Marine Corps rejects Pentagon’s pitch for new amphibious ship designs

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon team leading the charge to reduce the cost of amphibious warships has shown the Marine Corps drawings of scaled-down, less expensive ship designs — but a service general told Defense News he won’t accept them.

During a Tuesday hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee’s sea power panel, Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told lawmakers he will not change his current requirements.

“The trade space will be my requirements. And I’m the requirements officer for the Marine Corps: I am not coming off the requirement any further,” Hekcl said, amid an effort by the Office of the Secretary of Defense to reduce the cost of building San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks, or LPD.

In the early 2010s, when the Navy was considering replacements for its aging Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships, it settled on an approach to scale down the San Antonio-class LPD design to leverage a hot production line while saving money. That resulted in creating an LPD Flight II design to replace the Whidbey Islands that are today the topic of a debate over decommissionings.

Heckl told senators he’s not willing to take on further reductions.

The general told Defense News after the hearing he has two major concerns with the Pentagon’s suggested designs.

First is that amphibious ready groups — a collection of one amphibious assault ship and two smaller San Antonio or Whidbey Island amphibious ships — hauling Marine expeditionary units typically disaggregate as soon as they deploy to a theater. The Whidbey Island LSDs cannot operate alone, but the LPD Flight II replacements can, making this design a boon for the Corps and the combatant commanders who want flexibility in how they operate ships in theater.

Heckl said the proposed designs take away the ability of this revised LPD to operate independently.

Additionally, he said the flight deck and vehicle cargo storage spaces would be “reduced dramatically.”

He said the Office of the Secretary of Defense offered up “very rough ideas, and I’ve seen, like, three of them not flushed out at all. And none of them are acceptable. The Marine Corps will not accept them.”

He insisted the Corps isn’t being stubborn, noting that the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit currently in the Pacific region with the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group includes “a lot of [F-35B jets], a lot of V-22 [tiltrotor aircraft], a lot of [CH-]53 [helicopters], a lot of Zulu [helicopters] and a lot of Yankee [helicopters]. And you can’t do it without an LPD with the rightsized flight deck. That’s why we’re able to do this.”

The Pentagon prompted this reconsideration of the LPD design and cost amid what Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday called a rise in ship costs. The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. David Berger, pushed back on that, saying in constant-year dollars — not accounting for inflation — the cost of the ship production line is decreasing.

Twice in recent years Congress asked the Navy to buy its amphibious assault ships and amphibious transport docks, both made exclusively at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi. Lawmakers argued a multi-ship, multiyear contract would allow the company to save on materials and optimize its workforce.

The Navy has declined to exercise this authority, citing ongoing studies into its requirement for an amphibious fleet. Congress formally passed into law in the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act a requirement to maintain a fleet of at least 31 amphibious ships.

“They’re trying to reduce cost by reducing my requirement,” Heckl told Defense News. “The answer to reduced cost would have been to exercise on the two previous NDAAs’ [multi-ship procurement authority], one of which was a five-ship and would have saved the American taxpayers almost $900 million.”

During the Senate hearing, Jay Stefany, the acting assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said: “We’re all in agreement [that] 31 is the requirement. The question is: How do we best get to that requirement?”

Noting that LPDs are purchased every other year and that the Navy bought one in FY23, Stefany said that “there is a period where we can look at a more affordable way, potentially, to build those. We don’t need to build one in ’24; we can take some time to see if there’s a more affordable way to build those before we buy the ‘25 ship.”

Several senators took issue with the need for yet another study on amphibious ships, which the Senate Armed Services Committee, among other panels, previously supported.

In one exchange, Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, noted there had been 11 studies on the amphibious fleet. “What is this — yet another study — going to show that the 11 other studies have not?”

Vice Adm. Scott Conn, the deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting requirements and capabilities, called that a “fair question” and said the Office of the Secretary of Defense “directed it as part of a cost-capability study for the LPDs. … That will inform the [FY25] shipbuilding plan.”

Stefany added that LPDs cost about $1.9 billion and that the team was seeking a way to save money while still meeting the Marine Corps’ needs. He added the study should be complete by this summer.

Heckl said it remains unclear what the future holds since the options thus far are unacceptable to the Corps.

“The Navy won’t toot their own horn; they need a top line increase. We’re dealing with the preeminent threat [in China] directed by two different national defense strategies, and it’s in a maritime domain. And yet we’ve made no adjustments to how we allocate resources to the services,” he said of the Pentagon.

As long as the Navy doesn’t get a greater portion of defense funds — and it has to invest in its top-priority Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine — “I’m going to be a billpayer,” he added.

