Published: 5/16/2012

The U.S. military must leverage emerging technologies and capabilities to create Joint Force 2020, the fighting force of the future, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said here today.

“Today, we meet at another pivotal time in our joint force,” Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said at the 2012 Joint Warfighting Conference. “We're transitioning from a decade of war, a complex and uncertain security environment looms, and as we look toward the future each service in our total joint force faces fundamental questions about their identities, their roles and their capabilities.”

The chairman explained the challenge as a “security paradox”. “One one hand, we are witnessing greater levels of peace and stability worldwide,” he said. “In evolutionary terms, … the human race has never before experienced such low levels of violence. On the other hand, destructive technologies are proliferating.”

Technologies “are proliferating horizontally across advanced militaries, and vertically into the hands of non-state actors,” the general said. “As a result, more people have the ability to harm us or to deny us freedom of action than at any point in my professional life,”

Consequently, the United States faces a “far more competitive security environment … where our relative degree of overmatch against many foes has diminished,” Dempsey said.

“Today's security paradox, though, doesn't call for a larger or smaller military,” he said. “Instead, it calls for a different military, one capable of deterring, denying and defeating threats across the entire spectrum of conflict.”

Today’s joint force “is in need of reset,” Dempsey said, noting the joint force needed in the future “does not yet fully exist.” The Defense Department will take lessons learned from a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to build Joint Force 2020, he said.

“Getting this right is so important that it is one of my four focus areas as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Dempsey said, noting Joint Force 2020 will resemble the current fighting force.

However, he said “I do know that our present debates about force sizing must give way to a more fundamental discussion about missions and capability.”

About 80 percent of Joint Force 2020 already exists today, Dempsey said, and the major building blocks of today's force will still be around in eight years.

“That said, we do have a perishable opportunity to be innovative in two ways. We can significantly change the other 20 percent of the force that's not already programmed and in existence [or] we can change the way we use the other 80 percent,” he said.

Dempsey said change will occur through new technologies and capabilities coming to the force, as well as changes in military doctrine, training, leadership and education.

“Cyber is one of those areas where our actual capabilities are beginning to resemble science fiction,” he said. “In the future, cyber will become both a stand-alone warfighting instrument with global reach and it will also be a ubiquitous enabler of the joint force.”

“It will be both part of the 20 percent that's new and part of what allows the other 80 percent of the force to be used differently,” Dempsey added.

There are several other emerging capabilities that will play more important roles in Joint Force 2020, Dempsey said, including unmanned technology and undersea technology.

“The development and integration of these emerging capabilities will, by no means, amount to all that is new in Joint Force 2020,” the general said. “But I'll wager that they will make up an important part of it.”

Joint Force 2020 “is not just about the 20 percent of the force we can change -- it's also about re-purposing the other 80 percent,” Dempsey said. “War will always be a contest of wills so we need a military that can impose its will.

“[It could] be with a machine gun or it could be with the click of a mouse,” he added. “In tomorrow's security environment, it'll probably be both.”

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Published: 5/16/2012

President Barack Obama paid tribute today to a man who died defending his fellow soldiers 42 years and six days ago, and who the commander-in-chief said represents a generation’s honorable and undervalued service.

During a White House ceremony, the president awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry, recognizing Army Spc. Leslie H. Sabo Jr., a rifleman with the 101st Airborne Division who was killed in eastern Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Sabo’s widow, Rose Mary Sabo-Brown, accepted the award. His brother, George Sabo, also attended the ceremony.

Sabo is credited with saving the lives of several of his comrades in Company B, 3rd Battalion, 506th Infantry, when his platoon was ambushed near the Se San River in eastern Cambodia on May 10, 1970. Sabo shielded a comrade from an enemy grenade and silenced a machine-gun bunker before he was killed.

“Some 50 American soldiers were nearly surrounded by some 100 North Vietnamese fighters,” the president said, adding that other soldiers there that day remembered the enemy as “everywhere – behind trees [and] up in the tress, shooting down.”

Obama said, “Les was in the rear, and he could have stayed there. But those fighters were unloading on his brothers.”

The president described Sabo’s last moments: “Despite his wounds, despite the danger, Leslie did something extraordinary. He began to crawl straight toward an enemy bunker with machine guns blazing. … [he] kept crawling, closer to that bunker, even as bullets hit the ground all around him. Then he grabbed a grenade, and he pulled the pin.”

