 2008.

Meanwhile, the program office for Land Warrior here at home will be shut down. The Army will buy replacement parts and materials to last during the duration of the deployment...

The Army is looking for alternatives to give dismounted soldiers a point of presence on the network, Melcher said. One possibility is something called the Single Infantry Transport System, which has similar capabilities, he said.

The research from Land Warrior will be folded into the Future Force Warrior program, a component of the Future Combat System, Melcher said.

Giant Blimp Deflated; Laser Jet Delayed

The big weapons -- the destroyers, the aircraft carriers, and the stealth jets -- all emerged pretty much unscathed in the Pentagon's latest budget. Some of the more bleeding-edge projects weren't so lucky. Especially at the Missile Defense Agency, which took about a half-billion dollar hit for fiscal year 2008.

Take the High-Altitude Airship, for instance. Just a year ago, the Pentagon handed Lockheed a $150 million contract to build the missile-spotting dirigible. No, it wouldn't be 25 times bigger than the Goodyear Blimp, as originally planned. Nor would it be powered by lasers. But it would still be built to "hover above the jet stream at an altitude of 65,000 feet for months at a time." That is, if major advances in solar panels, fuel cells, aerodynamic controls, and flexible materials could be overcome.

Lockheed won't get the chance any time soon, however. The High Altitude Airship "has been canceled due to funding constraints," according to the Missile Defense Agency. But get too distraught, blimp-lovers; the budget for the Aerostat Joint Program Office just jumped from $243 million to $481 mil.

The Airborne Laser -- the modified 747, meant to zap missiles as they take off -- still gets more than $500 million in the new budget. But its first live-fire test has been delayed, again. Originally scheduled for 2002, the blast has now been rescheduled for 2009, Inside Defense notes. The Laser Jet's alternative -- the "Kinetic Energy Interceptor," a non-explosive interceptor missile -- has been pared back, as well. There's no longer a "kill vehicle," or warhead, part to the program, Defense News observes. Instead, the KEI has been tweaked, to become a "common booster" for all sorts of missile interceptions.

There's much, much, much more in this budget to explore. Expect lots of posts in the week to come.

D.O.D.: Iraq Budget "Wrong" from the Start

In its new budget for fiscal year 2008, the Pentagon says it'll parcel out about $142 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Defense Department doesn't really believe in its own figures, apparently. The number was was calculated before the new 35,00-48,000 troop "surge" plan was put in place, Pentagon comptroller Tina Jonas said in a news conference. So $142 billion is just a "best estimate."

"We know it will be wrong," she added. "Conditions will change, and we'll have to adjust at that point."

The number is also $28 billion dollars less than the $170 billion being spent on Iraq and Afghanistan this year. Does that mean there's some sort of secret plan to start bringing troops home? Hell, no. "White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that fact shouldn't be interpreted as an indication of likely reduction in U.S. troops in Iraq," according to the AP.

There was another item of note from the Pentagon news conference introducing the new budget. Vice Admiral Stephen Stanley, Director for Force Structure, Resources, and Assessment for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, listed a number of major "risks" to the health of the American armed forces. One of the biggest was increased wear and tear that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were putting on military gear. Another was the increased "operational tempo" from those wars, which were grinding down our troops. In other words, the wars themselves are a threat to the American military. Interesting to hear that, in a Pentagon briefing.

New Weapons Get Big Cash in Pentagon Request

You might think, with two wars draining hundreds of billions from the country's coffers, that the Pentagon would be inclined to slow down its modernization efforts. Especially ones that have little or nothing to do with fighting terrorists -- or even battling North Korea or Iran. That'd be wrong.

The Pentagon fiscal year 2008 budget adds another $8.8 billion to its modernization accounts, Defense Department comptroller Tina Jonas justed noted in a news conference. That'll include "the first significant funding" -- $3 billion -- in the next generation of aircraft carrier," the CVN-21. The Joint Strike Fighter fleet will grow from two in FY07, to twelve the following year -- including the first short take-off version. It'll take $6 billion in 2008, the Pentagon projects. Despite major cost inflation, the Defense Department budget request "funds three littoral combat ships and will continue funding for two DDG-1000-class destroyers and another amphibious assault ship," according to a American Forces Press Service article. "The Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter is budgeted at $3.8 billion for 20 aircraft."

The F-22, it should be noted, was recently deemed "too sensitive... to be useful" in places like Iraq. Most of these other systems -- big destroyers, new aircraft carriers, and the like -- wouldn't have much to do with an Iraq-style situation. Neither would the $8.8 billion for missile defense (although that is a more than a half-billion less than what the program got last year).

Of the major service's weapons programs, only the Army's massive modernization effort, Future Combat Systems, seems to have been trimmed. The $3.6 billion requested for FCS is just slightly less than what the Pentagon asked for last year.

One bit of good news is that the Army, after years of requests, is starting to get a bigger slice of the budget. "If the budget is enacted as submitted, the Army will receive $130.1 billion in fiscal 2008, for an increase of more than 20 percent," the American Forces Press Service says. "The Navy will receive $119.3 billion, up 9 percent. The Marine Corps will receive $20.5 billion, up 4.3 percent, and the Air Force will receive $136.6 billion; an increase of 8.2 percent."

Bloomberg's ace Pentagon-watcher, Tony Capaccio, has more.

UPDATE 02/06/07 4:06 PM: "Any fear that war costs would crimp spending on new weapons evaporated Feb. 5 when the Pentagon unveiled its proposed 2008 budget," says Defense News. Check out these stats:

�€� $14.4 billion for new ships, a 29 percent increase over 2007.
�€� $6 billion for satellites and related equipment, a 25 percent increase.
�€� $27.4 billion for warplanes, an 18 percent increase.
�€� $3.7 billion on the Army�€™s Future Combat Systems, a 9 percent boost.