F-35 upgrades slip to 2024, drawing lawmaker’s ire

WASHINGTON — The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will receive a slate of important hardware and software upgrades known as Technology Refresh 3 a year later than originally expected, the three-star general in charge of the program told lawmakers Wednesday.

Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the F-35′s program executive officer, said in a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing March 30 that the Joint Program Office now estimates TR-3 — which is intended to load the F-35 with improved displays, computer memory and processing power — will arrive in April 2024.

That would be a year later than the original due date of this April for TR-3, tactical air and land forces subcommittee chairman Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Virginia, said.

Pentagon rethinks F-35 engine program, will upgrade F135

The “F-35 is currently planning to achieve full operational capability status after the full TR-3 and Block 4 capabilities of the aircraft are fielded in 2028 — 27 years after the program began,” Wittman said. “That is by any measure unacceptable.”

Schmidt said Lockheed Martin, the F-35′s primary manufacturer, believes TR3 will arrive this December, and he suggested the actual arrival of TR-3 could fall in the “window” between those two dates.

The F-35 needs the TR-3 improvements, which will allow the fighter to store and process more data as well as run advanced software, before it can receive a modernization known as Block 4, which will include new sensors, the ability to carry more long-range precision weapons, more powerful data fusion, increased interoperability with other platforms and advanced electronic warfare capabilities.

Wittman criticized the F-35 program for delays and for TR-3 running about $700 million over budget, saying “the program has to do better.”

The delayed delivery of TR-3 is starting to hit already-existing fighter squadrons that are retiring older legacy fighters, Wittman said. Those squadrons won’t receive F-35As with the capabilities they need in time to avoid gaps in aircraft after their older aircraft are retired.

“We currently are paying for a great capability, but we’re currently only getting a good capability fielded,” Wittman said, quoting an unnamed Air Force official as saying.

Schmidt acknowledged to lawmakers that “We are behind.”

Driving up costs

The hardware’s development lagged and initial production was slow, Schmidt said, but the hardware has now matured to the point where it is proving reliable and passing flight safety requirements.

Schmidt said software integration also proved to be a challenge, and got off to a late start.

The Government Accountability Office in 2022 said that the greater-than-expected complexity of TR-3 was driving up the costs of the Block 4 modernization effort.

The Air Force conducted the first test flight of an F-35 with some TR-3 capabilities at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Jan. 6, and Schmidt said it has now flown 25 times.

The next software drop will come in about a month, Schmidt said, and will be a critical update that “unleashes most of the tactical capabilities in there,” so the military can do more thorough flight tests.

How video game Fortnite will power next-gen Javelin anti-tank training

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Aspiring tank-killers around the world could soon blast armor in a simulated environment powered by the same graphics engine used for the video game Fortnite.

This reality is only awaiting the development and fielding of defense contractor SAIC’s block I upgrade to the Javelin missile’s Basic Skills Trainer.

SAIC experts demonstrated the upgraded trainer to Army Times on Wednesday at an Association of the U.S. Army event, allowing a reporter to destroy a simulated T-72 tank, a platform that Russia operates.

The upgrade, expected to reach soldiers by 2025, is sorely needed. The existing Javelin trainer, developed in 2001 and modeled on real-world training ranges, struggles to replicate visually realistic scenarios and targets. Updates take significant time and effort because the software powering it was developed in-house.

Both U.S. and foreign purchasers of the Javelin receive an allotment of trainer devices, and approximately 900 are in operation around the world.

SAIC officials said the trainer is typically employed in a classroom setting, where troops become familiar with the device and its controls. While U.S. personnel sometimes progress to fire expensive, live missiles in their training, not all users around the world have that opportunity. That means the trainer is their only experience with the Javelin platform until it’s time to face down an enemy vehicle.

And the new Unreal Engine-powered version of the trainer will ensure a more realistic experience, SAIC experts said. After viewing the current software and comparing it to the forthcoming one, Army Times observed significant improvements in picture quality, terrain options and target realism.

The company is hopeful that bringing the program up to modern graphics standards can help “born-digital” Gen Z troops focus on training rather than graphical shortcomings.

Adopting an off-the-shelf physics and graphics engine will make maintaining the trainer and developing new scenarios — customized to each customer’s specifications — easier and cheaper, SAIC officials said. The Unreal Engine has a large user community across several industries, making it easier to solve problems, find talent and continue building additional capabilities into the new trainer.

The next-generation trainer’s expected 2025 release will come on the heels of an expansion of the anti-tank platform’s production line.

