August 2013

The adverse consequences of hangings and budgetary cutbacks preoccupy those who face them. There may be no silver lining for those about to die, but there can be for those who must live with less. Cutbacks can force evaluation of priorities and the slimming of organizations whose bloat clouds institutional concentration and hampers agility. The DoD is one such organization: it has too many cooks concocting too many broths that either should be the responsibility of other elements of the US government or of no elements at all. Thus, the sequester can be a blessing.

The DoD is like most organizations; if leaders do not have to make hard choices, they will avoid doing so. Even the hard-nosed Donald Rumsfeld, a man with his own settled views, signed off on Quadrennial Defense Reviews that were criticized for their failure to provide the guidance necessary to choose between this or that entity, program, or provider of services. But such guidance would probably have been superfluous; budgets after all were rising dramatically and (over)matching the increases in demands levied on the DoD. The people asking the DoD to do more were understandably not interested in giving it less to do it with.

Secretary Gates struck the right tone when he did three things. One was to “re-balance” priorities to concentrate on the ongoing wars at the expense of preparing for wars against a future regional hegemon. A second was to cancel hugely expensive programs that were over budget and overdue. A third was to argue for a “whole of government” approach when evaluating who should do what to secure US national interests. He believed that the DoD had taken on or been assigned too many functions which were better suited to State Department, the Agency for International Development, and other civilian agencies. He even did something that many saw as an unnatural act for a department head: recommend to Congress that it re-program DoD moneys to the State Department so that State could better carry out the nation-building that the DoD had been doing.

Gates’ third initiative was the most important. How much of a blessing the sequester will be depends on how well our nation’s leaders (and not just the DoD’s) undertake to prioritize what they want for this country and to specify which department or agency is best fitted to carry it out. Those discussions have remained muted or in the background for too long, and that reality lessens the ultimate utility of the continuous stream of DoD budgetary studies, proposals, and commentaries coming out of the DoD, the Congress, think tanks, talking heads, and pundits. When national security experts (including former JCS Chairman Mullin) tell us that our most important national security priority is to get our economic house in order and that our greatest security threat is our debt, we should acknowledge that the defense budget is more tail than dog.

Too many Americans are not used to thinking that way. The Cold War conditioned many of today’s older Americans in particular (many of whom hold the reins of power) to overvalue the military instrument and to readily accept debt to pay for it—in other words to prioritize military needs over economic considerations. (Indeed, Vice President Cheney went so far as to argue that the Reagan years proved that debt did not matter.) Containment was the overarching national strategy that provided the framework for deciding on the priority to be allocated to the politico-diplomatic, economic, military, public outreach, aid, covert action and other ways to defend and advance US interest. But even then how to choose among these choices was not obvious. It hardly ever is. The original author of containment, George Kennan, was unhappy with the overemphasis (in his mind) on the military dimension of containment as advocated by Paul Nitze, Kennan’s successor as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff. After the onset of the Korean War, Nitze’s conception largely dominated thinking through the end of the Cold War even when some Presidents—Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon (with heavy input from Henry Kissinger), and Jimmy Carter (up to the Afghan invasion)—sought to push back.

It was not until the Bush (43) Doctrine of preventive war (supplemented with democracy promotion) that the US had a grand strategy comparable to containment. Depending on one’s point of view, the Doctrine provided the ex ante rationale or the ex post rationalization for the strategically-disastrous Iraq War, but there was no confusion as to the centrality of the military instrument and the need to raise the DoD’s budget accordingly.

We are in a new era, and the sequester is nicely setting the scene to re-evaluate what we are about and how we should go about it. From a top-down perspective, we need for our national leaders to explicitly call for a national discussion. At the top of the agenda is the question: What are my country’s requirements? Reminiscent of Walter Russell Mead’s framework, should we give priority to a Jeffersonian emphasis on internal development and well-being? A Hamiltonian priority on international economic engagement? A Wilsonian priority on instilling American values abroad? A Jacksonian priority on the autarchic preservation of American honor and the achievement of military victory? What is the priority among them? How will we meet them? What ways—economic, politico-diplomatic, military, covert, etc—make the best sense and what are the priorities among them? Each way implies the generation and maintenance of resources and prioritizing among them. Generating resources in turn implies generating the capital to pay for them. In the best of all possible worlds, the capital would be there to allow the process to be top down only from requirements to resources, but that circumstance is rare and there must always be a bottom-up perspective: how much can I afford and how much must I trim my requirements? How much must I scale back on the ways on which I will rely? Which will be favored and within them which resources will I buy and to what extent? What bets will I place when making those choices? Where can I skimp in the purchase of resources in the hope that I will not regret it later? Alternatively how many contingencies—ranging from threats to domestic economic wellbeing to threats to our external influence—am I committing myself to respond to in the hope that I will never have to respond to too many at the same time? Indeed, how much is my commitment stance in any area more bluff than real, more hope than readiness?

The sequester provides an opportunity we should not forego.

Donald C. F. Daniel teaches security studies at Georgetown University. Previously he was Special Assistant to the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and prior to that he held the Milton E. Miles Chair of International Relations at the US Naval War College, Newport, RI, where he also chaired the Strategic Research Department in the College’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies.

