Gates: Speed FCS Replacement, Define Future USMC Role

[buglerbilly]

By JOHN T. BENNETT

Published: 7 May 2010 18:01

FORT LEAVENWORTH, KAN. - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants the Army to accelerate its top modernization program, and is challenging the Marine Corps to define its future role.


Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates speaks with members of the press on board a C-40 aircraft on May 7. (Cherie Cullen / U.S. Defense Department)

Last year, Gates terminated the Army's Future Combat Systems program and directed the service to begin a new modernization effort. The service responded with a new program that's slated to field the first vehicles in seven years.

That's just too slow for the defense secretary.

Speaking to an audience here, Gates noted the Pentagon took the mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) program from an idea to full-rate production "in a year." To Gates, that experience says, "we can shave a little time off" the post-FCS program's time line.

He said he has been discussing just that with senior Army leaders.

Gates said he has been interviewing candidates to replace retiring Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway. His first question to them: What's your vision for the future of the Corps? The question provides a window into the secretary's thinking about amphibious operations. Gates said he is unsure just where American Marines would be asked to storm a beach in the future - especially as potential foes continue fielding more and more advanced weapons, like large stocks of missiles.

But Gates said that America "will always have a Marine Corps," and "we will need some amount of amphibious capability."

On shipbuilding, Gates cited his May 3 speech to a Navy League conference, saying, "They didn't much like what I had to say." During that talk, the secretary said the Navy must find a way to build ships more cheaply, while also thinking of new ways to use its ships against ever-more sophisticated foes.

Today, Gates said that the Navy will not reach its 313-ship fleet goal unless it cuts shipbuilding costs.

He also said he does not want a situation to occur where Washington "is dependent on a foreign shipyard to build U.S. warships."

[buglerbilly]

DATE:07/05/10

SOURCE:Flight International

Gates raises uncomfortable questions for naval aviation

By Stephen Trimble

Questions raised by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on 3 May about the affordability of a new generation of warships for the US Navy also post concerns about the future of naval aviation.

Addressing the Navy League's Sea-Air-Space exposition in Washington DC, Gates challenged a heavily pro-shipbuilding audience to consider the fiscal feasibility of future naval fleets. "At the end of the day, we have to ask whether the nation can really afford a navy that relies on $3-6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers," he says.

One year after spearheading a successful campaign to terminate production of the US Air Force's Lockheed Martin F-22 after building 187 aircraft, Gates now appears to be aiming at shipbuilding accounts.

Although Gates notes that the fiscal year 2011 budget request supports the navy's current force structure plans, he raised questions about the practicality of his own spending proposal.

"Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one? Any future plans must address these realities."

Gates has raised the discussion at the same time that USN and Marine Corps aviation is managing an historic period of transition, with several fixed- and rotary-wing fleets being replaced simultaneously.

Meanwhile, the navy is supporting plans to buy more than 500 Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and 680 Lockheed Martin F-35B/C Joint Strike Fighters. Although the navy faced a 30 April deadline set by Congress to decide whether to support a third multi-year procurement deal for F/A-18E/Fs, the Navy League event passed without confirmation.

Even with that level of investment, the navy has projected a shortfall of more than 170 fighters after 2017, based on current plans to sustain 11 aircraft carriers. Any decrease in the number of carrier strike groups, as queried by Gates, could slash the inventory requirement by scores of aircraft.

[buglerbilly]

Gates: Cuts in Pentagon bureaucracy needed to help maintain military force


Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates speaks with U.S. Army officers at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on Friday. (Cherie Cullen/defense Department Via Associated Press) Network NewsX Profile

By Greg Jaffe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 9, 2010

ABILENE, KAN. -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates vowed Saturday to lead an effort to cut as much as $15 billion in overhead costs from the Pentagon's $550 billion budget and warned that without the savings, the military will not be able to afford its current force.

Under Gates's plan, the billions taken from the Pentagon's vast administrative bureaucracy would be used to pay for weapons modernization programs and the overall fighting force in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates also hinted that additional cuts to major weapons programs would probably be necessary in the coming years.