Pentagon's Big-Ass Budget

How much cash do we spend on defense, really? Center for Defense Information budget guru Winslow Wheeler provides this handy chart. Check out the $50 billion increase in the "peacetime" Pentagon coffers -- the money that doesn't get spent on Afghanistan and Iraq.

And where does that money go? Healthcare, paychecks, and new weapons, mostly. Check out this Pentagon chart.

Breaking: Double the Troops in "Surge" (Updated)

President Bush and his new military chiefs have been saying for nearly a month that they would "surge" an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, in a last, grand push to quell the violence in Baghdad and in Anbar Province. But a new study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says the real troop increase could be as high as 48,000 -- more than double the number the President initially said.

That's because the combat units that President Bush wants to send into hostile areas need to be backed up by support troops, "including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services," the CBO notes.

Over the past few years , DoD�€™s practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 personnel per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops.

DoD has not yet indicated which support units will be deployed along with the added combat forces, or how many additional troops will be involved. Army and DoD officials have indicated that it will be both possible and desirable to deploy fewer additional support units than historical practice would indicate. CBO expects that, even if the additional brigades required fewer support units than historical practice suggests, those units would still represent a significant additional number of military personnel.

To reflect some of the uncertainty about the number of support troops, CBO developed its estimates on the basis of two alternative assumptions. In one scenario, CBO assumed that additional support troops would be deployed in the same proportion to combat troops that currently exists in Iraq. That approach would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops�€”a total of 48,000. CBO also presents an alternative scenario that would include a smaller number of support personnel�€”about 3,000 per combat brigade�€”totaling about 15,000 support personnel and bringing the total additional forces to about 35,000.

According to the study, the costs for the "surge" would also be dramatically different than the President has said. The White House estimated a troop escalation would require about $5.6 billion in additional funding for the rest of fiscal year 2007. Of that, about $3.2 billion was supposed to go to the Army and Marines for their escalated activity.

But that figure appears to have been grossly underestimated. The CBO now believes "that costs would range from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment." There's a more detailed analysis of the numbers on pages 3 and 4 of the study, which was sent to House Budget Chairman John Spratt today.

UPDATE 1:43 PM: Here's Spratt's reaction, in a statement just released:

�€œAn average of 170,000 military personnel has been maintained in the Iraq theater of operations, and this high deployment level has taken a toll. Last year, CBO reported that the Department of Defense had reduced the amount of �€˜dwell�€™ time for many troops from two years to one year in order to sustain troop levels. �€˜Dwell�€™ time is the time troops spend in training at bases in the United States while living with their families. CBO questioned whether such a high pace of operations was sustainable over the long term. The President�€™s proposal will increase this level to above 200,000 troops, and to reach this level, the Pentagon will probably have to relax �€˜dwell�€™ time standards even more.

�€œCBO�€™s report concludes that the cost of the President�€™s plan to �€˜surge�€™ troops will be higher than previously indicated, both in dollar terms and in the burdens it places on our military.�€

UPDATE 2:06 PM: As they say on the Internet, "WTF?" Gen. George Casey, the nominee for Army chief of staff, "told a Senate panel Thursday that improving security in Baghdad would take fewer than half as many extra troops as President Bush has chosen to commit," the AP is reporting.

Asked by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., why he had not requested the full five extra brigades that Bush is sending, Casey said, "I did not want to bring one more American soldier into Iraq than was necessary to accomplish the mission."

With many in Congress opposing or skeptical of Bush's troop buildup, Casey did not say he opposed the president's decision. He said the full complement of five brigades would give U.S. commanders in Iraq additional, useful flexibility.

"In my mind, the other three brigades should be called forward after an assessment has been made on the ground" about whether they are needed to ensure success in Baghdad, Casey said. later.

Now, Casey has long been skeptical of a troop increase. "It's a tough nut, whether or not bringing in more troops, more US troops will have a significant long term impact on the violence," he said back in October. And just the other day, Casey was arguing that any additional boots on the ground could be removed by the summer. So this feels like we're seeing the edges of an internal squabble between the White House and the Army brass. Or maybe between general and general.

UPDATE 02/02/07 6:36 PM: The White House is denying the CBO report.

(Big ups: JA)

Darpa Takes $300 Million Hit

You'd think that the Defense Department's higher-ups would be happy, when their research agencies start demanding results from the scientists and engineers that they fund. Not necessarily. Inside Defense reports that the Pentagon's comptrollers have slashed Darpa's budget by $300 million -- about 10% - for the next fiscal year. Another $200 million is supposed to come off the top, the year after that. The reason: "A project management oversight structure introduced in DARPA... mandat[ing] that projects are reviewed at regular execution intervals to ensure that they are meeting defined program goals and objectives."

The switch "has resulted in more effective linking of resources to outcomes," according to "Program Budget Decision 704," an internal Defense Department document obtained by Inside Defense. Which would be a good thing, ordinarily. Except that Darpa hasn't been spending the money it's been given, apparently. While funding for the agency has gone up, up, up since 9/11, the number of program managers hasn't increased as fast. Combined with the new, results-driven process, that "has slowed execution of DARPA�€™s funding.... resulting in a significant decline in obligations and expenditures," says PBD 704. So what happened to all that excess cash? I haven't been able to get a straight answer, yet.

The subtext to all this wrangling is the leadership of Darpa chief Tony Tether. In the military research world, he's known as a hands-on manager -- a very, very hands-on manager. No item in his $3 billion budget is too small; even some of the names of Darpa research efforts require his approval. "Nothing happens without his say-so," one Darpa-funded researcher tells me.