July 2013

I was there (special asst to CJCS Powell) when we implemented the reductions to establish the Base Force and, further, when Les Aspin and Bill Clinton implemented even further cuts (resulting in the need, later, to use contractors massively in order to fight two wars simultaneously and thus avoid end strength limitations imposed by the very Congress that approved those cuts and authorized those two wars–or, actually, three wars if we count the backdrop war, the so-called GWOT–and to enrich men like Richard Cheney). Those were interesting times and very insightful as to what composes such situations in terms of the White House, the bureaucracy–civilian and military–and the national security decision-making process.

Today, my approach is that of the IPS/CAP report for 2013. The first step is to acknowledge that we spend $1.2T or more now annually on the national security account. That is State (150 account), VA, DOD, DOE (nuclear weapons), 17 intelligence bodies, and Homeland Security Dept. While GDP–particularly our anemic GDP–is an atrocious measure of almost anything and certainly for national security spending, such a holistic approach demonstrates a 7-8% of GDP expenditure rather than the 3-5% so often cited. That’s a hell of a lot of money by any measure.

Once this holistic approach to national security is the rule–and it has to be if one is going to make sense of what the nation is doing–then the first requirement is to balance appropriately the overall accounts in accordance with the nation’s strategic approach to the world. Since the best and only sensible strategic approach is to lead with soft rather than hard power, one realizes immediately how out of balance is the national security budget. This is true whether one is a balance of power theorist or otherwise; unless of course one’s objective is to destroy the empire through bankruptcy.

When even a rough re-balancing is accomplished within the accounts listed above, it becomes immediately clear that we can reduce the national security budget by somewhere between three-quarters of a trillion and a trillion dollars over the next decade, or done wisely year by year, between $60-100B per year, starting with FY 2014.

The essential details of these reductions should be accomplished in accordance with the nature of the threats we envision and the resultant capabilities we believe required to meet those threats. The White House, not DOD, should lead these efforts. DOD, as the major user of funds, should have a strong voice, but that voice should be conditioned by the overall strategy devised in the White House.

Will anything remotely resembling this happen? Probably not. We are led by amateurs, in all branches of government. I see not a strategic–or even an adult and wise–mind among them.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (US Army, ret.) had a distinguished career in the U.S. Army, was special assistant to CJCS Colin Powell and was Chief of Staff during Powell’s term as Secretary of State.

July 2013

One of the Pentagon’s earliest and catchiest bumper-stickers for the automatic cuts of sequestration came from then-Secretary Leon Panetta during the first week of January 2012. If that cut arrived – as it did – the Pentagon would “probably have to throw that [strategy] out the window and start over.”

Eighteen months have come and gone with steady, uncomfortable murmuring about strategy but no definitive change. Most recent is Secretary Hagel’s July letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee. This tension is a reminder that politics drive budgets, not just strategy.

Top-line budget request decisions belong to the White House and, like Congress’ defense committees, it has its own political reasons for not acknowledging sequestration. Even if the Pentagon wanted to submit plans for matching strategy to sequestration-level spending, it likely couldn’t – the political system will not accommodate that conversation right now. So strategy stays where it is, sure to adjust because of the size of the cuts but not yet adjusted.

This is less concerning than it might sound.

A rudimentary description of strategy would be that it is a statement of goals, an ordering of those goals by priority, and a cut line demarcating how far down the list the US can afford to go. When less money is available, the cut line moves up and fewer goals are financed. The priority order of these goals should not change, however. Priority #1 always gets bought and, in accounts as large as the Pentagon’s, priorities much further down the list are just as safe.

Under any resource circumstance, though, there comes a point at which the money goes no further. This can become a problem if things falling off the list are essential for national defense, if the priorities are ordered unwisely, or if the cuts aren’t made according to the list. Today’s problem isn’t the first – our national defense doesn’t hinge on the savings margins at play – and the second issue is subjective. Instead our consensus problem is that cuts aren’t being made according to the list.

Sequestration is the obvious example. Applying a formulaic cut across-the-board isn’t strategic. But it’s not the only example. Secretary Hagel’s letter forewarned that “cuts of that magnitude” place “at much greater risk the country’s ability to meet our current national security commitments,” overlooking that strategy-driven drawdowns aren’t about holding current commitments constant and accepting risk everywhere. To the contrary, they’re about raising the bar so that goals our strategy prioritizes are unaffected and goals that barely snuck into earlier budgets fall away.

The Budget Control Act and the dynamic it has fostered between Congress and the White House are about the politics of taxes and entitlement spending, not defense. Even the most astute, realistic strategy won’t change that, and various political pressures aren’t permitting adjustment of any kind. But the way ahead is much clearer than Panetta’s “throw it out the window” statement suggests, or even General Dempsey’s more recent comment about a “redo.” Once Congress and the White House make a decision on handling sequester and the federal debt ceiling, the Pentagon can give us a clearer sense of how it prioritizes goals from the 2012 strategic guidance and which of the lowest will fall away.

Matthew Leatherman is resident fellow at the International Affairs Council of North Carolina and former budget analyst at the Stimson Center, Washington, DC.

Winslow Wheeler. Guest Post, 24 May 2011.

The National Defense Authorization bill, H.R. 1540, will be debated by the House of Representatives this week. The bill is the work product of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), Chaired by Congressman Buck McKeon, R. – Calif..