Sabo’s fellow troops have said he held the grenade as long as he could, “knowing it would take his own life, but knowing he could silence that bunker,” Obama said. “And he did.”

The day he died, Sabo was 22 years old, part of a campaign in Cambodia aimed at preventing North Vietnamese forces from launching Attacks into Vietnam from there. The Army told his Hungarian immigrant parents, his brother, and his bride of eight months -- all waiting for his return to Pennsylvania -- that he had been killed by an enemy sniper while on guard duty.

“Leslie Sabo left behind a wife who adored him, a brother who loved him, and parents who cherished him,” the president said. “But for decades, they never knew that Les had died a hero … this story was almost lost to history.”

Though Sabo’s leaders recommended him for the Medal of Honor after that day’s fighting, the paperwork was never processed, Obama noted. Instead, another 101st Vietnam veteran, Alton “Tony” Mabb, discovered the award packet in 1999, during a visit to the National Archives.

Mabb sought to find answers, Obama said, and the result is that “Today, four decades after Leslie’s sacrifice, we can set the record straight.”

And this month, he noted, the nation will begin to mark the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War.

The end of that war, the president said, was “a time when, to our shame, our veterans did not always receive the respect and the thanks they deserved -- a mistake that must never be repeated.”

Vietnam veterans returning from war were called many things, Obama said, but there was “only one thing they deserved to be called: American patriots.”

The commander-in-chief then called for Sabo’s comrades from Bravo Company to stand and be recognized. A group of mostly suited, largely gray-haired, middle-aged men rose in response.  The audience –- including First Lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta and several military service leaders, senators, representatives and friends of the Sabo family – then stood in a prolonged ovation for the veterans.

Obama said Sabo’s medal was “bestowed on a single soldier for his singular courage, but it speaks to the service of an entire generation.”

The president said the families of those who serve also sacrifice.

“We see the patriotism of our families who give our nation a piece of their heart,” he said. “On days such as this, we can pay tribute.”

Obama stood with his arm around Rose as they listened to the reading of the citation, and kissed her cheek after presenting her with the framed medal.

The nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor is awarded for risk of life in combat beyond the call of duty. Sabo’s medal is the 247th awarded, and the 155th presented posthumously, for action during the Vietnam War.

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Published: 5/16/2012

The U.S.-South Korea alliance provides security and stability in Northeast Asia and that partnership will continue into the future, said Brig. Gen. Kang Yong-hee, chief of public affairs for the South Korean Army.

The United States and South Korea today stand together to face the threat posed by North Korea, Kang said in an interview with the Pentagon Channel. That partnership, he said, stems from the two nations’ comradeship during the Korean War.

“We fought together to protect values we both share -- freedom and democracy,” Kang said. “I think this experience is the founding stone of the ROK [South Korea]-U.S. alliance.”

North Korea has a 6 million-man military out of a population of 23 million. An armistice, rather than a peace treaty, ended the Korean War, which was fought from 1950 to 1953. Technically, this means the North and South are still at war.

The United States has about 28,000 troops serving in South Korea who exercise and train with their South Korean counterparts. They are seasoned by 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and are passing lessoned learned to their South Korean counterparts.

“I think the realistic, action oriented training system based on real combat experience has been very helpful,” Kang said.

South Korea is scheduled to assume wartime command of allied forces on the peninsula in 2015.

“As we develop our level of cooperation beyond the realm of military and security to areas such as politics, economics, society and culture, we need to enhance our military partnership beyond operational level,” Kang said. “I believe we can achieve that.”

During his visit, Kang received briefings and met with officials at the Pentagon. He also visited Fort Meade, Md., where he toured the studios of the Defense Media Activity.

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Published: 5/16/2012

Military spouses need only the focused attention of employers to improve hiring for the benefit of both sides, a military family advocate who works for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said today.

“This is all about finding those spouses and helping those spouses find you,” Laura Dempsey, an Army wife and director of the Chamber’s spouse employment programs, told dozens of business representatives who gathered here for two days of meetings as part of the Military Spouse Employment Partnership.

Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, launched the program last summer as part of her “Joining Forces” campaign with First Lady Michelle Obama.

The partnership program provides a digital recruiting platform for employers to have direct access to military spouses seeking jobs. At least 134 companies have signed on to the partnership with a pledge to recruit, hire, promote and retain military spouses in portable careers, Defense Department officials said.