That's a change for the agency, which has traditionally let its program managers -- and its researchers -- more or less follow their imaginations. Some current and former Darpa types mumble that the quality of research has been undermined, as a result; after all, "Darpa-hard" problems can take longer than six months to solve. But with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are sucking up more and more money, Defense research budgets are tightening up; demanding results doesn't seem like such a bad thing. We'll see how this one shakes out.

While PDB 704 takes from Darpa, it adds $300 million to the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. That's the widely-criticized effort to build new nukes -- a construction effort many sage observers thinks is completely unneeded.

New Gear Stuck in Labs

Nobody puts more money into bleeding edge R&D than the Pentagon. And a surprising number of those studies actually pan out. So why is the military still relying on gear that's decades old? The problem is crossing the so-called "valley of death" between research projects and "acquisition," when the Defense Department actually starts to buy stuff in bulk. National Defense magazine offers up some examples.

Last year, the Georgia Tech Research Institute developed a lightweight ceramic armor for a vehicle... The message from military officials was that they needed this technology immediately for troops in Iraq. �€œWe prototyped one vehicle and delivered it to Quantico,�€ where the Marine Corps acquisition command is based. �€œWe are waiting to hear from the Marine Corps on what the next steps are,�€ Cross says. �€œThis is where we all get frustrated �€� We think it�€™s a good solution. There�€™s no technology impediment for moving forward. It�€™s the acquisition process.�€

The armored vehicle is not likely to go into production any time soon. The Army and the Marine Corps are studying proposed designs from major defense contractors for a new light tactical vehicle that would replace the Humvee. The program is not expected to deliver new vehicles for at least two more years.

Frustrations with the defense bureaucracy also can be found at a California university where Congress created a �€œtechnology transfer�€ office specifically to expedite the transition of promising concepts from the commercial sector to the military.

�€œThe challenge is getting into acquisition programs. That consumes most of our time,�€ says Stu Gordon, director of the Office of Technology Transfer and Commercialization at California State University San Bernardino...

Recent products that, with CSU�€™s help, contractors successfully sold to the Defense Department include biological detectors, radios, batteries and fuel cells.

�€œWe have contacts at the office of the secretary of defense,�€ Gordon says. �€œThey are very supportive �€� But when we ask them how we get into acquisition programs, frankly, they don�€™t know. This is true for many of the technologies we have.�€

Getting to the right person who can write a purchase order so someone in the military can buy the product is �€œreally a hard thing to do,�€ Gordon says. Some officials at the Defense Department �€œwant to help us but they don�€™t know how.�€

UPDATE 3:40 PM: John Robb has some interesting ideas on how "tinkerers' networks" should be brought into the R&D process.

Behind the Army's Cash Crunch

Our Army gets $168 billion a year to train and fight. So why do its chiefs keep complaining about a cash crunch? The Wall Street Journal's Greg Jaffe explains, in maybe the best article on the subject to date.

From 1990 to 2005, the military lavished money on billion-dollar destroyers, fighter jets and missile-defense systems. Defenders of such programs say the U.S. faces a broad array of threats and must be prepared for all of them. High-tech weaponry contributed to the swift toppling of the regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has been of little help in the more difficult task of stabilizing the two countries.

Of the $1.9 trillion the U.S. spent on weaponry in that period, adjusted for inflation, the Air Force received 36% and the Navy got 33%. The Army took in 16%, it says. Despite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both dominated by ground forces, the ratio hasn't changed significantly...

It may seem hard to believe that a country which allocated $168 billion to the Army this year -- more than twice the 2000 budget -- can't cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the two pillars of the Army, personnel and equipment -- both built to wage high-tech, firepower-intensive wars -- are under enormous stress:

The cost of basic equipment that soldiers carry into battle -- helmets, rifles, body armor -- has more than tripled to $25,000 from $7,000 in 1999.

The cost of a Humvee, with all the added armor, guns, electronic jammers and satellite-navigational systems, has grown seven-fold to about $225,000 a vehicle from $32,000 in 2001.

The cost of paying and training troops has grown 60% to about $120,000 per soldier, up from $75,000 in 2001. On the reserve side, such costs have doubled since 2001, to about $34,000 per soldier.

At Fort Knox, Ky., the cash crunch got so bad this summer that the Army ran out of money to pay janitors who clean the classrooms where captains are taught to be commanders. So the officers, who will soon be leading 100-soldier units, clean the office toilets themselves.

"The cost of the Army is being driven up by [Iraq and Afghanistan]. That's the fundamental story here," says Brig. Gen. Andrew Twomey, a senior official on the Army staff in the Pentagon. The increased costs are "not from some wild weapons system that is off in the future. These are costs associated with current demands."

Senior Army officials concede they mistakenly assumed prior to the Iraq war that if they built a force capable of winning big conventional battles, everything else -- from counterinsurgency to peacekeeping -- would be relatively easy. "We argued in those days that if we could do the top-end skills, we could do all of the other ones," says Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the deputy commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. Iraq has proven that guerrilla fights demand different equipment and skills. "I have had to eat a little crow," says Gen. Metz...

The Humvee stands as a metaphor for the problems the Army faces. First fielded in the early 1980s, it was designed to ferry soldiers around behind the front lines of a conventional war. In recent years, the vehicle, which troops drive on the streets of Iraq, has been modified countless times. The Army has bolted layers of armor onto it to protect troops from roadside bombs. It has added sophisticated electronic jammers, rotating turrets, bigger machine guns, satellite navigational systems and better radios.

The result is a Humvee that is much better than the version the Army took to Iraq in 2003. But the add-ons have driven up its cost. The modified vehicle is top heavy and tends to tip over at high speeds. Army officials say they can't add more weight without overwhelming the engine or breaking the axle.