The Operation and Maintenance section (Title XLIII) of the bill is one of its largest and most important. “O&M” deals with the support, logistics, maintenance, training and much else needed to enable our armed forces to function effectively. $170.8 billion was requested by President Obama; the committee increased that by $361 million to $171.1 billion. However, to get there the Committee took some detours.

Sprinkled throughout the O&M title the HASC added various earmarks (one minor example: $4.0 million for “Simulation Training Systems for the Army” [p. 430 of the Committee Report]). All of these came to a lot more than the $361 million net add to the bill. The Committee and its staff had to find offsets to help pay for these earmark goodies and other additions.

In past years, the HASC (and the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Defense Subcommittees of both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees) has listed strange sounding reductions in the O&M sections of their bills – “unobligated balances.” These should be technical alterations for money previously appropriated to the various military services for various programs; they become “unobligated” when the planned expenditure does not occur, and they presumably become available for offsets for new spending, or – if the Committee were to be more forthcoming to the taxpayer – return to the Treasury.

For example, on p. 432 of the HASC Committee Report, the tables for Army O&M show a reduction of $384.6 million labeled “Army unobligated balances estimate.” That amount happens to be 1.1% of the president’s request for total Army O&M ($34.735 billion).

The Navy section on O&M in the HASC bill shows a $435.9 million reduction for “Navy unobligated balances estimate.” For some strange reason, that amount also calculates to 1.1% of the President’s request for Navy O&M ($39.365 billion).

Stranger even, the Marine Corps O&M reduction for unobligated balances as also 1.1% ($66 million of a $5.960 billion request).

Same thing for the Air Force; the same 1.1% ($400.8 million from a $36.195 billion request).

None of these are discussed or explained in the text of the committee report; the only “explanation” we get is that they are “Army [or Navy, or Air Force, etc.] unobligated balances estimate.”

That all of these “estimates,” which should be technical in their nature, come to 1.1% reeks of gaming the system. Two relevant questions: Who did it? And Why?

First, I seriously question if these conveniently similar estimates did indeed come from the military services. That would require a rather strange (and specious) amount of coordination by them all to all come to 1.1% of their respective O&M budget requests.

Secondly, why are there no “unobligated balances” in the procurement and R&D titles, which are heavy with the kind of spending that can end up “unobligated”?

Third, why isn’t this money being returned to the Treasury, from whence it came and now belongs if indeed the money is no longer needed by the Defense Department?

There are lots of other questions, but hopefully you get my drift. The offsets the HASC took, calling them “unobligated balances,” are nothing but across the board whacks at one of the most importance accounts in the DOD budget – the one that makes for a well trained and supported military. Why is the HASC doing these across the board cuts, and why are they doing it in O&M?

There are some other “unobligated balance” issues in the bill. The defense wide part of O&M also took a $456.8 million hit from a request of $30.940 billion. This comes to 1.47%. Why does the part that supports the special forces and others take a bigger proportional hit than the other military services?

Also, the Defense Health Program takes a $225 million hit which is “explained” as a “GAO estimate,” but no GAO analysis or other explanation is offered.

The Military Personnel budget that pays military salaries takes a $693 million hit from a $142.828 billion request (.48%). I found no explanation.

Finally, section 2107 permits the Secretary of the Army to use $115 million in previously “unobligated” spending to fund a water treatment facility at Fort Irwin California. Perhaps the House representative from the Fort Irwin area can explain how all this works and how he or she got to fund some spending in the district from these ubiquitous funds.

In my judgment, the HASC, which is charged with oversight of DOD, could use a little oversight itself.

by Winslow Wheeler.
November 2010.

Based on my experience at the Senate Budget Committee, I learned that reading different deficit reduction plans can be tricky. Some use CBO or other “baselines” as a basis for comparison, but those baselines can be a mystery to some and differ – sometimes by huge amounts – from more readily understood future budget proposals for departments, such as the Pentagon’s. Other sources of confusion can be whether the plan applies just to the Pentagon or the larger National Defense Budget Function, uses outlays rather than budget authority, and does or does not include funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sometimes the dollars used are “constant;” sometimes they are “current.”

Sometimes the press and others simply misunderstand elements of an overall plan, such as by reporting a plan’s savings for one “illustrative” year as the entirety of the plan’s savings. Sometimes uncovering what a plan really means requires close reading of the text and footnotes; in still other cases, it requires prolonged discussion with the authors.

This information paper attempts to remove the various impediments to an apples-to-apples comparison of the major plans to reduce defense spending that have been publicly proposed to the Obama Commission of Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. It compares all the plans to the Obama/Gates Plan for National Defense Spending for the years 2011 to 2020; it addresses only “base” budgets (which exclude spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere), and it applies budget authority in “current” dollars.

Budget Authority Savings
Relative to the Obama/Gates “Base” National Defense Budget 2010-2020
Billions of Dollars, All Dollars Are “Current” Dollars

After the above table each plan is addressed briefly, pointing out its major characteristics. I have attempted to do so objectively, with as little editorial comment as possible.

