NAVY BUDGET: Despite Troubled Waters, Navy Will Stay the Course with LCS

By Philip Ewing Thursday, July 28th, 2011 3:26 pmWe observed not too long ago that the urgency seemed to have gone from the Navy’s littoral combat ship program, but nevertheless, the service’s next chief of naval operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, said Thursday that it’s still committed to its vision of 55 ships and their interchangeable mission equipment. Greenert told Senate lawmakers at his confirmation hearing that he’s spent the night aboard the first ship, the steel-and-aluminum USS Freedom, as well as some quality time aboard the second, the all-aluminum USS Independence, and he and the brass remain convinced that the Navy has made the right bet with the LCS concept.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is not a fan of LCS. He castigated the Navy for spending so much money and still failing to “have a single ship that is operationally effective or reliable.” (Both Freedom and Independence are laid up today, and neither has any of the custom equipment it needs to hunt submarines, mines or fight surface battles.) Hey, we get it, Greenert said, but just you wait and see — the Navy’s bet on LCS is going to pay off. One of its bets already has, Greenert’s hearing showed: After going back and forth about whether it would select a single LCS design or build both of them, the Navy decided last year to go with both, pleasing shipbuilding-state lawmakers whose constituent yards will all get to share the work.  Read more

What Could Austerity America's Defense Posture Look Like?

By Philip Ewing Monday, August 1st, 2011 11:21 am
Posted in Rumors

The Pentagon is staring at the prospect of as much as $850 billion in budget reductions over the next 10 years and beyond — which, as DoD and service officials keep saying, will require some major strategic recalculations. Even now, we can only imagine what’s in the PowerPoint slide decks rocketing back and forth across the Building as staffs come up with alternatives and scenarios for absorbing those kinds of cuts. The only upside, from DoD’s perspective, is that it sounds as though the White House and Congress are sold on the idea of a grand strategy that lays out how to move forward and where to accept risks.

Two old caveats remain in effect, though: First, whatever the Pentagon comes up with has to survive Congress, where defense lawmakers in the age of austerity will fight harder than they ever have to keep their pieces of the military-industrial complex. And second: The Pentagon needs a better bad guy than “persistant global instability” when it’s fighting to keep budgets and hardware, and we all know what that means: China. It’s a fair bet that the Mother of All Reviews will call for the military to keep or increase its focus on the Western Pacific, even as it dials back the U.S. forces positioned elsewhere around the world.

Here’s one vision for how this movie plays out:  Read more

BIOTERRORISM: U.S. Pushes to Standardize Collection of Biothreat Samples

Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2011

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology on Tuesday said it is collaborating with the National Guard to ensure that federal, state and local emergency response personnel are trained to collect disease materials for analysis in accordance with recently adopted procedures (see GSN, Aug. 1).

photo courtesy DoD

“The aim of the operation is to provide a training lane that can help standardize the interface between initial local, state and federal responders to make sure everyone gets what they need from a collected sample of suspicious material, including providing a solid chain of custody,” NIST environmental engineer Jayne Morrow, who headed preparation of the collection protocol issued in 2010, said in a statement.

“Our goal here at NIST is to help integrate standards and training so that everyone from first responders to investigators knows they can rely on that sample,” Morrow said.

The National Guard operates 57 Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams established to back up civilian response efforts in the event a WMD attack (see GSN, Dec. 1, 2010).  Read more

BIOTERRORISM: Obstacles Seen to Ebola Treatment

Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2011

The United States has backed efforts to develop a vaccine for Ebola, but specialists said scientists must look into a number of areas in pursuing defenses against the potential bioterrorism agent, The Lancet reported last week (seeGSN, Jan. 21).

image courtesy
biologynews.net

Weaponizing the Ebola virus appears to be a daunting task, the magazine said; the virus dies rapidly when exposed to sunlight, and the high speed with which it kills carriers minimizes opportunities for its spread.

Still, the Defense Department has provided $291 million for the development of two potential countermeasures for the Ebola and Marburg viruses at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Md. Each of the highly lethal agents causes hemorrhagic fever in humans.

“There have been quite a few promising vaccine candidates in post-exposure treatment strategies that have successfully protected nonhuman primates,” said Thomas Geisbert, an expert with the University of Texas at Austin who led a research group that determined one such treatment was 100 percent effective in animal testing. A vaccine would be useful to laboratory personnel and to medical workers in areas where the virus exists in nature, according to the magazine.  Read more

DoD > US Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace

[Excellent document for dealing with all things cyber...find below the outline of contents]

INTRODUCTION 
STRATEGIC CONTEXT 
FIVE STRATEGIC INITIATIVES       
     Strategic Initiative 1: Treat cyberspace as an operational domain to organize, train, and equip so that DoD can take full advantage of cyberspace’ potential    
     Strategic Initiative 2: Employ new defense operating concepts to protect DoD 
networks and systems 
     Strategic Initiative 3: Partner with other U.S. government departments and agencies and the private sector to enable a whole-of-government cybersecurity strategy  
     Strategic Initiative 4: Build robust relationships with U.S. allies  
and international partners to strengthen collective cybersecurity 
     Strategic Initiative 5: Leverage the nation’s ingenuity through  
an exceptional cyber workforce and rapid technological innovation  
CONCLUSION

CHINA > South China Sea Tension Concerns US

VOA News July 15, 2011

image coutesy of southchinasea.org

The top U.S. military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, says the United States remains worried that a miscalculation could "greatly heighten the stakes" in the dispute over the South China Sea.

Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday in Tokyo that his visit to Beijing earlier this week was productive, but indicated the U.S. wants to continue to address its concerns about China's defense build-up.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea. Five other governments: Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, also claim all or part of the region, which is thought to contain large reserves of oil and gas.