"The Army recognizes that the Humvee has reached a limit of our ability to improve it for the current fight," Gen. Speakes says.

What the Army says it really needs is an all-new vehicle, designed to better withstand roadside bombs that have become part of life in Iraq. But such a vehicle likely won't be ready until 2010 or 2012, Army officials say. In the interim, the Army wants to buy something on the commercial market -- South Africa, Turkey and Australia all make alternatives. Yet it's not clear whether the Army, which is struggling to equip the current force, has the money.

Army Axing High-Tech Uniforms, "Future"

The Army made a big decision, back in October. After 15 years and a half-billion dollars in development, the service would finally take Land Warrior, its ensemble of high-tech soldier gear, to war for the first time. The collection of radios, GPS-locators, and next-generation rifle scopes wasn't perfect -- far from it. But, for infantrymen who typically don't even have a walkie-talkie, it was an important first step towards plugging the average soldier into battlefield network.

But, just six weeks later, the Army appears to have reversed itself. According to Inside Defense, service financiers have decided to kill off Land Warrior in its 2008 budget. It's one of a number of high-tech programs slated for big cuts by the Army.

The service got $17 billion less than what it wanted for its 2008 budget from the Pentagon and the White House. "Earlier in October... Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker said if the service got less than what it needed in FY-08 it would be forced to slow the modernization of the force," Inside Defense's Dan Dupont notes. "In submitting its budget plan to Pentagon leaders last week, the Army contended that budget constraints have forced the service to take what it believes are imprudent risks in the readiness of today�€™s forces, as well as in its future plans."

Future Combat Systems -- the Army's plan to connect all its next-generation tanks, robots, and fighting vehicles to that battlefield network -- is also slated to take a good-sized hit.

By delaying key milestones, shifting some pieces of the program out of FCS plans and killing others, the Army believes it can save more than $3.3 billion over the next six budget years (fiscal years 2008 to 2013).

The moves would reduce the cost to field each FCS brigade combat team, but it would also push back procurement plans for BCT equipment, delaying by five years the schedule for fielding the teams, according to sources familiar with the plan.

The FCS cuts also entail the removal of some unmanned aerial vehicles from the program and the deferral of some vehicles, as well as some ammunition. The upshot of the moves would be an FCS program consisting of 14 platforms plus the network, down from the 18 envisioned today, with FCS systems to be fielded at a rate of one brigade combat team per year for fifteen years, beginning in 2015. Prior plans called for those 15 BCTs to be fielded at a rate of 1.5 per year over 10 years.

Now, just because the Army has proposed these cuts doesn't necessarily mean they are going to happen. As you may have heard, there's a new party taking over Congress. And, at least in the run-up to the elections, these guys made a lot of noise about giving the Army a boost. Then there's the new Secretary of Defense. He may be more favorably inclined to funding the Army than his predecessor was. Certainly, he seems to look kindly on the larger goal of retooling the military. Check of this exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Dole:

SEN. DOLE: Dr. Gates, the transformation efforts undertaken by Secretary Rumsfeld are critical to meeting the challenges of the 21st century. While Secretary Rumsfeld made transformation of the military a priority, obviously much remains to be done. In your view, which transformation programs are the most important and effective in fighting this war on terror?...

MR. GATES: Senator Dole, one of the things that has impressed me the most in the briefings -- the very short briefings that I've received preparatory to this hearing, is the extent of the transformation that actually has taken place in recent years, compared to when I was in government.

I can't tell you how many crisis meetings I sat through in the Situation Room over a 20-year period, and we would look at military contingencies, and we would be looking at 60 to 90 days to generate a brigade, to get a military force on the move and in place.

So the expeditionary nature of the Army, the mobility, the change in mind-set -- sometimes perhaps those of you who have been really close to it may not fully appreciate just how dramatically the situation already has changed, compared to when I was in government last.

I think that the transformation needs to continue... The two things that I think make a lot of sense has been this shift of the Army from being basically a static force to a more mobile expeditionary force. I think that's very important.

I think that the -- based on very superficial information at this point, this -- the shift from divisions to the brigade structure does make a lot of sense, and I think it provides a lot more flexibility.

I would say that one of the things that I think is very important in the transformation is continuing to strengthen our capacity to fight irregular wars. I think that's where the action is going -- is most likely to be for the foreseeable future. And so I think it's very important that it go forward.

New Congress: Army Up? (Updated Again)

The Democrats weren't the only winners in last night's elections. The Army and the Marines are looking like they just came out on top, too.

There's a long-standing cliche that, when it comes to military spending, "the Republicans are mostly interested in weapons systems. The Democrats are interested in people," as Gen. Wes Clark told a New Hampshire public radio show, back when he was running for President.

You can buy the old saw, or not. But last night was a major power boost for two lifetime buddies of the people-heavy services. Ike Skelton, who's in line to become the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has been close with the Army's leadership for decades. Ditto possible House Majority Leader John Murtha. Both were big Don Rumsfeld haters.

Now, for months, the SecDef's office and the Army have been locked in a cage match over the service's budget. That might change, with Rummy being shoved out. But if it continues, who do you think Skelton and Murtha are going to back?

Phil Carter says to look out for five items as Skelton, Murtha, and Co. move into the big offices on Capitol Hill:

1) An increase in the military's end strength;

2) Some kind of restriction on multiple reserve callups or deployments;

3) Funding for reset of equipment to peacetime readiness levels;

4) Increased pay, benefits, and incentives tied to recruiting and retention; and

5) Policies geared towards making the military more well-rounded, i.e.
incentives to start Arabic and Chinese language programs.

Notice he didn't mention anything about technology programs. That's because, despite the love for the Army, big weapons systems -- like the $300 billion Future Combat Systems effort -- are going to get a whole lot more scrutiny.