Matthew Hoey is the founder of the Military Space Transparency Project (MSTP) and a former senior research associate at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS) where he specialized in forecasting developments in missile defense and military space technologies. He responded on 02 March 2010 to the Mello-Knight exchange of views on nuclear disarmament and the Obama administration.
________________

President Obama’s hopes to begin the long march toward a nuclear free future are not limited to just words, though I understand how some may believe this to be the case. Upon closer examination, the President is taking the critical first steps in an effort to go beyond his address at Prague. The President is in the process of negotiating a new arms control treaty with the Russians, and it is highly likely that he will be pursuing even deeper cuts in the future. He has also made efforts to expand and strengthen the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Where are the results? Why have we not seen action? When will the nuclear threat begin to wane–even if it happens ever so slightly?

This is a very informative thread, and I have enjoyed reading all of the entries. What Charles [Knight] has initiated here serves as an example of how if we draw upon all of the myriad arguments before us, we are sure to paint a more nuanced picture of the road to consensus and cooperation. The same could not be truer in regard to our domestic political and international diplomatic climates as well. Parties in all corners have legitimate disputes and concerns, and until these are all fully addressed in a courageous and aggressive new fashion it is my belief that our drive towards zero will never get in gear. Here are my thoughts on how we can get moving.

One step would be for both American and Russian defense industries to gradually be converted into commercial industries – in the current global economy this would be slow to begin but would eventually reap tremendous benefits. Such a transition would even free university students from the confines of military contractors as a leading option for employment, ensuring that this generation of young people would not be bound to the archaic practices of the military industrial complex. The ripple effects on cooperative defense would be tremendous. As it is, our overall military capabilities are already unrivaled. Such reductions in military spending and subsequent reinvestment in new technology would not in fact lessen our strategic dominance, since cooperative defense would diminish the move-countermove dynamic that has long undermined disarmament efforts. Then taking into consideration cooperative defense and the promotion of one another’s security, our mutual economic potential would be enhanced further, thus strengthening our international relationship to an unprecedented level.

This would not be a cooperative security agreement limited to just sharing military and launch data; such a partnership would also extend into a shared strategic defense. In this era where the war on terror and the threat from extremism is the focal point of nations such as the US and Russia—ever posed with internally-based security threats and intrusions by radicals who would not hesitate to use a nuclear weapons in a major city—this simply makes sense.

The pursuit of missile defense to guard against incoming threats is the single greatest impediment to progress – this is the lynch pin, and under the banner of reducing national security threats it does nothing more than increase them. It is a fool’s pursuit. Should the United States pull back from its BMD aspirations in concert with the initiation of cooperative defense discussions, real progress toward reducing the threat of a missile attack against the US could begin. This would also help to motivate the US and Russia to find common ground in regard to Iran during this heady time. With the world’s two military superpowers acting as enhanced security and economic partners, it is more likely that this leadership by example would take hold and could spur the beginning of a global trend over the long run.

Spending has long been unrestrained within the nuclear complex and the national labs. This is a perennial phenomenon—the effect of unwavering pork barrel spending and lobbying by elected officials in cahoots with the defense industry to bring home jobs to their home districts. This cannot be undone without disastrous results. The US economy is addicted to the defense dollar and must be weaned from it gradually. This would come in the form of a transition away from the development of destructive technology and towards the development of beneficial technologies, for example, alternative energy solutions or emerging technologies that would enhance space exploration. Far too many working American families rely upon the defense budget and the nuclear dollar. If consensus for disarmament efforts is to extend across the aisles of Congress and the Senate, this must be understood and honored. If not, we face divisions and a squandered opportunity that may not present itself again.

Once such a transition takes place, a type of economic vacuum effect could commence where free markets, capitalism and innovation driven by new technology could lift the US and Russian economies out of the mud that is the threat of nuclear annihilation. This vacuum effect was not possible in years past, and is actually enabled by the current economic crises and the need for new industries that would contribute to economic recovery and job creation. It does not require any more courage, concessions or clarity to pursue a world without nuclear weapons through such avenues than what is needed to cling onto weapons that can and will someday kill millions.

When placed side-by-side, exchanges and the resulting debates regarding the increase in the nuclear complex budget versus the White House’s current policy positions beg for such a solution. In fact, if such a solution is initiated cautiously through careful consideration of the needs of all parties, it could ripple across the economy help to address our greatest global challenges. This could be accomplished while progressively extracting more and more American and Russian scientists from the nuclear gadgetry industry and channeling their enormous individual and collective talents into a more prosperous direction.

Barack Obama and Dimitri Medvedev have the courage and clarity to understand and express their willingness to discuss a world without nuclear weapons. Progress will require a steadfast commitment to courage in the face of the defense industry and the clarity to see that thousands of Russian and Americans rely on these industries and will need jobs that provide the means to support their families. Cooperative defense will lead to the beginning of a transition from massive defense spending to productive civilian investment that stands to benefit all.

Offering concessions and placing cooperative defense on the table while viewing the road ahead in a broader context should get the discussion moving in a direction that turns words into additional actions. As long as the United States refuses to give up missile defense in Eastern Europe we will remain at a standstill.