“A life of service will wreak havoc on a military spouse’s career,” Dempsey told the audience. “But luckily for all of us in this room, military spouses are finding clever and creative ways of dealing with it, and they are finding ways to connect through DOD and service organizations to employers like you.”

Improving spouse employment also is important to retention in the military services, Dempsey said. “If a spouse can’t find a good job, that spouse is going to talk their service member out of the military,” she said.

Dempsey told her own story of employment challenges. She graduated from law school in 1996 and married her husband, Jason, a U.S. Military Academy graduate. The couple has two young children, and they’ve moved seven times for Jason’s Army career.

That didn’t keep Laura from trying to maintain her work as a civil rights attorney. Just six years out of law school, she was licensed to practice law in four states. “But by 2006 – 10 years out of law school – I was no closer to a partnership or a lucrative law career,” she said. “I took a slow-moving crash course in military spouse employment from the get go. I am not atypical.”

In fact, Dempsey said, the average military spouse moves eight times in a 20-year military career. Making matters worse, she said, in the past 10 years of war, a service member’s average time away from his or her family has been two to three years.

Dempsey co-founded Blue Star Families nonprofit support organization in 2008 and has helped draft legislation in support of military families. She is a leader in the Chamber of Commerce’s “Hiring Heroes” campaign to hire military veterans, but she said it’s important for military spouses to have their own hiring programs and events.

“Spouses need a room of their own, and if you give them that, they will use it,” she said, adding that “if you give employers a chance to meet with spouses,” they will find ways to overcome challenges such as frequent relocations because military spouses make great employees.

Dempsey said she took part in 100 hiring fairs for spouses last year and plans to increase that to 400 this year. At least 20 of those will be on or near military installations, she said.

Dempsey assured employers they will receive a high return on investment by hiring military spouses.

“If you hire one military spouse, you’re going to hire another,” she said.
 

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Published: 5/16/2012

The Army wants to create a leaner and more agile force over the next seven years. But sequestration, the threatened across the board spending cuts required by law would derail that plan, the service’s top uniformed leader said today.

The Army’s current budget proposal is strategy-driven, and it allows the service to apply the lessons of more than 10 years of continuous combat, Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told a Pentagon news conference.

“We will be leaner,” Odierno said. “We’ll be a more agile Army that is an adaptive, innovative, versatile and ready component of the joint force.”

The Army will be “the best-manned, best-equipped, best-trained and best-led land force in the world, to be decisive for a broad range of missions,” the general said.

The new strategy, he said, calls for the Army to perform many different missions, from humanitarian through full-scale combined operations, as well as being more responsive.

“We will have the opportunity to adapt this process to be more wide-ranging, especially as we rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region,” Odierno said. “As such, we will implement a progressive readiness model for both the active and reserve components to be more responsive to all of our combatant commanders.”

Next year, the Army will begin a regionally aligned force concept to better meet some theater requirements, the general said. The intent is to focus unit or headquarters training cycles “on specific mission profiles and unique environmental characteristics that make them available to the combatant commander for employment in their area of responsibility.”

A brigade from the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., will serve as the pilot unit that will receive guidance from U.S. Africa Command, he said.

“For enduring commitments in some of the theaters, we plan to employ rotational units,” Odierno said. “Europe comes to mind as we reduce two forward-station brigade combat teams over the next two years. We’ll leverage pre-positioned equipment, sets and multilateral training exercises to allow us to promote regional security and enhance capacity and interoperability and sustain our relationships with our NATO and other allies in Europe.”

The Army’s end strength will drop, he said, but the changes will make it more capable even as this happens.

“Besides 10 years of hard-earned combat experience in our ranks, we continue to increase our special operations force capacity,” the general said. “We have significantly increased our ability to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. We’ve increased our aviation assets to support worldwide missions and responsiveness around the world. We continue to increase our cyber capability as we move forward. And we continue to look at other capabilities in order to move forward.”

Odierno said all of this change is in jeopardy if sequestration comes into play.

“As I have testified over the last several months, it’s important for the Army to execute the fiscal year ‘[20]13 budget as planned,” he said. “It reflects the highest priorities of the Army in support of the new defense strategic guidance and allows the Army to meet contingency requirements, take care of soldiers and families and achieve balance between end strength, readiness and modernization.”