The Pentagon's budget has almost doubled over the past decade, but the faltering national economy and surging U.S. debt will impose new austerity on the military, Gates warned.

"The gusher has been turned off," he told an audience of about 300 people at the Eisenhower Presidential Library here. "And it will stay off for a good period of time."

Gates is far from the first defense secretary to promise major cuts in the Pentagon bureaucracy. Throughout his tenure, Donald H. Rumsfeld railed against the inefficiencies plaguing the Defense Department but was unable to realize significant savings. The Clinton administration similarly promised savings by turning to private contractors, an effort that only produced greater costs.

But Gates said that the ballooning national debt lends his efforts a new urgency. "The national economic situation is different than it has ever been in modern times," he told reporters Friday. "If we want to sustain the current force, we have no alternative."

He also suggested that his personal involvement would make this effort different. "When I devote a lot of my time . . . things tend to get done," he said.

Gates told President Obama in January that he planned to stay in office through December 2010, but the defense secretary hinted Friday that he would be willing to stay on longer to ensure that the savings he is seeking are realized. "The truth of the matter is that I have just come to this in the last couple of weeks," he said of his cost-cutting crusade. He also emphasized that his proposed savings of $10 billion to $15 billion a year were rough estimates.

Among Gates's apparent targets for major cuts are the private contractors the Pentagon has hired in large numbers over the past decade to take on administrative tasks that the military used to handle. The defense secretary estimated that this portion of the Pentagon budget has grown by as much as $23 billion, a figure that does not include the tens of billions of dollars spent on private firms supporting U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The defense contractors, who populate new office towers throughout Washington's suburbs and have been a major driver of the local economy, are a significant source of budgetary bloat, Gates said. "We ended up with contractors supervising other contractors -- with predictable results," he said in the speech Saturday.

Gates rattled off examples of costly bureaucracy inside the military, as well. A simple request for a dog-handling team in Afghanistan must be reviewed and assessed at multiple high-level headquarters before it can be deployed to the war zone. "Can you believe it takes five four-star headquarters to get a decision on a guy and a dog up to me?" Gates said to reporters Friday.

More than two decades after the end of the Cold War, the military still has more than 40 generals, admirals or senior civilian equivalents working in Europe. "Yet we scold our allies over the bloat in NATO headquarters," he said.

Gates's new focus on slashing Pentagon bureaucracy is driven by the realization that politics is severely constraining his ability to make cuts elsewhere.

The Pentagon chief has complained in recent weeks that spending on major weapons is often disconnected from real-world threats. He has noted, for example, that United States maintains 11 aircraft-carrier strike groups at a time when no other country has more than one and questioned whether that huge advantage amounts to overkill.

The Pentagon, however, has no plans to scrap a $10 billion to $15 billion aircraft carrier, despite the vessels' increasing vulnerability to precision weapons. "I may want to change things, but I am not crazy," Gates told reporters. "I am not going to cut a carrier. Okay. But people ought to start thinking about how they are going to use carriers in a time when you have highly accurate cruise and ballistic missiles that can take out a carrier."

The defense secretary's ability to cut personnel costs has also been constrained by Congress, which is loath to trim benefits for troops or veterans. "Leaving aside the sacred obligation we have to America's wounded warriors, health-care costs are eating the Defense Department alive, rising from $19 billion a decade ago to roughly $50 billion -- about the entire foreign affairs and assistance budget of the State Department," Gates said Saturday.

Gates spoke outside the Eisenhower library beneath an American flag and two large banners bearing Ike's likeness, and often Gates seemed to be channeling the former president's concerns that massive military spending could, over time, weaken the country. "Eisenhower was wary of seeing his beloved republic turn into a muscle-bound, garrison state -- militarily strong, but economically stagnant and strategically insolvent," he said.