The Javelin is among several Western weapons that gained popularity over the last year, as Ukraine fights off its Russian invaders. In spite of the demand, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth pushed back on the narrative of a “Javelin crisis” at a March 15 event.

“We’re making 2,500 Javelins a year already,” the Army’s top official said. “And we’re going to be getting that up to 5,000 Javelins a year in the next year or two.”

BAE begins major reshuffle of Army, Marine Corps vehicle work sites

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — BAE Systems is moving most of its production of howitzers and recovery vehicles to other places in order to make room at its York, Pennsylvania, facility to build new Armored Multipurpose Vehicles as well as Amphibious Combat Vehicles, according to a company executive.

“Our biggest program is kind of AMPV right now,” Jim Miller, vice president of business development for combat mission systems, said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium here today.

The Army is not only likely days from reaching a full-rate production decision for the AMPV, the service is also planning on ordering more vehicles from BAE so it can more rapidly replace aging M113 armored personnel carriers sent to Ukraine with the more modern vehicle.

The Army plans to buy 197 AMPVs in fiscal 2024, which results in BAE ramping up production from 12 AMPVs a month to 16.

Additionally, the company is busy building ACVs for the U.S. Marine Corps.

“As we look at our industrial network, we’ve got to be able to flex and grow that and be pretty agile about that given the demands we see in front us,” Miller said. “We’re going to focus [York] to be our AMPV and our ACV center of excellence.”

The company already moved M88A2 Hercules recovery vehicle work to Anniston Army Depot, Alabama. “We’ve done that pretty successfully. We’re actually delivering our first vehicles from Anniston … already,” Miller said.

The company has continued to perform some work on M88 hulls at York, but now that will be moved to a partner facility. Miller said he was not able to disclose the partner yet. That company will deliver hulls to Anniston, where assembly is performed.

But the move that will “grab your attention,” Miller said, is the plan to move assembly of the M109A7 Paladin Integrated Management System 155mm tracked, self-propelled howitzer and ammunition carrier hulls to Anniston. The company plans to keep fabrication of the PIM hull at York because that will remain the site of major welding work.

BAE will also retain final assembly and test work at its Elgin, Oklahoma, facility.

Bradley Fighting Vehicle builds will take place at Anniston with some work still at York.

The plan at York is to build a total of 430 vehicles a year, with over 190 of those AMPVs.

The company plans to begin moving things around this summer.

Other improvements are underway to ensure BAE can hit the rapid production increase for AMPV, Miller noted. The company has already added robotic welding, a swim pond for the ACV, and replaced all of its machining capabilities.

The swim pond is already creating efficiencies and savings within the ACV program as BAE used to take the vehicles all the way to Baltimore Harbor to swim, a “waste of time and money,” Miller said.

The Army provided $27 million from Ukraine supplemental funding to help ramp up AMPV manufacturing, which covered facilities modernization. BAE is investing the rest and has already spent $250 million on the robotic welding, swim pond and machining replacements, according to Miller.

“We’re pretty excited about the move,” Miller said, and “we hope that helps us field those critical vehicles out to the Army faster than they were intended to be fielded previously.”

Russia to upgrade Moscow’s missile defenses by year’s end

MOSCOW — Russia will finish modernizing the missile defense systems protecting its capital by the end of the year, according to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

The announcement comes amid the war in Ukraine, which has entered its second year. And earlier this week, Russia said a Ukrainian drone crashed and caused a fatal explosion in a town 175 kilometers (109 miles) south of Moscow. Ukraine did not immediately comment on the report, while Russia’s Defence Ministry said the drone crashed after an electronic jamming system disabled its navigation.

Russian state-run news agency Tass said authorities identified the drone as a Ukrainian Tu-141. The Soviet-era drone was reintroduced in Ukraine in 2014 and has a range of about 1,000 kilometers.

Shoigu made the announcement about Moscow’s defenses at a board meeting of his ministry this month. In 2023, he said, the country will form an air defense division and brigade, a special-purpose air and missile defense brigade, and an anti-aircraft regiment with the S-350 surface-to-air missile complex.

Developing aerospace defense capabilities has been a major component of Russia’s State Armament Program since 2020. That effort has accounted for about 17.5% of the 3.4 trillion rubles (U.S. $44.3 billion) spent on the program since it began in 2011.

The program is meant to lead to the deployment of 100 battalions, which include 800 launchers made up of the S-400, S-350 and S-500 missile systems. Under the latest iteration of Russia’s State Armament Program, also known as GPV-2027, funds will help with the production of the S-500. The previous iteration, GPV-2020, laid out efforts to create, produce and maintain military equipment.