But if sequestration occurs, it will force the Army to cut an additional 80,000 to 100,000 soldiers, Odierno said. This reduction, he said, would come from a combination of active duty and reserve component personnel.

By law, across the board spending cuts associated with sequestration would occur if Congress and the White House fail to reach an agreement to reduce the federal deficit in the coming months. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has said the hundreds of billions of dollars in additional cuts required from the Pentagon budget would be ‘devastating’.

“But what even makes sequestration worse is we have no say in where the cuts come,” the general said. “It is directed across every element of our budget, and it’s a certain percentage.”

This, he said, would create a hollow force.

“It would probably cause us to breach many contracts that we already have in place because we would not meet the current requirements that we have on our developmental contracts,” Odierno said. “And fundamentally, I think all the Joint Chiefs have come to the conclusion that we'd fundamentally have to relook our whole strategy if it occurs. And those are the concerns that we have.”
 

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Published: 5/16/2012

Army leaders are asking whether -- and how -- to open infantry and armor ranks to women, the service’s senior soldier said today.

Officers in charge of training and force development are now gathering data to help answer those questions, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told reporters during a Pentagon briefing.

In line with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s policy, the service has already opened 13,000 previously all-male positions to female soldiers, the general noted.

“Earlier this week more than 200 women began reporting to the maneuver battalions in nine of our brigade combat teams, selected to participate in the exception to the direct ground combat assignment rule,” he said. “Additionally, co-location [with combat units] as an assignment restriction is rescinded.”

A Defense Department report to Congress in February outlining the assignment policy changes included a vision statement that said the department “is committed to removing all barriers that would prevent service members from rising to the highest level of responsibility that their talents and capabilities warrant.”

Odierno noted the changes open new opportunities to women, who comprise 16 percent of the Army’s ranks. “This revision … allows us to leverage the tremendous talent resident in our ranks,” he added.

Women will likely filter in to the new positions for “several months,” the Army chief said. Two categories of assignments are now open to women: jobs such as tank mechanic and field artillery radar operator that are necessarily performed close to combat units, and a limited “exception to policy” opening select positions at the battalion level in jobs women already occupy.

“My guess is, based on my experience in Iraq and what I've seen in Afghanistan, we'll then move forward with a more permanent solution [involving those two assignment categories] inside of the Army probably sometime this fall,” he said.

Odierno said the next step is “to look at, do we open up infantry and armor [military occupational specialties] to females?”

He emphasized no decisions have yet been made on the question, but noted the answer will have implications for all-male Army formations, including the Rangers.

Army Rangers are rapidly deployable, light infantry troops trained to engage conventional and special operations targets. While there are only three Ranger battalions, with a special troops battalion and a separate Ranger training brigade, Odierno pointed out the “Ranger tab” denoting completion of Ranger training is a key to advancement among infantry officers.

Ranger school consists of three phases -- mountain, desert and swamp – over 61 days, and combines rigorous infantry training with famously sparse amounts of food and sleep.

While Odierno cautioned, “I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” he noted that some 90 percent of Army senior infantry officers -- all male -- are Ranger-qualified.

“So, if we determine that we’re going to allow women to go into infantry, to be successful they are probably, at some time, going to have to go through Ranger school,” he said. “We have not made that decision, but it’s a factor that I’ve asked them to take a look at.”

If combat arms jobs open to female soldiers, “We want the women to be successful,” the general said.

The Army, like DOD, is committed to providing maximum opportunity for its members, Odierno said.

“We’re going to move toward it,” he said. “It’s how we do that, what we have to do, [that we’re assessing] as we move forward.”
 

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Published: 5/16/2012

A program started almost two decades ago to support former Soviet bloc militaries following the Cold War has proven to be a U.S. model for building long-standing military-to-military and civil-military relationships around the world.

U.S. European Command established the State Partnership Program in 1993, working with the National Guard Bureau to tap into what at the time was one of the U.S. military’s most underutilized resources overseas.

The concept was simple: establish a long-term partnership between a state National Guard and a country in Eastern Europe to help build capabilities within its military.

Sparking the program was a request from the Latvian government for help in developing a military based on the National Guard’s citizen-soldier model. Army Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time and Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, then Eucom’s commander, embraced the concept as a way to build partnerships with non-NATO countries in the region as they established democracy and market economies.