Skelton is calling for "re-creating an Armed Services investigation and oversight subcommittee, which Republicans did away with in 1995," according to Aviation Week.

But Skelton could be the least of industry's problems. "I'll tell you the two words that freak then [contractors] out the most," one senior Congressional aide told me a few weeks back, "Chairman Waxman."

That's Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), in line to head the wide-ranging House Government Reform Committee. He's a master of the subpoena. And, Av Week notes, he "has complained about lax supervision under the Republicans and introduced contracting reform legislation in September that would require federal agencies to use at least 1% of their procurement budgets for contract oversight. The bill also requires Congressional hearings to investigate credible evidence of waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement."

If the Republicans hold on to the Senate, things could get even more heated. John McCain likely takes over the Armed Services Committee. He is one of the few people in Congress who truly, truly cares about the Pentagon's out-of-control spending on weapons development. And there is no contractor that pisses him off more than Boeing -- the guys in charge of Future Combat.

UPDATE 1:28 PM: The Navy, which is facing money questions of its own, potentially gets two new, high-profile champions. Retired Admiral Joe Sestak won a congressional seat last night in Pennsylvania. And if former Navy Secretary Jim Webb hangs on in Virginia -- and delivers the Senate to the Democrats, in the process -- he's instantly going to become one of the Dems' most influential voices on national security.

UPDATE 4:56 PM: "Investigations into defense contracting and a re-examination of spending priorities could mean a shift in spending from hardware to troops," former Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, tells Defense News.

The Army, in particular, is under strain from the war in Iraq, and Democrats may push for permanent increases in the size of the Army and Marine Corps. That means spending more on personnel and the everyday equipment they need to fight.

As a result, Democrats might try to trim spending on big-ticket weapons such as the F-22 stealth fighter, the Joint Strike Fighter and the Army�€™s Future Combat Systems in order to pay for more ground forces, Turner said.

Army a 'Cinderella service'

The Army has been short-changed for years in favor of its glamorous and pricey sisters the Air Force and Navy. Now it's the land service's turn for the big bucks, Army chief of staff General Pete Schoomaker tells GovExec.com:

Historically, the Army's been a Cinderella service. We paid the lion's share of the so-called peace dividend in the 1990s. We had a $100 billion shortfall in investment in the 1990s. We cut the Army by 500,000 soldiers -- active, Guard and Reserve. Defense Department investment was $1.89 trillion between 1990 and 2005. And the Army's share of the pie was 16 percent.

The result, Schoomaker says, was an under-manned and under-equipped force, which is only now turning around:

You cut 500,000 soldiers out of the Army and then try to grow 30,000 back -- it's a little like trying to grow oak trees. They're easy to cut down, but it takes years to grow them back. ... Everybody knows the Guard and Reserve had serious equipment shortages; not only that, they had serious modernization problems - Korean War era trucks, shortages of aircraft, wheeled vehicles, older versions of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The active force also had serious shortfalls. We had six active heavy divisions. None of them were the same because of the various degrees of modernization, the various degrees of organization. When you go to war with a $56 billion deficit in equipment, you have to aggregate that equipment and push it forward to the war, which means that on the backside, you now have issues in training, you have issues in reconstitution and reset. That is the challenge that we've been dealing with. If you take a look at our depot backlog, we have over 600 tanks unfunded. Almost 1,000 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, 2,500 wheeled vehicles are sitting in depots right now that if we had the money, we'd be repairing them faster.

Schoomaker says there's increasing appreciation of the Army's unique capabilities. That means more money for the service, especially at the expense of the Air Force, which is shedding 40,000 people and 1,000 aircraft, almost 20 percent of its fleet. The general continues:

I believe in airpower, and there's nothing like having somebody on the other end of the radio when you need something done in a hurry. But to overstate what's possible with airpower is easy to do, and people have a certain tendency to love things that go fast, make noise and look shiny. Like I told you, never confuse enthusiasm with capability. It takes a team. I wouldn't denigrate airpower at all, but anybody who thinks that you can win these kinds of things in one dimension is not being honest.

Fiscal Years 2004-06 were the first in a long time in which the Army got at least as much money as the Air Force and Navy -- and that's not counting supplementals, which last year totalled more than $100 billion, most of it for the Army. The Army got less in '07 than its sister services, but not by much, and supplementals will surely change that.

Schoomaker closes the interview with a plug for his service's prize program, Future Combat Systems, a $250-billion gobbler that rivals the multi-service Joint Strike Fighter for the record of biggest weapons program ever:

FCS right now is on schedule and under cost. We have 3 percent actual cost growth in the program. This is really not just a program of record, it's a strategy. We have already either terminated or adjusted 126 of our programs in the Army to do the things we have to do. I'm fairly sure that we ought to play hardball on FCS, and that's what we're doing.

--David Axe

War Funds: Bush Disses Hill?

"Congress said it wants next year�€™s defense budget to include funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," intead of using a series of so-called "supplemental," emergency requests for cash, Defense News is reporting. But President Bush "has indicated he may ignore that request."

In a "signing statement" released when he signed the 2007 Defense Authorization Act on Oct. 17, the president listed two dozen provisions in the act that he indicated he may or may not abide by...

Among the provisions is Section 1008 of the Authorization Act, which requires the president to submit defense budgets for 2008 and beyond that include funding for the wars and contain "a detailed justification of the funds requested."

The Bush administration has frequently ignored requirements that it does not like by proclaiming exclusions from the law in signing statements, which are written statements about how the president plans to interpret the law. Since he became president, Bush has issued statements carving out exceptions to more than 750 laws �€” a rate far higher than any previous president.