[buglerbilly]

Gates to Pentagon Bureaucrats: You’re Next

By Noah Shachtman May 8, 2010 | 3:00 pm



You thought my last overhaul of the Pentagon was radical? Wait ’til you see what I’ve got planned for next year.

That’s the message Defense Secretary Robert Gates is sending to the armed services and to Capitol Hill. In a speech today at the Eisenhower Library in Abeliene, Kansas, Gates not only informed the military establishment that the post-9/11 “gusher of defense spending… has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time.” He warned that he’s putting everything from ships to jets to general’s billets to troops’ healthcare reimbursement rates under fresh scrutiny. “Given America’s difficult economic circumstances… military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny,” Gates added.

In 2008, before Gates rolled out the budget that offed the Air Force and Army’s signature programs for superpower war, he paved the way with a series of speeches blasting the military-industrial complex for not focusing on today’s conflicts. This talk — along with one given Monday at the Navy League symposium — signal a similar approach.

Cutting hardware will almost certainly be part of the equation, once again. Gates all-but-told the Navy earlier this week that the idea of having 11 carrier strike groups was overkill. But this next time, Gates is promising to do something much, much harder. First, he wants to rejigger the military’s healthcare system.

“The premiums for TRICARE, the military health insurance program, have not risen since the program was founded more than a decade ago,” Gates noted. “In recent years the Department has attempted modest increases in premiums and co-pays to help bring costs under control, but has been met with a furious response from the Congress and veterans groups. The proposals routinely die an ignominious death on Capitol Hill.”

Then, he wants to convince the military’s barnacled, byzantine bureaucracy to do the unthinkable: cut itself down.

“According to an estimate by the Defense Business Board, overhead, broadly defined, makes up roughly 40 percent of the Department’s budget,” he said. “Almost a decade ago, Secretary Rumsfeld lamented that there were 17 levels of staff between him and a line officer. The Defense Business Board recently estimated that in some cases the gap between me and an action officer may be as high as 30 layers… A request for a dog-handling team in Afghanistan – or for any other unit – has to go through no fewer than five four-star headquarters in order to be processed, validated, and eventually dealt with.”

The private sector has flattened and streamlined the middle and upper echelons of its organization charts, yet the Defense Department continues to maintain a top-heavy hierarchy that more reflects 20th Century headquarters superstructure than 21st Century realities…

Now, just about every military listener will answer this talk with a loud “amen.” The question is how many generals and how many senior execs will really put their little fiefdoms on the chopping block. As Gates noted, his successors have waged war on the Pentagon’s bureaucracy, too — only to be forced to retreat. Gates even gave props in his talk to Donald Rumsfeld’s (in)famous statement of September 10th 2001, that the military’s PowerPoint-pushers were “a serious threat to the security of the United States of America.”

But unlike Rumsfeld, Gates appears ready to order the bureaucratic cuts - not just bitch about the bloat.

Therefore, as the Defense Department begins the process of preparing next’s years Fiscal Year 2012 budget request, I am directing the military services, the joint staff, the major functional and regional commands, and the civilian side of the Pentagon to take a hard, unsparing look at how they operate – in substance and style alike… In other words, to convert sufficient “tail” to “tooth” to provide the equivalent of the roughly two to three percent real growth – resources needed to sustain America’s combat power at a time of war and make investments to prepare for an uncertain future. Simply taking a few percent off the top of everything on a one-time basis will not do. These savings must stem from root-and-branch changes that can be sustained and added to over time.

What is required going forward is not more study. Nor do we need more legislation. It is not a great mystery what needs to change. What it takes is the political will and willingness, as Eisenhower possessed, to make hard choices – choices that will displease powerful people both inside the Pentagon and out.

I once called Gates the “most dangerous man in the military complex.” But if he follows through on this speech, his most hazardous job may lie ahead.