Flash forward 19 years and the program has exceeded the originators’ wildest visions.
Eucom now has 22 programs, but other combatant commands have followed its lead. U.S. Southern Command has stood up programs with 20 countries. U.S. Africa command has eight, and Army Gen. Carter Ham, its commander, told Congress recently he has asked the National Guard Bureau to add two more state partners this year. U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. Central Command also have small programs.

Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis, the Eucom commander and supreme allied commander for Europe, sang the praises of the program in recent testimony before Congress, calling it a huge force multiplier that extends a positive U.S. presence throughout the theater.

“I think the State Partnership Program, dollar for dollar, may be one of the most efficient and effective programs that we have at our disposal as combatant commanders,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March.

In addition to his experience with programs in the European theater, Stavridis reflected on his previous command role at U.S. Southern Command, with the Defense Department’s second-largest State Partnership Program.

“I’ve seen about 40 to 45 of these over the last six years, and the bang for the buck is terrific,” he said. “Because in the end, we can do all kinds of messaging and strategic communication, but personal contact trumps everything. And when we put fine young American Guardsmen and –women in and around their partners, the return on investment, especially over time, is very powerful.”

The program will become increasingly important to Eucom’s theater engagement as the United States draws down its permanently based forces in Europe and grapples with budgetary constraints, Stavridis told the panel.

“The State Partnership has been a real windfall for the combatant commands,” agreed Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, Eucom’s deputy director for plans, policy and strategy. “It brings a lot of specific, required skill sets that can come in short, one- to-two-week durations, provide the necessary engagement with our partner nations without significant expense to U.S. European Command.”

Montgomery noted the contributions participants make in areas ranging from non-commissioned officer and junior officer development to small-unit tactics, civil-military relations, emergency preparedness and disaster response.

The Guard’s experience in disaster preparedness and civil-military relations at home – responding to everything from hurricanes to snow emergencies to tornadoes – makes its members particularly suited to the mission, he said.

“They bring a wealth of experience that we don’t necessarily always have here in Eucom,” he said. “So this is a win-win for everyone involved.”

The Alabama National Guard, which became one of the first states to participate in the program, has witnessed the fruits of its 19-year relationship with the Romanian military.  Army Maj. Gen. Perry G. Smith, the Alabama Adjutant General, said his soldiers and airmen have taught the Romanians skills acquired during combat deployments and as well as those learned by responding to Hurricane Katrina and other disasters at home. Smith noted that on one day in April 2011, the state suffered 58 tornadoes, requiring him to activate 3,000 National Guardsmen to assist in response efforts.

This has given the Alabama Guard solid experience to share with the Romanian military, Smith said, including its processes for providing defense support to civilian authorities and the courses-of-action development process the military uses to present commanders with decision-making options.

The two countries’ special operators, military police, infantry and logistics elements work together through the program. During Smith’s most recent visit to Romania in March, his troops advised their Romanian counterparts as they establish a training area modeled in part after Fort McClellan, Ala.

In addition, F-16 fighter jet crews from the Alabama Air Guard’s 187th Fighter Wing share tactics and procedures and logistical know-how with the Romanian air force’s Mig-21 crews, Smith said.

But beyond military skills, Smith said the Guardsmen bring a spirit of friendship to the mission, building bonds that simply aren’t possible among active-duty forces who regularly rotate between assignments.

“It’s all about relationships,” he said. “As National Guard members get on the ground and start working with the Romanians, they develop life-long relationships. And people can get things done a lot better if they know and trust each other.”

Those relationships have paid off in Afghanistan, he said, where 1,750 Romanians are operating directly alongside deployed Alabama National Guard forces.

Alabama Guardsmen with special operations and infantry specialties traveled to Romania to help their partners get ready to go to war and to validate their training. “Now they are operating together, using the capabilities that we have worked with them to help build over the last 19 years through the State Partnership Program,” Smith said.

Army Col. Ted Martinell, director of the State Partnership Program for Eucom, said the program will remain critical to reinforcing lessons learned in the combat theater and taking partnerships to the next level. “As Afghanistan draws down and we move into the future, one of the things this [program] is going to do is help maintain the strategic partnerships,” he said.

Those partnerships are vital elements of the new defense strategic guidance that points the way to a smaller, leaner and more agile force prepared to confront future challenges, Martinell said. “It’s leveraging everything we have out there to support smart defense.”

Montgomery called the program a template for this new fiscal environment. “This is a wonderful opportunity to leverage existing forces – our state Guard units – and continue to give them interesting and meaningful missions here in Europe,” he said.