(Big ups: Brad)

Feds Flail Flying Saucer Friend

Yesterday's raids on the homes of Rep. Curt Weldon's daughter and pals is bad news for the Republican party, of course. But it's really, really bad news for the Russian flying saucer community, Wonkette reminds us -- pointing to one of my own dang articles.

Long before he started pushing kooky theories about Saddam's WMD and military data mining, Weldon -- a fluent Russian speaker -- was one a one-man quest to find jobs for former Soviet scientists and engineers. "It keeps them from otherwise working with the bad guys around the world," he told me, for a 2003 Wired News story.

The employment process seemed to begin by getting these Russian firms, like the Saratov aviation company, to hire Weldon's daughter as a lobbyist. Meanwhile, the Congressman would convince arms of the U.S. military to take on projects by the ex-Sovs.

In Saratov's case, Weldon was particularly impressed with "Ekip" -- a flying saucer, relying on vacuum shell for its lift.

"The fact that they had put together a full-scale prototype -- with very limited resources, because of the cutbacks in the military-industrial base -- that was remarkable to me," Weldon said.

So Weldon asked some folks at the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, to take on the saucer project. The initial prototype was supposed to be 500 pounds -- just a speck compared with the 12-ton craft that Saratov claims to have successfully test flown in the early 1990s.

If memory serves, NAVAIR wound up abandoning the project after a while. And if Admiral Joe Sestak winds up beating Weldon in next month's election, it may be a very, very long time before the saucer takes flight.

(Big ups: Haninah)

Cash-Poor Army Pays Big to Pimp Pricey 'Future'

The Army is quickly going broke, its leaders insist. Worn-out gear can't be replaced; units can't properly prep for combat; some bases can't even afford to mow the lawn.

But there's one Army account that the generals are still managing to keep packed to the brim: marketing. The annual Association of the United States Army convention is going down this week, in Washington. And the Army is pulling out all the stops, to show just how groovy its $300 billion high-tech upgrade, Future Combat Systems, is going to be.

High above conferees' heads, a movie theater-sized screen shows Hollywood-grade videos of how awesomely FCS will work in action. Beneath the display, an Army major and a Boeing executive -- each equipped with wireless mics -- lecture a crowd, seated in stadium seats, about FCS' virtues. Beside them, to the right, is a mock operations center, manned by a trio of soldiers, pantomiming battle commands.

To the left, an defense contractor is demonstrating the new Future Combat video game. "Kaboom!" he shouts, as he directs some simulated next-gen cannon to waste a pixilated foe. Ostensibly, the game is supposed to start getting officers familiar with "the FCS wireless network-centric operating system that seamlessly links advanced communications and networking systems with soldiers, platforms, weapons, and sensors." But when I ask the contractor whether the game is really just a marketing tool for the mega-expensive project, he sighs, "Yeah."

Now, the FCS folks are hardly the only Army team with a booth at the conference. Everyone from Airborne to Special Forces to ROTC has a little set-up -- to market themselves within the Department, to show off to the higher-ups, and to prove their worth to Congress. And that makes some sense, in an organization as big and complex as the Army. But still, you've got to wonder whether it's the right thing to do -- with multiple wars raging and with budgets apparently so tight. "A real 'fleecing of America' story," says one conference-goer. "It's like 'we're going broke, and here's a super-slick presentation to show you why.'"

Big War Machines Pushed for Korea Fight

There are still a whole heap of unknowns, in the wake of North Korea's nuclear test. But here's something you can take to the bank: every admiral, every Air Force general, and every Congresscritter with a big, hulking, weapon system is going to crow about how his gazillion-dollar machine is the key to fixing the Korean problem.

Even before Kim's October surprise, Air Force officials like Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap Jr. were railing against "boots-on-the-ground zealots" and "neo-Luddites" who "quot[e] counterinsurgency manuals from the horse cavalry era." Instead, Dunlap insisted, we should be pouring money into "air power �€” our most effective national security component."

With the Army lobbying for a bigger chunk of the Pentagon budget, expect the volume on these Air Force and Navy-first screams to be turned up several notches in the months to come. Wanna shell the Norks' nuke facilities from way out in the sea? Then you need a big ol' DD(X) destroyer to do the shelling. Attacking from the air? For that, you just have to have a next-generation, long-range bomber. Oh, and a whole bunch of conventionally-armed Trident ballistic missiles, too. And so on...

Of course, "American air units in South Korea, Japan, and the United States, plus the US Third and Seventh Fleets, are available to blockade North Korea and strike at targets of opportunity" today, Arms and Influence notes.

However, it remains to be seen what opportunities for punitive and disarming strikes exist, or what the North Korean response would be... The facilities are too dispersed, often in the worst kind of geography for precision bombing, mountainous terrain. Even if the US were able to hit every North Korean nuclear and production facility, the obvious question would be, What's next?

We can predict at least one immediate consequence: a North Korean attack on South Korea. Whether the North Korean army tries to seize control of the South, or merely retaliate with conventional and chemical artillery attacks on Seoul and other population centers, the US would need ground forces to take the next step: eliminate the North Korean government. Even with its nuclear fangs removed, the North Korean government would remain a menace to the South, and perhaps would have reasons to try for one last gamble to end the decades-long stalemate on the Korean peninsula...

The United States has an impressive array of carrier battle groups, attack submarines, tactical air assets, and strategic bombers that it can hurl at North Korea. However, the last several years have taught Americans an important lesson about warfare: your own strength matters far less than what you actually do with it.

UPDATE 4:39 PM: The Herald-Tribune has a good rundown of just how piss-poor the Norks' conventional forces really are.

The military in North Korea is by far the largest consumer of the country�€™s scarce resources. But even so, its combat jet pilots get only about two hours of flying time a month, its soldiers sometimes have to grow their own food, and much of its equipment is old and outclassed by that of its neighbors. According to South Korean and Western experts, if a conventional war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, the best the North Korean military could manage would be to fight to a bloody stalemate.