[Photo: DoD]

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/05/gates-to-pentagon-bureaucrats-youre-next/#more-24529#ixzz0nVvCBuu7

[buglerbilly]

Defense Industry’s Attack Dog Goes After Gates, ‘Mexicans’

By Nathan Hodge May 10, 2010 | 4:32 pm



Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Robert Gates put the defense industry and the Pentagon bureaucracy on notice, warning in a major speech that the post-9/11 spending spree was coming to an end. And that speech provoked a particularly sharp response from defense analyst Loren Thompson, who worried that the “notoriously dour” secretary might cut future weapons buys.

“If all the budget cuts come from weapons, America will end up with an unbalanced, labor-intensive defense posture that fails to adequately leverage the warfighting and peacekeeping potential of new technologies,” Thompson wrote in an issue brief published today.

There’s a reason journalists like to quote Thompson, the chief operating officer of the not-for-profit Lexington Institute: He’s a plugged-in defense analyst who is eminently quotable — and extremely knowledgeable when it comes to the politics of defense procurement. But there’s also a reason that they are usually careful about how they quote him. In addition to his job at the think tank, he’s also a paid consultant to the defense industry, and Lexington receives a hefty amount of support from military contractors as well.

With declining budgets on the horizon, it’s little wonder that Thompson is launching such a vigorous assault on the secretary’s speech. But sometimes, quotability has a quality all its own.

Take Thompson’s caustic comment on the mood at the Pentagon. “The only people celebrating at the Pentagon last week were the Mexicans working on renovating the building,” he wrote.

I’ve written a fair amount about the ties between the defense industry and think tanks. But I generally avoided the subject of the Lexington Institute, in part because it seemed so obvious that the place was so closely tied to the large military contractors. After all, Thompson freely admits he’s dual-hatting as a for-profit advisor to the defense industry. ”I am a consultant to Lockheed. However, I also advise many of Lockheed’s competitors,” Thompson recently wrote.

In a recent piece in Harper’s, Ken Silverstein dubbed the Lexington Institute the “defense industry’s pay-to-play ad agency.” Bruce Bartlett, writing recently at Forbes, said think tanks like Lexington resembled “little more [than] lobbying operations with tax-exempt status.”

Thompson won’t say how much Lexington gets from Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing, and the like — other than it’s “quite a significant” amount.

And in a phone conversation with Danger Room, Thompson said the comment about Mexicans was a “straightforward observation” about the ethnicity of many of the workers on the Pentagon’s renovation.

“I often notice as I walked in and out of the building that a lot of Hispanics were working in the building,” Thompson said. “It’s not a criticism, it’s just an observation.”

Last week, Thompson added, was Cinco de Mayo, a holiday that honors Mexican history and culture: “We don’t have a lot of Mexicans working desk jobs in the Pentagon. I was just observing that they were the only people in the building that may have had a reason to celebrate.”

[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/05/defense-industrys-attack-dog-goes-after-gates-mexicans/#more-24590#ixzz0nZjOfVFP

[buglerbilly]

Gates Calls For U.S. Army Technology Caution

May 11, 2010

By Michael Fabey

As the U.S. Army turns up the throttle on Future Combat Systems (FCS) spin-offs, the service must temper its enthusiasm for technology as it evolves its ground programs to handle current conflicts and future combat needs, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says.

“We are moving ahead with substantial programming and funding that supports the full spectrum of capabilities,” Gates told members of the Command and General Staff College last week during a speech at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan. “The Army is accelerating the development of the Warfighter Information Network and will field it — along with proven and viable FCS spin-offs. I remain committed to the Army’s ground-vehicle modernization program, but it has to be done in a way that reflects the lessons we’ve learned the last few years about war in the 21st century.”

In his prepared speech, Gates said, “We must always recognize the limits of technology — and be modest about what military force alone can accomplish.

Advances in precision, sensor information, and satellite technologies have led to extraordinary gains that will continue to give the U.S. military an edge over its adversaries.

But no one should ever neglect the psychological, cultural, political, and human dimensions of war or succumb to the techno-optimism that has muddled strategic thinking in the past.”

That is especially true for the ground services, he said, which will bear the brunt of irregular and hybrid military campaigns in the future.