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Published: 5/16/2012

A new book published by the Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense describes changes in military weapons systems acquisition during the 15 years following World War II.

“Rearming for the Cold War 1945-1960” by retired Air Force Col. Elliott V. Converse III is the first in a five-volume series of books focusing on the history of the acquisition of major weapons systems by the Defense Department. The book’s 766 pages contain a detailed examination of military acquisitions during the early years of the Cold War, and they are full of case studies, personality profiles, charts and photographs.

During a recent joint interview with AFPS and The Pentagon Channel, Converse said the book and its companion volumes were not written for historians. Rather the effort is “primarily aimed at the acquisition workforce, the people who do acquisition day-to-day and perform acquisition for their careers.”

It’s anticipated that defense policy decision makers would also gain something from the books, he added.

Converse earned a doctorate in history from Princeton University and served as the lead historian on the Defense Acquisition History Project team. During the joint interview, Converse said he was attracted to studying this “very dramatic” period of time.

“This was the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. When the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, Americans realized we might be vulnerable if they can put a satellite up there,” Converse said. “There was great concern that our weapons systems counter a threat like that. There was a lot of drama in the 1950s and 1940s.”

Following World War II, U.S. defense policy makers were convinced that the United States’ ability to maintain military supremacy rested on having superior technology, Converse said.

“One important thread that runs through the volume is the consensus that American leaders had at the end of World War II that the United States would seek security in the future by maintaining an advantage in the most technologically advanced weapons systems over any possible opponents,” he said. “They realized that the U.S. could not have an army as big as the Soviets or the Chinese or probably deploy as many systems as they could. So, the theory was that by having the most advanced systems, we’d be able to offset that advantage in terms numbers and equipment.”

That idea of the necessity of maintaining technological superiority to ensure national security affected how weapons systems were developed, produced and deployed, Converse said. It also determined how the Defense Department and the military services organized their acquisition efforts and led to changes in the acquisition workforce.

The book, he said, offers a prime example of how the United States’ perceived need to maintain an edge over its adversaries in advanced weapons technology affected the process of acquisition by its discussion of the acquisition strategy called “concurrency.” Using this approach, production activities would begin before the weapons system was fully developed and tested.

The strategy of concurrency “was in contrast to the way systems were developed before World War II,” Converse said, noting the pre-war system “was a sequential, deliberate system. You would design the weapon, you would develop the prototype, you would test it, you would produce it. All that would be done in series.

“By this new acquisition strategy,” he continued, “production activities began before development was completed. Sometimes, production contracts were let even before … an aircraft had ever flown its first flight. Prototypes, in terms of aircraft, were not generally developed. A new system was selected on the basis of a paper design competition.”

Concurrency was used on a limited basis during World War II, Converse said, and the Navy and Air Force tried to use the strategy after that war ended and before the Korean War started, attempting to speed up production by overlapping development and production. Once the Korean War began, he said, all the services adopted concurrency as an acquisition strategy.

“Its record was not very good during the Korean War,” Converse said. “A lot of the technologies needed for the advanced systems had not yet been developed, and some that had been developed were not proven sufficiently. Another problem was that the people defining requirements for new weapons systems often set requirements that were beyond the state of the art.”

In practice, he said, testing was often inadequate because of the haste to rush weapons systems out to the field, and they often discovered problems with the systems when they were fielded. Those problems frequently required that the systems had to be modified and changed, he added, which drove up cost and which meant that forces in the field still didn’t have systems that operated properly.

The problems associated with the strategy of concurrence were forgotten after the Korean War, Converse said, as the U.S. entered into an arms race with the Soviet Union to develop ballistic missile systems that could deliver nuclear warheads from continent to continent. Each of the services used concurrency in their acquisition programs to develop ballistic missiles, he said, and they encountered the same problems with concurrency that had been encountered during the Korean War. But the situation was now different.

“The difference was that these programs had the highest national priority, which meant that the program managers … all had generous budgets to get their jobs done,” Converse said. “They also had special authorities that exempted them from going through the different layers of bureaucratic approval necessary to get things done when they were developing their weapons systems. And these programs were great successes.”

Some of the systems were developed and deployed within four to five years which, according to Converse, was “an amazing amount of time for such advanced systems.” In the 1960s, he said, decision makers tended to overlook the problems associated with concurrency and it became the preferred acquisition method.