In recent months, the Philippines and Vietnam have complained about repeated Chinese incursions into territory they claim, some of which they say involved Chinese military vessels.

During his visit to China, Mullen visited Chinese military facilities, getting a rare look at China's submarines and nuclear missiles. In May, Chinese armed forces commander Chen Bingde visited the United States and toured some U.S. military bases.

Mullen's visit to Japan is expected to include a visit to the region hit by a massive earthquake last March. Thousands of U.S. troops helped in rescue and aid efforts after the disaster. which left about 20,000 people dead or missing. Japanese officials thanked him for the assistance.

During Mullen's visit to Beijing, Chinese officials criticized the U.S. for its military drills this week with Vietnam in the South China Sea and made clear they are unhappy with Washington's position that peace in the region is part of its national interest.

Mullen also visited South Korea this week, where he said that North Korea remains a "very real" threat to peace in northeast Asia.

Also Friday, Vietnam welcomed three U.S. warships to its waters for scheduled port calls and joint training exercises.

The U.S. embassy said in a statement that the two sides will conduct seven days of training involving navigation and damage control along with dive and salvage training. No combat drills will be held.

Officials have said the port call was scheduled in advance, but it comes during heightened territorial tensions between China and Vietnam over resource-rich areas in the South China Sea.

China's military sharply criticized the U.S. on Monday for going ahead with the exercises.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

CYBER TERRORISM > Threat Grows More Destructive, Lynn Says

Cyber Threat Grows More Destructive, Lynn Says

By Karen Parrish
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, July 15, 2011 – The cyber threat the United States faces is increasing in severity and is accessible to a wide range of enemies, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said in a television interview broadcast last night.By Karen Parrish
American Forces Press Service

“Most of what we see today is exploitation -- that's theft, stealing secrets, either commercial or military,” Lynn told Ray Suarez on “PBS Newshour.” “[But] we know the tools exist to destroy things, to destroy physical property, to destroy networks, to destroy data, maybe even take human lives.”

Lynn said nation-states currently are the sole possessors of sophisticated cyber tools, but the capability will spread over time.

“It's going to migrate to rogue states, and it's going to migrate to, eventually, terrorist groups,” he said. “At some point, you're going to see a marriage of capability and
intent, and that is what we should truly worry about.”

DOD is working both to defend its own networks and support the Department of Homeland Security’s mission to protect systems important to national security, Lynn said.

Pentagon officials yesterday released the Defense Department’s first strategy aimed at countering the cyber threat. The strategy document charts the increase of Internet usage since 2000, when there were 360 global users, to 2010’s 2 billion. DOD alone has 15,000 networks and more than 7 million computing devices.

“In the first instance, we're protecting those military capabilities,” Lynn said. “But we need to go further. Working through the Department of Homeland Security, we need to think about how we might use better defensive capabilities to protect … the power grid, the transportation network, the financial sector.”

DOD is not committing to protecting the entire Internet, Lynn said.

“We're talking with our allies about how we have a collective
defense,” he said. “We're working with them to share technologies, to share understandings of the threat, so that we have a collective defense approach to this important problem.”

Most cyber attacks happening now are malicious activity, some are criminal, and some reach the level of espionage, Lynn said.

“We have seen a few cases … where it goes above that and degrades networks themselves,” he said, noting the 2007 attack on Estonia and the 2008 cyber assault on the republic of Georgia.

Defending the cyber domain requires a new way of thinking, Lynn said.

“It's different than land, sea, air and space,” he noted. “It's largely privately owned. It crosses borders. It doesn't respect sovereignty. And the speed at which it moves, keystrokes on one side of the globe can have an impact on the other in the blink of an eye.”

U.S. Cyber Command is responsible for organizing DOD’s efforts in the cyber domain, the deputy secretary said.

“They're out hiring people, both in uniform and as civilians, with … [the] cyber skills that we need,” he added. “They're different kinds of skills than we might need with conventional soldiers, but they're equally important.”

DOD doesn’t monitor or scan commercial networks in the United States, Lynn said.

“We're trying to work with the appropriate agencies, the FBI, with law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, for protection of critical infrastructure to provide capabilities … that the Defense Department has that might be used for those critical missions,” he said. “But we don't have the primary role.”

House Approves 2012 Pentagon Budget

Friday, July 8, 2011

By Martin Matishak

Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday overwhelming approved a $649 billion spending plan for the Defense Department in the next fiscal year (see GSN, June 20).

(Jul. 8) - A U.S. B-1 bomber, shown at a 2007 Air Force firepower demonstration in Nevada. The House of Representatives on Friday approved a $649 billion Defense Department appropriations bill with an amendment to prohibit the retirement of any B-1 bombers (Ethan Miller/Getty Images).

The appropriations bill, approved by a vote of 336-87, includes $530 billion for nonemergency defense spending in the coming budget cycle, which starts on October 1. Overall, the legislation cuts $9 billion from President Obama's original request for Pentagon, but marks a $17 billion increase over the fiscal 2011 defense budget.

>The legislation includes a nearly 50 percent reduction for development of so-called "prompt global strike" weapons, conventionally armed systems intended to be capable of destroying a target halfway around the world within an hour of launch (see GSN, June 16).

The White House sought roughly $205 million for the effort but the House Appropriations Committee last month cut the program to just shy of $105 million. No amendments were offered during the floor debate on Friday to reverse that action.

Most amendments to the spending bill dealt with the war in Afghanistan or the ongoing military operations in Libya.

Lawmakers voted 322-98 against an amendment offered by Representatives Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) to eliminate the full $297 million designated in the bill for development of a new, penetrating nuclear bomber. The final figure is $100 million more than the administration's request, according to the bill's accompanying report.  Read full article