“The black-and-white distinction between conventional war and irregular war is becoming less relevant in the real world,” Gates said. “Possessing the ability to annihilate other militaries is no guarantee we can achieve our strategic goals — a point driven home especially in Iraq.

The future will be even more complex, where conflict most likely will range across a broad spectrum of operations and lethality. Where even near-peer competitors will use irregular or asymmetric tactics and non-state actors may have weapons of mass destruction or sophisticated missiles.”

Gates applauded the Army’s efforts to explore and exploit the latest technologies, using the Web, social media, and other tools to rapidly turn battlefield lessons learned into usable tactics, techniques and procedures.

But, he said, “There has been a concern that our force is too focused on counterinsurgency, and has lost its edge for complex, conventional operations involving multiple brigades or divisions. This is a legitimate concern, and we continue to work toward finding the right balance.”

However, Gates said, “The notion that the U.S. Army is turning into some sort of nation-building constabulary that is losing its core competencies — above all, to shoot, move, and communicate — does not reflect the realities of the tough combat that has taken place in Iraq and Afghanistan, as you know all too well.”

Credit: DoD

[buglerbilly]

America's Solution for a More Cost-Effective Defense: Leverage the National Guard



08:17 GMT, May 12, 2010 WASHINGTON

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has a ready solution at his disposal as he looks for ways to cut excessive overhead, bloat and needless spending in the Defense Department.

The solution is the nation's most cost-effective defense organization, one that provides nearly half of the Army's combat power and a third of the Air Force's combat capability for about 7 percent of the defense budget.

It's the National Guard, which National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS) officials today said does more with fewer resources than any other component in the U.S. military and which can do even more with only a modest increase in funding.

"It's time for the nation to start talking about cutting the active-duty military and growing the National Guard," said retired Maj. Gen. Gus Hargett, the NGAUS president. "Relying more on the Guard may be the only way America can reduce defense spending without cutting American military power."

In a speech over the weekend in Abilene, Kan., Gates said he wants the Pentagon to take a hard, realistic look at what defense capabilities America really needs in the 21st century.

Hargett said NGAUS welcomes the effort, but added that the discussion and debate should not be confined to Defense Department officials, who are often too wedded to active-component institutions to see defense solutions from other sources.

Congress, the nation's governors and the American public all need to be heard, he said.

"Today's economic and fiscal realities call for all of us to put America's future defense ahead of America's current defense institutions," he said.

"Unfortunately, the Army and the Air Force are already considering plans to cut the Guard at the end of today's conflicts," the NGAUS president said. "With a largely part-time force and barebones infrastructure, our overhead is much less. We simply can do the same job cheaper. But, too often, that does not matter to some decision-makers. Perhaps it will now.

"Our goal should be nothing less than maintaining the required military power to defend our nation, taking care of our troops, and saving money," Hargett said. "We can do all three, but only if we consider every possible solution."

[buglerbilly]

Cartwright: U.S. Likely to Remain at War for a Decade

By JOHN T. BENNETT

Published: 13 May 2010 10:18

For the next "five to 10 years," the U.S. military likely will remain engaged in the same kinds of conflicts it has been fighting since 2001, said Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright.


Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. James Cartwright did not name specific nations beyond Iraq and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region that U.S. forces or assets might be deployed over the next decade. (MC 1 Chad J. McNeeley / U.S. Navy)

The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs on May 13 told a conference in Washington that "no one I know thinks we'll be out of" these kinds of conflicts any time soon.

"There is nothing out there that tells us we won't be wrapped up in these conflicts for as far as the eye can see," Cartwright said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies-sponsored forum.

In coming years, however, the military might be tasked with fighting these kinds of wars "in different places and at different levels," Cartwright said.

He did not point to specific nations into which U.S. forces or assets might be deployed over the next decade beyond Iraq and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

His comments come several days after Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters traveling with him to Kansas that he doubts Washington will soon launch another "protracted" operation like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. One reason, Gates said May 7, was the high cost of such missions, especially amid the ongoing economic crisis.