“Few people recognized that the reason the ballistic missile system program worked was that they had nearly unlimited funding and special authorities in those programs. Other programs did not have those, and that’s where problems with concurrency surfaced,” Converse said.

In response to those problems, by the 1970s the Defense Department went back to a more deliberate acquisitions strategy, Converse said.

“You didn’t go on the basis of paper designs. You would require two contractors, each to develop a prototype of the system. Then, those prototypes would be tested and, in theory, better decisions [would be] made,” he said.

Converse said understanding concurrency as an acquisition strategy during the Cold War is important because it addresses a central problem that still confronts the Defense Department.

“If your national strategy is to get security through having the most advanced technology, you have to deploy that technology rapidly and have it in the field so as always to maintain that edge over the opponent,” he said. “If that’s your strategy, then you have to find a way to insert advanced technology rapidly enough but at the same time to have it cost reasonably and overcome those problems I talked about before. That’s been a central dilemma.”

Since the 1950s, the United States has tried to find ways to maintain military technological superiority while dealing with the difficulty of rapidly fielding systems that might not yet be sufficiently developed or proven, Converse said, noting that’s “a problem that people working in the field today still face.”

Despite facing the same conundrum, Converse warned against trying to create exact analogies between current situations and those of the past.

“People have said that history does not repeat itself -- it rhymes,” Converse said. “You can’t draw exact lessons from the past because the situations are not the same. … The value of history is that by taking a look at the past you can see how your predecessors in this field addressed problems. … History tends to broaden your perspective.”

Converse presented his book May 10 to an audience in the Pentagon during the second installment of the DOD History Speaker Series.

He was joined for a panel discussion by several other authorities. Benjamin F. Cooling, a professor at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, set the book in the overall historical context of defense acquisition. Jacques S. Gansler, a former undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, offered his perspective on the book based on his experience managing DOD acquisition. Roy L. Wood, dean of the Defense Systems Management College, moderated the panel.

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Published: 5/15/2012

With safety remaining his top concern, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has ordered the Air Force to take additional steps to mitigate risks to F-22 pilots, George Little, acting assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said today.

Beginning in 2008, a few pilots experienced hypoxia-like symptoms when flying the aircraft, Little told reporters at a Pentagon news conference. Hypoxia is a deficiency of oxygen. There have been a total of 12 cases of these hypoxia-like symptoms affecting pilots.

Little said the secretary has followed developments in the F-22 closely and has directed the Air Force to expedite the installation of an automatic backup oxygen system in all of the planes.

In addition, effective immediately, all F-22 flights will remain near potential landing locations to enable quick recovery and landing should a pilot encounter unanticipated physiological conditions during flight” Little said.

Finally, Panetta directed the Air Force to provide him with a monthly progress report as the service continues the search for the root cause of the problem.

These steps are in addition to the measures the Air Force is already taking to determine the root causes of the hypoxia-like symptoms pilots have experienced.

Panetta made this decision in part due to the reluctance of some pilots to fly the aircraft, Little said.

“Secretary Panetta believes the department must do everything possible to ensure pilot safety and minimize flight risks,” Little said.

The secretary’s directions take into account the need for determining the cause of the problem, while still allowing the military to use the unique capabilities provided by the F-22 Raptor. The aircraft are based in the United States and are now deployed to Southwest Asia, Little said. As the only fifth-generation aircraft in the world, he added, the plane is the most capable fighter in the air and is necessary to maintain U.S. air dominance.

“Safety is a zero-sum game,” Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. John Kirby said at the news conference. The automatic backup oxygen system will complete testing by the end of November, with installation in line fighters beginning in December. Ten Raptors will be retrofitted with this system per month, he said.

Keeping the F-22 fleet flying allows the service to examine the aircraft closely. “There’s a troubleshooting process going on right now,” Kirby said. “So the aircraft being in operation assists that process. We believe we’ve mitigated the risks as much as possible.”

But safety is the paramount concern, he said, and if he needs to, the secretary will ground the fleet. “But right now, he believes … this is the right course,” Kirby said.

The Air Force has been studying the problem since 2008. “The root cause of hypoxia-like events has not been determined,” Little said. “It is possible … that it could be attributed to the oxygen system in the airplane – thus the installation of a backup system. But it could have other causes, too, and the Air Force is aggressively looking at other factors that could be contributing.”
 