It was Dr. Randall Forsberg who opened my mind to this way of thinking. She taught me about how cooperative security could be used as a vehicle for peace. Her words that follow, written in 1992, ring today with a renewed poignancy:

The end of the Cold war represents a turning point for the role of military force in international affairs. At this unique juncture in history, the world’s main military spenders and arms producers have an unprecedented opportunity to move from confrontation to cooperation. The United States, the European nations, Japan and the republics of the former USSR can now replace their traditional security policies, based on deterrence and unilateral intervention, with cooperative policies based on minimum deterrence, non-offensive defense, nonproliferation, and multilateral peacekeeping.

There are four important reasons to make this change, and make it quickly:

First, massive resources are at stake. With a cooperative security policy, the United States could cut the annual military budget… A peace dividend on this order is exactly what we need to revitalize the economy and meet the backlog of needs in housing, health, education, environment and economic infrastructure.

Second, the cooperative approach to security is prerequisite to stopping the global proliferation of armaments and arms industries. The prospect of proliferation has become the single greatest military threat to this country and to the world…

Third, the choice by the major industrial nations either to perpetuate a US-dominated international security system or to develop a more cooperative system will have far-reaching political ramifications at home and abroad… here in America, the change would help reverse the nasty mixture of cynicism, violence, and racism that has increasingly pervaded our society since the first Reagan Administration made increases in military spending at the price of national debt and deep cuts in domestic programs.

Last but not least, a cooperative approach to security is likely to be far more effective than the traditional approach in reducing the incidence and scale of war. Despite these enormous stakes, Congress and the Administration have, until recently, refused even to consider substantial cuts in post-Cold war defense spending, much less seize the unprecedented opportunity to develop a cooperative security system. [Randall Forsberg, "Defense Cuts and Cooperative Security in the Post-Cold War World", Boston Review, May 1992]

Should President Obama choose to accept this torch I believe that we can achieve the goals outlined in Prague within our lifetime.

Winslow Wheeler. Straus Military Reform Project, 24 February 2010.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Straus Military Reform Project has obtained almost two years of monthly reports from the Defense Contract Management Agency on Lockheed-Martin’s production of the F-35 “Joint Strike Fighter.” The most recent of those reports show deterioration from previous reports in several respects.

The Defense Contract Management Agency’s (DCMA) most recent reports cover the months July through November, 2009. These will soon be available at the Straus Military Reform Project website.

Major elements of the July through November reports can be summarized as follows:

The F-35 assembly line at Forth worth is being cannibalized for parts to support flight testing. This may be the first time an assembly line has been cannibalized for parts for such a tiny number of flight test aircraft as Lockheed-Martin has been able to get into the air. See summary of August report below.

Continuing and sometimes deteriorating nature of the delays at Lockheed-Martin’s (L-M) Fort Worth plant refutes the L-M contention that things are getting better and that the F-35 program learned from the past and with new design techniques is avoiding the kinds of problems experienced by “legacy” aircraft programs.

The cause, nature and implications of the “stand down” mentioned in the November report could well be important, but details are redacted in the DCMA reports and the press is yet to uncover the nature of the “stand down.” It is a matter looking for an explanation.

Some details from the reports follow:

July Report: Page 4 talks about a new DCMA estimate to complete System Design and Development, but the numbers are redacted. DCMA calls the L-M estimate “inadequate.” This DCMA estimate is before the Pentagon’s second independent Joint Estimating Team (JET II) estimate was finished and available, and is presumably independent. Most importantly, it clearly was available for SecDef Gates Forth Worth visit in August. Was it briefed to him? If so, why was Gates so positive about the program at that visit; if it was not, is that an example of why the F-35 program manager, General Heinz, was fired: i.e. that troubling information was not getting to Gates on this high visibility program.

Page 4 also mentions without further discussion a “BF-4 STOVL Upper Lift Fan Door incident.” The context is the rising costs of the overall system, but there are no details. Given that the Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) F-35B is on a short schedule to deployment, is this a problem that will further complicate the schedule for the F-35B?

Page 4 identifies a “Corrective Action Plan” to address “EVMS,” “Earned Value Management system” or the system that LM uses to measure and report execution of the program and its budget. I understand it to be the core method DOD uses to monitor and manage the program. Results of the plan are due to DCMA in August. (The October Report states that the plan was submitted, but no specifics are reported. It is only stated that “a more focused Review will occur in three to five months by the DCMA….” [Page 4 of October Report.]). There has been some reporting on the failure to meet EVMS criteria in the press. The threat to L-M is that it will have to maintain its “certification” to perform EVMS calculations—if it is lost, L-M could end up not legally eligible to be a contractor to the federal government.

August Report: L-M is cannibalizing the production line to provide spare parts for the flight test program (pp. 3 & 4). These cannibalizations are “causing significant workload to supply chain personnel and are disrupting the production line.” There is no further discussion or explanation. This may be the first time a development aircraft’s production line was cannibalized for spares.

September Report: “Execution of the Flight Test Schedule continues to be a significant Program concern.” (Page 3.)

“The volume of major CR’s [Change Requests] is projected to continue.” “…the number of major changes has exceeded projections. Additionally, the impact of timing these changes and the disruption to the floor were not anticipated.” (Page 3.) This would seem to be exactly the kind of thing that L-M promised would not happen: i.e. that they had learned from previous programs and with the benefits of advanced computer design, the F-35 would not have the kinds of design disruptions so common with “legacy” aircraft.

