In space warfare one man’s refueling or repair capability can look an awful lot like another man’s ability to destroy or cripple your satellite. Now one Chinese satellite has approached another and, apparently, bumped its target and changed the orbit. U.S. analysts of Chinese space efforts seem to agree, so far, that this was not an anti-satellite test.
With the stroke of a pen Air Force Secretary Mike Donley engaged one of the most complex bureaucratic challenges faced by the service: how to buy, build and manage satellites and the rockets that move them into space. In perhaps the biggest change, Donley vested the service’s undersecretary, Erin Conaton, with the responsiblity for guiding all space policy activities overseen by the Air Force. The assistant secretary for acqusiution will now lead all space acquisition, combining traditional fighter, bomber and other service acquisition with space.
It was the top story in the Wall Street Journal — China looks set to become the world’s second largest economy. But the New York Times put it on the front page of the business section, seeming to indicate this story was less a milestone and more a technical correction. The need for analysis was obvious so we asked a Chinese expert at the Heritage Foundation to give us a better idea of just how important this fact is and why. Dean Cheng’s conclusion: the PLA must still fight for its share of the pot, but a growing pot will probably drive a demand for greater deference from China to those who share its neighborhood.
UAVs aren’t going to be as useful as they have been in Afghanistan and Iraq because, in the next real war, they are much more likely to face armed opposition from the ground and from the air. The outgoing commander of US air assets in Europe, Gen. Roger Brady, told a recent UAV conference maneuverability and stealth limitations are arguments against UAVs in contested airspace. It turns out the folks at General Atomics have been listening and looking ahead.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has swung the axe once more, this time aiming for the enormous personnel costs that have swelled since Sept. 11, 2001, eliminating Joint Forces Command, freezing the numbers of senior military and civilian positions, cutting contractor numbers and aiming to control the costs resulting from congressional and OSD reports. Gates’ goal, put simply, is to inculcate a “culture of savings and restraint” and forestall any efforts to strip the overall defense budget in these hard economic times.
The talk on Capitol Hill is that major interagency reform — a new look at the interagency legislation and executive orders undergirding US national security — may be the hottest and hardest to address of the recommendations of the independent QDR panel led by Bill Perry and Stephen Hadley. The panel called for a substantial revamp of the national security structure, saying it was created during the Cold War and was best suited to that era, not to today.They also called on Congress to fix its own house and reduce the overlapping jurisdictions that slow and complicate everyone’s ability to act.
The chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee said this morning he will lean on the wary Democratic leadership to bring the defense spending bill to a full committee and then floor vote by the end of September. The chairman was speaking at an awards event held by the Association of the US Army. Dicks, chairman for a few months since the death of Rep. Jack Murtha, is likely to run head on into Rep. David Obey, outgoing chairman of the full committee and a resolute opponent of war and — sometimes — defense spending.
Farnborough Air Show – Imagine a UAV with radar built into its wings, its nose and its tail. Now imagine a squadron of UAVs sharing that data among themselves and building a huge field of regard. Add a few Super Hornets or F-35s to enlarge the field even more and giving the squadron not just eyes but also weapons to destroy any targets identified during the run. Put all that together and you possess a likely view of the next five years.
This week the Senate Armed Services Committee held a highly classified hearing on what is probably the core issue of the treaty: verification. Next week the committee holds an open hearing on treaty implementation. That should bring a few howls of anguish from Republicans committed to squashing the treaty, afraid it will leave the United States less safe in a dangerous world. Earlier this week, we ran a START commentary by a group created by the folks at Heritage. Today, the left — in the form of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation – swings back, arguing that START will make us safer.
The NRO charter has taken a crucial step, having been finalized for approval by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the next Director of National Intelligence. The NSC got a copy last week. For members of the intel community, the most important part of all this may not be that the document is moving to approval but that language in the draft was changed to “clarify” the extent of the NRO’s reach.
As the Senate Armed Services Committee readies classified hearings for Wednesday this week on the technical verifiability of the new START treaty, the right wing of the Republican Party has come out swinging. The Heritage Foundation has created an independent group with the purpose of pressing their views on the treaty, Heritage Action for America, They contacted us last week about running an o-ed and here it is.