It is the deep insecurity born of these shortcomings, the experts say, and not any desire to grab attention or gain leverage, that drove President Kim Jong-il�€™s decision to defy international warnings and declare this week that his country had tested a nuclear weapon.

Comedian 2, Internet Arms Dealers 0

South London comedian Mark Thomas has always been a rather unusually political gag man -- leading protests, giving out leading spies' cell phone numbers, launching one-man WMD inspections, showing up at a Nestle factory "dressed as a huge teddy bear, and then produc[ing] a huge ghetto-blaster playing Zimbabwe's health minister making serious allegations about Nestle's baby-milk marketing methods." Think Michael Moore meets Sy Hersh. But way more pissed off.

Thomas' most provocative stunt may have come earlier this year, when he helped a bunch of teenaged schoolgirls set up an online arms dealership. Before long, they were pricing out tanks, negotiating for grenade launchers, and -- in his words -- buying up stun batons and other "equipment intended for torture or ill-treatment."

It was enough to get Parliament involved. MPs "praised comedian Mark Thomas for unearthing evidence of stun batons being sold through websites in the UK," according to the BBC. And the politicians began leaning on the trade and defense ministries to do something about the sales.

Yesterday, they did. "Two men have been arrested during raids by police investigating the sale of military weapons over the internet," the Times of London reports. "The men, aged 61 and 40 years old, were detained when more than 40 police officers swooped in on two properties in Kent early this morning. Both men were arrested on suspicion of possessing prohibited weapons."

"Mark Thomas, the stand-up comedian, has done more to expose illegal arms deals than the Ministry of Defence, the Export Control Organisation and HM Revenue and Customs put together," the Guardian proclaims, "simply by searching the internet and the trade press and attending the arms fairs the British government hosts."

Here's to those simple searches.

Army's Funds Drying Up

For nearly forty years, Fred Kaplan notes, "the Army, Air Force, and Navy... have abided by an informal agreement that gives each of them a roughly equal share of the total military budget... In this way, the chiefs have avoided the interservice rivalries that tore the military establishments apart throughout the 1940s and '50s."

But that was before the war in Iraq pushed a slimmed-down Army to the brink, with gear wearing out fast, and units who can't properly prep for combat. "The Army is clearly in need of a higher share of the budget now. It is the service that's dominating the fighting, losing most of its troops, and getting most of its equipment chewed up," Kaplan adds.

There are ways to treat the Army's ailments without opening the purse strings. [It could stop stuffing R&D projects into its Iraq war budget. -- ed] For instance, [Army chief of staff Gen. Peter] Schoomaker could cancel or postpone the Army's Future Combat Systems, a $200 billion confabulation that may be way overdesigned for any realistic scenario of future combat. But the FCS is the Army's only big-ticket weapon system, and the procurement commanders wouldn't surrender it unless the Air Force and Navy chiefs junked their big fighter planes and submarines, which isn't about to happen, either.

Early on in his regime, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might have had the clout to force such a bargain, but no longer. He has already abdicated his authority, allowing Schoomaker to appeal directly for more money to the White House's Office of Management and Budget. (According to Army Times, this is another unprecedented move: No service secretary has ever dealt directly with the OMB �€” all such appeals are supposed to be made through the secretary of defense.)

This bureaucratic turbulence only reflects a broader dilemma that higher political authorities will soon have to address, whether they'd like to or not. Schoomaker's central complaint is that he doesn't have the money to maintain the Army's global missions. The president and the Congress can pony up the money (a lot more money) or scale back the missions. To do otherwise �€” to stay the course with inadequate resources �€” is to invite defeats and disasters.

UPDATE 11:44 AM: One more quick point on this. Traditionally, the Army has been thought of as the low-tech, low-cost service. That's no longer so. Back in the day, you could send an infantryman into battle with just a rifle and a helmet. Now, he takes all kind of gear -- body armor, night vision goggles, you name it. Equipment costs, per man, have gone from something like $2,000 a soldier during Vietnam to around $25,000 today. It's another reason why doling out the Army's traditional slice of the budget pie ain't gonna work this time around.

Sats Hit Snags

Just about everything the U.S. military does these days depends on satellites: spying on insurgents, relaying orders, keeping drones and soldiers pointed in the right direction. The idea, in the future, is to go even more sat-centric. Too bad the Air Force is having such a tough time getting contractors to build the next generation of orbiters it says are so critical.

Last week, the Air Force decided to cut fees owed Boeing, citing a $260-million cost overrun and delays of three years in the company's work on new Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites (pictured). Meanwhile, an Air Force review of the program recommended rescheduling first launch of the new satellites from January 2007 to May 2008.

Nearly the entire slate of Air Force satellite programs, valued at around $40 billion through 2010, faces cost, schedule and technical challenges. All this, despite years of warnings of "systemic problems" with the military space program. Space Radar, a $5-billion program to field orbiting radars for ground targeting, has suffered Congressional budget cuts in recent years amid concerns that its cost and schedule are poorly defined. Transformational Satellite, or TSAT, is intended to support secure wideband communications with a five-satellite constellation beginning in 2013, all in an effort to ward off an impending military bandwidth crunch. But the Congressional Budget Office contends that even TSAT -- part of a portfolio of communications satellites that accounts for the majority of space spending -- will fail to satisfy the military's enormous (and growing) appetite for secure bandwidth.

Read more at Military.com.