Page 4 addresses another delay issue: ”Wing-at-Mate” problems. These, I understand, have to do with the decision to mate the wing to the fuselage before the wing is “stuffed”. The plan was to mate the completed wing to the fuselage. But, because of delays, L-M decided to add wing components after mating, which – being inefficient — slows things down more.

“Composite production is not meeting the demands of the production operations – composites for the AFT and Empennage assemblies are paced by the availability and quality of composites.” (Page 4.) Again, the modern design feature of composites, said to not just reduce weight (of the over weight aircraft) but to facilitate design and fabrication is proving to be a source of delay and complication.

October Report: Flight test schedule still “a significant Program concern.” “AF-1 continues to be in a maintenance period as of this report, progressing towards taxi tests and first flight.” (Page 3.) This is an example of a problem addressed in earlier DCMA reports: aircraft coming off the production line incomplete and incapable of flight. They are sent to adjacent hangars for post-production production. This pre-first flight “maintenance” would seem to be a misleading misnomer.

Mentions that the program is about to get its “sixth schedule revision.” (Page 3.)

More on the “Wing-at-Mate overlap” which appears to be improving. (Page 3.)

November Report: Due to the need for the sixth schedule revision — coming in early 2010 — “Recent Program summary charts, scorecards, and management briefings do not consistently depict performance to the master schedule baseline.” (Page 3.)

The graph on page 6 shows Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) aircraft delivery rate is on average 80 days late. The rate significantly deteriorated in April and stayed at that deteriorated rate. Individual aircraft deliveries are significantly above that: AF-6 will be 92 days late; AF-7 will be 142 days late. A sentence presumably explaining the increased delay was redacted. (Page 6.) This category is rated “red” by DCMA. On the other hand, DCMA confirms public reports that while LRIP 1 & 2 aircraft are months late, the “risk” that LRIP 3 aircraft will be late is rated as “low.”

Suppliers’ Delivery Rate (Page 8.) is also getting worse, now down to about 75% on-time. This category is also rated “red” by DCMA.

The Management Reserve of money is gone, “further straining the financial management of the Program.” Amounts are redacted. Given USATL Carter’s decision to used LRIP production money for SDD, how much of that will go to L-M’s management reserve slush fund, rather than directly to SDD activities?

A section is titled “Maintenance and Quality Verification Stand-Down” immediately followed by several redacted lines. Later the section states “This incident triggered a maintenance and quality verification stand-down to determine systemic root causes for increasing aircraft impoundment and suspension of operations incidents to date.” And later, “The focus areas are Software, Rework/Repairs, System Check Out Procedures (SCOPs) and Aerospace Equipment Instructions (AEIs).” (page 4.) The discussion in the section titled “Improve Software Productivity” refers to “F-35 stand-down events” and explains that a “Joint Process Review” effort to address software issues was “postponed until further notice as it was overcome by F-35 stand down events that took precedence.” (Page 18.)

This “stand down” would appear to have some significance, but has not been reported to the public by L-M or DOD.

Note: for links to the DCMA reports cited here see Winslow Wheeler, Pentagon Reports Document Continuing Lockheed-Martin Failures, Center for Defense Information, 24 February 2010.

Cindy Williams. statement before the Committee on the Budget, U.S. Senate, 23 February 2010. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/100223williams.pdf

Excerpt:

O&M spending does seem to rise and fall in loose concert with total defense budgets-an indication that some of the seemingly avoidable rise in O&M spending is a consequence of budget largesse as much as a cause of it.

One thing is certain: assuming that O&M costs face an unavoidable rise simply because they rose in the past is the surest way to make it so. Several past efforts to bring O&M costs under control have been successful. Assuming based on past trends that it cannot be done is an invitation to waste. The better strategy is to put O&M on a diet and challenge the services to bring the costs of operation and upkeep under control.

Todd Fine organized and developed the Global Zero campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons as a program officer at the World Security Institute. He is currently working to establish the Iran Data Portal at Princeton University. He responded on 18 February 2010 to the Knight-Mello exchange of views on nuclear disarmament and the Obama administration.

___________________

Fine:

President Obama’s exceedingly generous budget request for the nuclear weapons labs has boiled long-simmering anxieties about the concrete policy impact of his frequently expressed “vision” for “a world without nuclear weapons.” Aligning with the prominent series of op-eds in The Wall Street Journal, Obama repeated this earnest aspiration consistently throughout the campaign for the presidency, and in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and April 2009 policy speech in Prague.

Given the ambition of this vision in practical terms, and, of course, the now apparent serious interest in its achievement by predecessor Ronald Reagan, it is not surprising that long-time advocates have expected policy proposals that would explicitly move in this direction. Yet, these budgeting numbers signal an overall regression. They will further institutionalize the development of new weapons and will make restructuring the labs toward other functions more difficult.

The failure to assure advocates began at the rhetoric’s root. Despite the welcome credibility they have given the anti-nuclear cause, the op-ed authors – George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and William Perry – had a burden to consider how other countries perceive the size and activities of our weapons laboratories. At the same time in 2007 that American anti-nuclear lobbyists and activists were feverishly working to block funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) in Congress, Kissinger forwarded an analysis by Shultz and Hoover fellow Sidney Drell to Sen. Pete Domenici supporting investments in the program. And although Nunn declared that he was opposed to the RRW, he signaled his acceptance for large-scale increases in lab funding in the foursome’s third op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on January 19, 2010. Unlike the previous op-eds, which were enthusiastically endorsed by others and received with much fanfare by the press, this one seemed clinically designed to give their reputational blessing to the upcoming budget numbers.