The first really clear indication that serious planning was underway to strike at Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons site came a month ago when British news outlets reported that Saudi Arabia had given Israel permission to cross its airspace en route to Iranian targets.
Yesterday, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States said publicly that his country was willing to live with the consequences of a strike against Iran. Now Sen. Lieberman says in Israel that the U.S. will use military action “if it must.”
The Air Force’s head of acquisition is unhappy with Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk program. David Van Buren held a rare on-the-record briefing with reporters today and said he was “unhappy” with the program at least three times. Van Buren said he was unhappy with the program’s approach and achievements on cost. He said he was unhappy with the sensors that go on the aircraft. And he said he was unhappy with the aircraft itself. Oh, and by the way, he said the program takes way too long to submit proposals. How slow can the pace be, you ask? Van Buren said it was “excruciating.”
The intelligence community and the Pentagon have pressed ahead, fought, stumbled and generally made a mess for more than half a decade of crafting a new guiding document for the NRO, the agency that builds and operates the nation’s spy satellites. “It’s been my concern all along that this whole issue of redoing the NRO charter has been hung up in what I think of as typical Pentagon bureaucracy,” Rep. John Kline said today. He wants the charter finished, period.
White Sands Missile Range -- As the Pentagon and Boeing explore the best uses for smartphones on the battlefield, it looks as if the iPhone’s proprietary software may mean the military will give it a miss and gravitate to Android phones because of their open operating systems. The Army is experimenting with 200 Android, Windows Mobile and iPhones here to see how they can best be used. And a Pentagon app store should open any day now to service military phones.
UPDATED: Strong Support Voiced By Senior HPSCI Democrat
Jim Clapper may have ticked off a senior Republican on the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, but most intelligence professionals and some very important Democrats view his ascension to the DNI as a most welcome event. The most significant aspect of Clapper’s background is his knowledge of geospatial intelligence, a discipline he played a large part in creating. You can bet that in the battle for dollars and influence between the main defense intel agencies — NSA, NRO and NGA — that the geospatial folks are very hopeful that their slice of the budget will grow, as will their influence over what is bought and why.
The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hoss Cartwright, ranks as one of the smartest players in the national security world and he rarely speaks in public. Even more rarely does he speak in public about one of the most essential elements of his job — strategy. The Center for Strategic and International Studies are broadcasting a talk by Cartwright tomorrow as well as a host of a host of provocative panels. We’ll be covering his remarks, as well as those of some of the others speaking during the conference. Click for the link to Cartwright’s and the other broadcasts.
The House Armed Services Committee today added $362 million to the Obama administration’s 2011 defense authorization bill for missile defense, including $50 million for further tests of Boeing’s Airborne Laser, a program the Obama administration had sought to end. The HASC markup also boosted funding for Aegis SM-3 and THAAD missile production.
The enormous need for overhead reconnaissance to combat IEDs and to track terrorists and insurgents over large areas for long periods is driving at least one part of the Pentagon to develop so-called stratospheric UAVs that can hover above the Jet Stream for several months or more. That may be the harbinger of a long-term shift in the UAV market, according to one advocate of the concept, Ed Herlik. Persistent stratospheric UAVs will significantly change the marketplace for both platforms and payloads in less than five years, he predicts in a market forecast. “Persistent surveillance (months or a year on-station above the Jet Stream) is the one capability that will significantly enhance the ability to combat an insurgency while minimizing troop risk and ground commitment,” the report says.
North Korea, bereft of friends and access to the outside world, sits isolated but for its great northern neighbor and its ports, so it can be fairly easily contained as a nuclear power. But Iran boasts Shiite followers in a wide arc of the Muslim world, produces oil with which it wins friends and influences people, is bound by eight neighbors and trades with them and many others. It fields and funds terrorists such as Hezbollah who do its bidding when needed. So Iran is not easily contained. That flexibility, and the fact that Iran learned from Iraq’s experience when Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear plant — disperse your facilities, bury them, reinforce them and lie about them — makes them a formidably difficult state to isolate or control.
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