-- David Axe

UPDATE, 13:25 EST: This just in from Defense News regarding the 2007 defense budget:

Expressing concern over cost growth in the troubled Transformational Communications Satellite program, senators cut $230 million from the $867 million requested for program. They cut $100 million from the $266 million sought for the Space Radar, citing �€œuncertainties with the program.�€

Pentagon Closing Transformation Shop

In the 1990s, Admiral Arthur Cebrowski began pushing the unorthodox idea that the Pentagon had to change itself, from a relatively-small collection of heavy, plodding forces to a larger array of lighter, quicker, cheaper, better-networked units. By 2001, the notion -- known alternatively as "revolution in military affairs" or "force transformation" -- had become official doctrine. The Army began a massive modernization effort, based, in part, around Cebrowski's ideas. Presidential candidate George W. Bush embraced the concept during the 2000 election. Donald Rumsfeld adopted it as the cornerstone of his return to the Pentagon, and installed Cebrowski as the director of a new department: the Office of Force Transformation, or OFT.

The office initiated a series of novel, seemingly off-the-wall projects: armored vehicles equipped with pain rays, sneaky ships silently bringing commandos to shore, orbiting mirrors to send lasers across the globe.

But early last year, Cebrowski was forced to retire, as he fought a losing battle with cancer. Observers wondered whether OFT and its projects would survive his passing.

The office, at least, probably will not, according to Defense News. Pending approval by deputy defense secretary Gordon England, "the office [will] be dissolved by Sept. 30."

Defense analyst Bob Work thinks it "may be an indication of just how hard it is to balance the competing demands for transformation in the midst of this protracted campaign" in the Global War on Terror. The Armchair Generalist fears this could be the final "nail in the coffin" for transformation. But military theorist Tom Barnett, long allied with Cebrowski, sees the shift as the final move in bringing Cebrowski's ideas into the heart of the U.S. military.

"Art's success in mainstreaming his thinking meant that OFT always had a limited shelf life. [His ideas are] everywhere now," Barnett writes. "Art himself saw this coming and had no problem with it. He simply would have moved on to the next great definition."

Besides, the office is "not really shutting down," an OFT source tells Defense Tech.

It is being split apart and embedded in two other areas of OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense]. The analysis and study portion of OFT is to be rolled into a new office as part of a larger reorg of OSD Policy. [More about that here -- ed.] All of the other initiatives here, like... Redirected Energy and Operationally Responsive Space are to go into a new office under [Director, Defense Research and Engineering] John Young...

So, in a sense, this is a good move. Since OSD had no interest in appointing anyone to replace Cebrowski, the office was hobbled.... If this is approved, OSD is saying we like this OFT approach [so much] that we are willing to apply it more broadly across the entire department.

Could be. But with costs piling higher and higher for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and with the budgets for many "transformational" projects swelling, fast -- I worry that this could jeopardize Cebrowski's work, not institutionalize it.

Hot Off the Presses

Just out on InsideDefense.com:

The Marine Corps is planning steep cuts to one of its largest modernization programs -- the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle -- as part of a wider effort to recalibrate its forces to better fight irregular combatants, according to internal Pentagon budget documents.

The cuts are spelled out in a summary of the Marine Corps' new six-year spending plan obtained by InsideDefense.com. The plan also includes �€œsignificant changes�€ to tactical aviation, including purchases of 25 fewer MV-22 tiltrotor Osprey aircraft and 35 fewer Joint Strike Fighter aircraft between fiscal years 2008 and 2013.

The Marine Corps six-year program �€œhas been rebalanced to shift resources from conventional to irregular capabilities and capacities,�€ states a 10-page executive summary of the service�€™s program objective memorandum for FY-08 to FY-13.

Sorry: This one ain't free. But it's available here. (And new users can get it free.)

UPDATE: This new report on Marine Corps equipment post-Iraq, which I linked to earlier today, has this to say on EFVs:

The Marines need a new Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) to replace the Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV), but it is not clear that the service can fill all of its future needs with the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) given the system�€™s high cost. The Marines should seriously consider cutting back the number of EFVs that they plan to purchase from 1000 to between 600 and 700 vehicles. The Marines should instead consider purchasing a mix of EFVs and LAV II vehicles or other similar APCs. While these vehicles are not amphibious, the likelihood of the Marines storming heavily fortified beaches on the scale of WWII remains remote. Instead, the Marines should main tain a sizeable portion of the legacy AAV fleet as a strategic reserve in case there is a need to undertake a substantial amphibious operation.

-- Dan Dupont

Who Ran the Coalition Provisional Authority?

Another great decision was brought to us this week by T.S. Ellis, the U.S. District Court judge who is making his own very special legal mark on the Global War on Terror.

In a surprise ruling, Ellis decided that defrauding the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), though not such a nice thing to do, wasn�€™t the same as defrauding the U.S. government (presumably that�€™s bad, too).

What? Yes, yes, the word �€œcoalition�€ is in the name, but we assumed that was just window dressing, sort of like the Nicaraguans who were part of the �€œCoalition of the Willing.�€

I guess some people took that coalition stuff seriously.

Let�€™s revisit the case. Custer Battles a Virginia-based security firm with no substantive experience in security, got a lucrative security contract from the CPA. In 2006, they were found to have defrauded the U.S. government�€”something that didn�€™t come as a surprise to those who worked with them (�€œprobably the worst I've seen in my 30 years in the Army" was a memorable quote). The case was prosecuted on the False Claims Act, which allows citizens with insider knowledge of fraud to make claims against these bad-boy companies.

The False Claims Act was expected to be used against a number of companies operating in Iraq, according to the New York Times. Ellis' ruling throws a wrench in those plans, the article says:

But an underlying issue raised by Custer Battles during its trial and on appeal was whether bills submitted to the Coalition Provisional Authority could be regarded as bills presented to the United States government. The coalition authority was an entity created and largely financed by the United States to run Iraq, and largely staffed by American officials, but with an ambiguous legal status.

The Justice De