DoD Buzz

What would cost $8 billion, has a mission capable rate that is a “troubling” 62 percent and “is proving very expensive to operate?” The answer: 100 upgraded F-22s. John Young, the Pentagon’s acquisition czar, also said the plane “still does not meet most of its KPPs (Key Performance Parameters).”

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 highly influential Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Pentagon funded think tank, recommends that the Army cut its planned force expansion of 65,000 new soldiers and comes mighty close to saying the service should axe its prized Future Combat Systems modernization program.

It’s not often anyone on the House Armed Services Committee invokes the constitution, but today’s hearing on the F-22 featured repeated mentions of the founding document by frustrated lawmakers who knew the Pentagon had outflanked them on the controversial program. “You are acting in defiance of the law and the will of Congress,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) hurled at John Young, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.

The Army has requested bids from industry for up to 10,000 lightweight versions of its Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle, dubbed MRAP All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV), a lighter, off-road capable and more maneuverable vehicle than the monstrous MRAPs the Army bought to shuttle soldiers around Iraq.

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.”

In a new paper, analyst Frank Hoffman dissects the Navy’s current maritime strategy and finds it wanting, particularly in terms of resources, which the strategy barely mentions. He proposes a new approach based on partnering with foreign navies and large numbers of small “streetfighter” ships.

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.

The nascent Obama administration has filled the job of lead for the Pentagon transition and it isn’t Sam Nunn, as earlier reported by some media outlets. Because of all the fog surrounding this story, I checked with a source familiar with Obama’s defense team to confirm that Michele Flournoy, co-founder of the Center for a New American Security thinktank and former head of strategy under Clinton, is joining former Deputy Defense Secretary John White to head the team reviewing the Pentagon. White is now head of the Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative.

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..”