Chief nuclear negotiator under President Reagan, Max Kampelman, who has claimed that he originally prompted George Shultz to return to the question of elimination, has advocated a bold path to zero using multilateral processes in the United Nations. Indeed, outlining the divisions among the foreign policy elite, the Global Zero campaign was initiated by a number of attendees of the Shultz-led Hoover Institution meetings who were dissatisfied with the extreme focus on short-term “steps” instead of the explicit practicalities of achieving the ultimate goal. And following that, the policy program of Global Zero itself has revealed a split between the advocates of immediate multilateralization of the strategic arms control process and others who propose that a decades-long series of U.S.-Russia agreements expand into a multilateral process.

These assorted divisions among the elite may come to the fore at the May NPT Review Conference as other nations test the United States’ new-found commitment to the treaty’s stated objective of disarmament. Given the current crises involving Iran and North Korea and the shortening window of Obama’s dynamism on the world stage, if the President fails to inspire others to adopt his “vision” and work toward elimination concretely, he may miss a singular opportunity. If CTBT, which is symbolic despite its limitations, is not ratified by the conference date, these budget requests alone may devastate U.S. credibility. And as Greg Mello’s logic indicates, other nations are unlikely to be impressed with the scale of the START follow-on treaty, and there are not yet any indications that the posture review language on “the role” of nuclear weapons will be that momentous in terms of practical implications.

In order to blunt these concerns and sincerely recommit to the vision, there are a number of policy proposals the Obama administration could potentially advocate going into the review conference:

1. A funded international program that would initiate cooperative research into verification technologies and enforcement strategies that would be required in a world of “global zero.”

2. The initiation of an international audit of all existing nuclear weapons and material.

3. Sponsorship of initial discussions on a timeline for negotiations and targets involved in the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

However, as Charles Knight mentioned with respect to international concerns about the United States’ superiority in conventional weapons, these actions would only be a start. Given the terrifying overall budget projections and the abject failure of our military contracting and procurement processes, the United States needs to reformulate its entire defense posture and budget. In order to convince states like Russia and China to approach low numbers of nuclear weapons, it might even be necessary to consider multilateral treaty restrictions on general conventional forces and on specific advanced weapons systems like Prompt Global Strike. If the elimination aspiration is sincere, then these concerns are unavoidable and should be seriously studied and contemplated.

Max Kampelman, the symbolic initiator of the present return to abolitionism, has spoken powerfully of what real leadership by an American president, especially when morally confident and unabashed, can accomplish. President Obama’s rhetoric on the elimination of nuclear weapons apparently inspired some enough to award him the Nobel Peace Prize; if he is sincere, he owes it to the younger generation to present a clear path to elimination, if not in his lifetime, then in ours.

Jonathan Granoff is president of the Global Security Institute. He responded on 15 February 2010 to the Mello-Knight exchange of views on nuclear disarmament and the Obama administration.
Jonathan Granoff is the author of Memo to Obama: Nuclear Weapons, which appeared in Tikkun Magazine, January-February 2009.

__________________

Jonathan Granoff:

Was President Obama outplayed by DOD and DOE? They have posed a very clever analysis. If progress is to be had on nonproliferation, such as support for a test ban, then modernization and the ability to strengthen the capacity to improve the arsenal seems to be the cost. Does this still allows them to say that the modernization “might require testing someday?” This will be an enormous benefit for those who want to stop the test ban. Will it not be like the Clinton administration’s deal with Stockpile Stewardship where he thought funding it would generate their support for the test ban but did not gain the full out support of DOE?

I am consistently surprised by how naive politicians appear when challenged by strategic military planners. So, I state this as an example where it appears that President Obama really wants to make progress (not necessarily on disarmament, but certainly on nonproliferation) and even here he is getting cul de sacked.

Or, is he fully aware of the strategy being played out. Does Mr. Mello think he was being deceptive in the Prague speech, or just a bit cute?

Regardless, the current programs being funded that Mr. Mello highlights will certainly make achieving any strengthening of the nonproliferation aspirations of the Administration at the upcoming NPT very difficult. They certainly do not seem to be consistent with a commitment to disarmament.

I sincerely hope I am wrong and look forward to hearing from some of the people in the current Administration whom I respect very much, such as Ambassador Rice and Assistant Secretary of State Gottemoeller.

Greg Mello responds to Jonathan Granoff:

Among your other interesting points, you raise this question: “Does Mr. Mello think he [Obama] was being deceptive in the Prague speech, or just a bit cute?” I would say neither. The substitution of an aspiration for a commitment or promise is a rhetorical device so normal these questions don’t arise. Both the speaker and the audience expect some sort of ritual acknowledgment of our common aspirations. The gap between those aspirations and our actual practice is fairly embarrassing; many members of the audience are looking for some sort of fantasy bridge between the two. They don’t want bad news, they want “hope.”