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Published: 5/15/2012

Pentagon officials hope the Pakistani government will reopen the ground supply lines into Afghanistan “in the very near future,” George Little, acting assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said today.

During a Pentagon news conference, Little said a U.S. team has been in discussions with Pakistani officials since the government closed the border crossings in November 2011. “We are hopeful that in the very near future they will reopened,” he said. “They are important supply routes for us.”

Pakistan closed the routes, known as ground lines of communication, after a Nov. 26 incident in which American troops came under fire from Pakistan. U.S. forces returned fire and killed 21 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan responded by closing the main overland supply routes for U.S. and NATO forces into Afghanistan.

U.S. logistics specialists quickly shifted to other means to supply the forces, but the routes through Pakistan are considered the most direct and most cost-effective.

Other aspects of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship were not affected. “We continue to work closely with the Pakistanis to renew our relationship that gets over some of the obstacles that we faced in the past,” Little said.

The United States and Pakistan share common threats, concerns and interests, the assistant secretary said. “Terrorism is common concern that both the United States and Pakistan face,” he said. “The same terrorists that come after us go after Pakistanis and have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Pakistanis.”

Little and Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. John Kirby also discussed counterterrorism in Yemen. U.S. service members continue to work with Yemeni personnel against al-Qaida and other terror groups in the country, Little said. “They have taken aggressive action in their own country against militants who want to plan attacks against Yemenis and plan attacks on the United States and other countries,” he said. “We believe the government of Yemen has taken on in a decisive manner the need to go after militants inside the country.

U.S. service members do conduct operations with the Yemenis to get after terrorist targets, Kirby said. “But a large part of our effort is to help them build the capacity to do it themselves,” he added.
 

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Published: 5/15/2012

The Joint Chiefs of Staff is developing the framework to tie operational capabilities to the military strategy guidance the Defense Department released in January, a senior Pentagon official said here today.

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. George J. Flynn, the chiefs’ director of joint force development, discussed the Joint Operation Access Concept before a panel at the 2012 Joint Warfighting Conference at the Virginia Beach Convention Center.

“Joint forces will operate within and across domains,” Flynn said. “Our decision cycle or process must keep pace with accelerated times. We must rapidly gain a common understanding of the problem, take action and anticipate rapidly second- and third-order effects.

“All the while, we must be prepared for the black swan, or the unanticipated event,” he said. “What we're doing about it is we're taking a look, and hopefully, we'll have it published this summer as the new capstone concept for joint operations.”

Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, intends for the capstone document to bridge the new strategic guidance to the development of operational capability, Flynn said.

Operational challenges, Flynn noted, determine how well joint forces, with constrained resources, protect national interests against increasingly capable enemies in a rapidly changing world while security challenges take on both local and global dimensions.

“The capstone concept will frame [this] problem for proposed solutions,” he explained. “We're looking at the global, functional and regional command structure. We're going to look at the seams and we're going to see what we should be doing differently.”

“We're going to make sure that commanders have the authorities necessary to match the speed of operational climates and the employment of the capabilities that they have,” he said.

The Defense Department will try to achieve “cross-the-lane synergy,” Flynn said.

“We're also going to take a look at traditional support and supporting relationships to see what we need to do to change,” he said. “And we're going to have to look at increased interdependence and interoperability across the joint force. We're going to also have to deal with the fact that the force is going to be distributed more across the battlefield.”

It will also be necessary to streamline command and control of the force and develop the leadership needed to guide the force, he added.

“The intent that we're working through is to be able to achieve globally integrated operations,” the Marine general said. “The human element is at the heart of our ability to be able to do this.”

The chiefs also will “take a look at some other war-fighting functions” such as mobility, contracting, deploying forces, use of energy, force protection, and game-changing capabilities.

“On the mobility piece, we have a smaller force, so a key ability is going to be the force [having] the mobility to make sure we're rapidly able to shift our forces around the world,” he said. “It's easy to move people; it's hard to move equipment.”

Flynn added with any capability there is always is risk. “The first risk would be if we don't have the ability to communicate amongst ourselves if the network fails,” he said. “The second risk is if our partners are not able to join the network. Another risk is that our pursuit of advanced technology proves to be unaffordable.”

An additional risk would be a smaller force unable to meet security demands, he said. “Our growth or our movement toward greater interdependence within the joint force results in less flexibility,” he said.

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