DoD Buzz

It must be the worst nightmare of every CIA director — the agency ignores its own rules and regulations and kills innocent Americans, and then the people in charge of the operation lie to Congress and cover up what happened. The nightmare has apparently come to life and it became public today when Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) announced that a report by the CIA’s own inspector general found that agency officers apparently ignored standing rules and regulations governing when they could shoot at aircraft in the drug war in Latin America.

The end of black-white space integration may be at hand. The man long identified as one of its most devoted followers, Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, the head of Air Force Space Command and former deputy commander at Strategic Command, told the intelligence community that “this approach is posing insurmountable problems, and those problems are going to get worse as we look to the future.”

Names for likely members of the team to head President-elect Barack Obama’s intelligence team are quietly leaching out of the gray world.

One top possibility is former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), who helped sponsor the legislation that created the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, known as the 9/11 Commission.

UPDATED: Mike Wynne, former secretary of the Air Force, sharply criticized John Young’s decision to approve advanced funding for a small number of F-22s. “This gives efficient acquisition a very bad name, as everyone knows this level of quantity will lead to high prices..”

Reports of the death of a crucial satellite system known as BASIC have been grossly exaggerated.
The Associated Press and other media outlets reported 10 days ago that $1 billion for BASIC was cut by the House and Senate Appropriations intelligence subcommittees, canceling the program. Well, as often happens with intelligence spending, the picture is much more complicated and nuanced, according to a senior Pentagon source and a congressional aide.

Theresa Hitchens, former editor of Defense News, is leaving the gently liberal (and officially nonpartisan) Center for Defense Information to take up a post with the United Nations. Hitchens will leave town in January to take up a post in Geneva, Switzerland as director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research. So when you see definitive UN research about weapons of mass destruction (nukes, chem/bio,) small arms, landmines, and space issues, that will be Theresa’s doing.

So far most of the talk about the next Pentagon budget has been relatively optimistic and cautious. The Gates Pentagon clearly believes it must maintain spending at or above current levels to support forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and buy weapons for future conflicts. But that view is clearly not shared by some Democrats. As a GOP email screamed this afternoon: “HOUSE DEMOCRAT CALLS FOR $150 BILLION CUT TO DEFENSE SPENDING.”

Remember the Chinese shooting down their weather satellite? Remember the Chinese using a laser to paint a US satellite? Remember the US shooting down its own crippled spy satellite, US 193? The debate about how to protect space assets is heating up and one of the top national security space experts, Bob Butterworth, weighs in below for what I will call (in the best Chinese tradition) the third way, arguing that space defense does not require weapons in space.

If, as the polls indicate, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) loses his bid for the presidency he will also likely preside over a shrunken Republican presence on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

I hadn’t heard much from the Senate about just how the election might affect it so I called a congressional aide who keeps a pretty keen eye on his bosses doings. If the Democrats sweep up seats as the latest polls indicate likely they will win at least 55 seats and have a reasonable chance of winning another five seats.

The rumors, speculation and fear about China and its plans to build a true blue water fleet, complete with carrier groups and all that would mean for the shift in power in the Pacific, appear to have gained some substance.
The respected naval analyst Norman Polmar is hearing reports “that 50 Chinese naval officers have begun [...]