Meantime, the vice chairman echoed Gates in saying the Defense Department must change how it goes about buying weapon systems.

The duo's message is simple: If DoD continues pursuing expensive weapons packed with countless advanced subsystems, it will be able to afford only a handful of each platform.

Cartwright said this approach, unless corrected, has the U.S. military on a path toward lacking enough ships and aircraft to be in all the many places American presence is required.

"We need quantity more than quality," he said to a silent audience.

Cartwright panned a U.S. military-industrial complex that "thinks we must have the best capability."

That kind of approach, he said, is unaffordable, meaning the Pentagon must begin working more with U.S. allies to develop costly weapon platforms.

"We cannot do it," Cartwright said. "We cannot afford to do everything ourselves - we are not an island."

Further, the Pentagon must think beyond which weapons it must buy for current and future operations.

Asked about civil affairs troops, Cartwright said many more are needed for the kind of conflicts America is in and will be in for the some time.

"We have been growing that in onesies and twosies," he said, but faster growth and more robust numbers of such troops are needed.

"The question is, how many bomber squadrons do we need versus how many troops expert at stability operations," Cartwright said.

He did not answer his own question directly, but reiterated his belief that he doesn't see the United States moving away from the current kinds of conflicts "any time soon."

Cartwright drove home his point by adding: "People want to buy high-end" platforms, like bombers, "but the low-end is the war we're in."

[buglerbilly]

Gates Pushing Pentagon Out Of The Box

May 20, 2010



By Michael Fabey

In Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ recent speech at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, there was a phrase that certainly should get the attention of program officials in the Pentagon: “No one should ever neglect the psychological, cultural, political, and human dimensions of war.”

In his May 7 remarks, Gates stressed the need to “develop the analysis, doctrine, strategy and tactics needed for success in 21st century conflicts.”

No doubt about it — the former CIA chief is giving his Pentagon minions a heads up that the traditional way of doing business is not going to cut it in the Defense Department.

Looking for much more

The defense secretary is looking for much more from the service chiefs and their program officers, who may want to take heed — if they haven’t already done so — of passages from Gates’ 1996 insider book about his CIA years, “From the Shadows.”

For example, here’s what Gates writes in the tome about the need for a different kind of analysis in his former agency: “I urged more outside contacts, more CIA sponsorship of conferences and seminars with nongovernmental experts, more training and education for analysts, more assignments in the policy community for managers so they had a better understanding of how intelligence was being used.”

He continues, “One of management’s priority objectives … should be to fight bureaucratic routine and established ways of thinking as absolutely inimical to collecting information and producing the best possible analysis … There are far too many people playing it safe.”

How far should Gates’ subordinates stray outside the box in their thinking? Consider Gates’ comments about former CIA director William Casey’s suggestion to read T.E. Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” to prepare for Central America insurgent warfare operations: “It was characteristic of Casey’s constant search in history, literature, and personal contacts to find new and better ways to do things — a rare openness simultaneously to the old and proven as well as the new and interesting.”

‘No overarching strategy’

In his Fort Leavenworth speech, Gates also warned of the need to prepare for the old and new when it comes to warfighting, to focus on the basics as well as the latest generation of technological toys. In “From the Shadows,” Gates also highlights the need to strengthen all the elements of an “effective defense capability — logistics, communications, pay, training, stockpiles, maintenance and more.”

Not only has the Defense Department lost sight of those needs in years past, Gates writes, the Pentagon often lacked the ability to get its priorities straight.

“There was no overarching strategy behind myriad congressional decisions and budget cuts,” Gates writes about the Pentagon’s past.

“The internal budget-cutting process at Defense was so driven by tactical compromises, maneuvering with Congress, and military service politics. The entirety of the Defense budget and program lacked rationality and coherence.”

There’s little doubt that Gates wants rationality and coherence, backed by the proper analysis, both traditional and irregular. As a result, the Gates Defense Department will be much different than when he came here — or what many thought it would be several years ago or even several months ago.

Credit: DoD