Somehow we have gone from “I will put a chicken in every pot” to “I will seek to put a chicken in every pot.” There is less accountability in the second formulation, which may be especially helpful in a time of contracting national prospects — in which contraction, the increased nuclear military spending I am criticizing plays a central symbolic role. Our hopes are greater than the realities available to service them. We, and our donors and supporters, want Santa Claus.

Paul Ingram is the executive director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC). He responded on 15 February 2010 to the Mello-Knight exchange of views on nuclear disarmament and the Obama administration.

Ingram:

Everyone knows that in this tough world of realist nuclear politics it does not pay to be naïve. What is less frequently recognised is that in a world of global threat it can be equally dangerous to play an extreme game of zero trust.

So we have to go through this strange and difficult world navigating a constant and complex series of considered calculations, making judgments based upon evidence and previous experience, what we can trust and what we cannot. That goes as much for those of us trying to influence decision-makers as much as for officials making decisions over foreign policy.

So when a President gets up and makes a speech that contains within it commitments to a world free of nuclear weapons, proposing a number of initiatives, and looking forward to concrete commitments in the near term, it pays to be hopeful, but not gullible. And we have the first test of this hope in the very near future when the President comes to publish a version of his long awaited Nuclear Posture Review.

Let me say at the outset that I am not intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Obama Adminsitration’s game plan, with the NPR, the START follow-on negotiations, these investments. I don’t like these investments in the infrastructure [weapons complex] any more than Greg. I think they are a waste of US taxpayer’s resources, and America and the world would be better off without them, with existing budgets devoted to further winding down the infrastructure, clean-up and the like.

But there remain several reasons for treating Obama’s nuclear diplomacy, and these investments, seriously:

1) It is a new departure. Now, bask in that fact, but I agree with Greg, this is hardly a cause for great celebration.

2) There are no obvious electoral benefits in this for Obama beyond the concrete international results that pertain. Few Americans will vote differently on this, unless President Obama actually delivers upon this agenda and appears come the next election as a President that delivers on the international scene. In actual fact, if the agenda were a cynical one, he will more likely end up seen as a President big on promises and weak on delivery – whether he is genuine or not, this is a likely and very depressing outcome.

3) The view that is being taken by the Administration over the need for this level of extra investment may be misguided, but it does hold a certain level of internal consistency. Let’s be honest, few things in politics are pure and simple, black and white. Even the JASON report, when pointing out that the warheads were in good shape, said that the infrastructure itself was under severe strain through lack of investment and the challenge of attracting talent into the profession. The belief that we need to reduce slowly and multilaterally whilst maintaining a nuclear force well into the future may be frustrating to many of us, and highlight the fact that we still live in a world where governments have not yet understood the need for more radical shifts in their postures, but it does not contradict the vision. And let’s be clear here, commitment to the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, whilst only the first step, is an important one nevertheless. And if you were based in France, you’d know what a big step it was.

4) Perhaps most important, the Obama Administration, and we ourselves, need to consider strategically how we can realistically bring the majority of Americans, Russians, and God knows, the Indians, Pakistanis and Israelis along with us (everyone these days focuses on the Iranians but trust me, they are easy in comparison). It is not effective simply to state positions and push through initiatives against majority opposition, even when you are the most powerful man in the world. You still have to convince Congress, the Americans people, and then colleagues abroad, in a huge complex web of inter-relationships that are not conducive to rational debate, let alone instruction. It takes gentle engagement, openness to others’ perspectives, appreciation of diversity, team work and many other cooperative skills beyond policy work to build the process necessary for disarmament. And that takes building confidence. And that probably requires the sort of investment we are witnessing today.

William D. Hartung is Director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. He responded on 15 February 2010 to the Mello-Knight exchange of views on nuclear disarmament and the Obama administration.

______________

Hartung:

Obama’s aspirations go beyond just his statement at Prague. He is in the midst of negotiating a new nuclear arms
reduction treaty with Russia, with a possible follow-on seeking deeper cuts; he has committed himself publicly to pursuing ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and a treaty banning the production of bomb-making materials
(the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty); he is hosting a nuclear security summit of scores of nations to work on plans to secure or destroy “loose nukes” and bomb-making materials; and he hosted a meeting of the UN Security Council (the first U.S. president to do so) to reinforce disarmament pledges of numerous key players.

Some of these changes can occur without major restructuring of U.S. conventional forces (new reductions with Russia and new nuclear security measures, for example).

Everything beyond that will require substantial changes first, as Charles suggests, not only in U.S conventional forces and posture but in regional politics in security dynamics in South Asia (India and Pakistan) and the Middle East (Israel, Iran, and host of related questions, including an Israeli-Palestinian setttlement). And current actions such as boosting spending on the nuclear weapons complex need to be reversed.

Many of these factors are rarely or not fully discussed by many — but not all — of the advocates of “getting to zero.”

So, I guess I agree with many of the points made by Charles and Greg, but I’m not ready to give up on the prospect of some significant changes in nuclear policies and postures. My sense is that we should applaud Obama’s commitments and then hold him to his word, not presume that progress is impossible.

Winslow T. Wheeler. Straus Military Reform Project, Center for Defense Information, 01 February 2010.

Gordon Adams. American University and the Stimson Center, 16 December 2009. PowerPoint presentation hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/0912adams.ppt