Currently, Russia’s air and missile defense forces control 1st Air and Missile Defense Army, which defends Moscow and the central industrial district. The 1st Air and Missile Defense Army has regiments equipped with S-300 or S-400 systems, but Shoigu said the force is to receive S-350 weapons.

In total, according to the 2018-2027 timeline for the State Armament Program, Russian forces will receive 12 battalions of the S-350 to replace the S-300. Six S-350 launchers are already in service, but the 1st Air Missile Defense Army has not yet received this weapon.

Regarding the planned special-purpose air and missile defense brigade, Russia will arm the 15th Aerospace Forces Army with the S-500, which can counter ballistic missiles.

The S-500 has been under development since the early 2000s. In 2011, Russia unveiled plans for two new plants to produce the S-500; they opened in 2016. In 2020, analysts with the Russian military news outlet Avia.pro estimated one S-500 — including launchers, radar, the command post, missiles and technical vehicles — costs $700-800 million.

In 2019, production of the S-500 began for the Aerospace Forces. The Defence Ministry and local company Almaz-Antey signed a contract for the supply of more than 10 S-500s in 2021, with the first delivery expected in 2022. The 15th Aerospace Forces Army received the first S-500 prototype in 2021, but no delivery took place last year.

Shoigu also said his ministry will put the space control station Razvyazka on combat alert this year. This is a replacement for the Dunai-3U long-range radar station, which was in service from 1978 until the early 2000s. The Dunai-3U is located in the Chekhov district of the Moscow region, where the Razvyazka is based.

The Razvyazka early warning radar will complement the existing Don-2N radar station, which has operated around Moscow since 1989 and received upgrades in recent years.

Russian company Radiofizika said at the MAKS military conference in 2021 the Razvyazka is a P-band radar whose main purpose is cataloging and working with high-orbit space objects. According to the company, about 1 billion rubles went toward developing this radar in 2014.

The State Armament Program is also expected to accomplish the following tasks by 2027:

The creation of the S-550, an anti-missile and anti-space system with improved detection capabilities and a greater range compared to the S-400 and S-500. The Aerospace Forces are to receive the S-550 by 2025. However, Russia hasn’t announced test launches.Designating the A-235 Nudol anti-missile and anti-satellite system as one of the defense top priorities. The ground-based, mobile, non-nuclear system should be capable of hitting objects in orbit at a maximum altitude of 700 kilometers (435 miles). Russia is creating it to replace the Soviet-era A-135 system. The A-235′s 12th test launch took place in December 2022 at the Sary Shagan test site in Kazakhstan.Delivering Pantsir S-1 anti-aircraft weapons to Russia’s air and missile defense forces to protect the other systems defending the country. A total of 507 items will be delivered to the Aerospace Forces this year. According to Shoigu, about 85% of the Aerospace Forces’ equipment will be modernized versions by the end of the year.

The Associated Press’ Karl Ritter in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.

US Army has a ‘gigantic problem’ with logistics in the Indo-Pacific

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army must adapt its approach to logistics to prepare for an adversary such as China, military officials say, and the service is taking steps to tackle the challenge, standing up a team tasked to develop capability that will enable troops and large amounts of equipment to deploy even in constantly contested environments.

“It’s a gigantic problem, especially in the priority theater,” Gen. James Rainey, head of Army Futures Command, said at a conference in Washington, referencing the Indo-Pacific.

The service acknowledged the contested deployment problem in a 9-page annex that was part of its Multidomain Operations doctrine published last fall.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth appointed Army Materiel Command in October to lead service efforts on figuring out how to deploy troops with large amounts of weapons and equipment from fort to port and beyond in an environment where the service is unable to travel freely without adversary interference — commonly referred to as “contested logistics.”

Together with Army Futures Command, which oversees requirements, AMC is moving forward with efforts to develop a strategy and plans, according to Rainey.

Top focus areas are buying new capability, working with the industrial base, securing operational lines of communication, increasing the lethality and survivability of deployable formations and lightening the logistics tail, he said.

More details are expected in the coming months, Rainey told Defense News in a March 28 interview at Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

AFC set up cross-functional teams when it was established in 2018 to focus on modernization priorities including Long-Range Precision Fires, Next-Generation Combat Vehicles and Future Vertical Lift.

For the first time since the command’s beginning, it is creating a new CFT, focused on contested logistics with portfolios centered on lines of effort that will be announced at a later date.

“It will have the mission to work the portfolio of contested logistics,” Lt. Gen. Christopher Mohan, deputy commanding general of AMC, told Defense News in an interview just ahead of the symposium. “But it will also integrate sustainment into the rest of the CFTs.”

Eye on the Pacific

As the Army works out a strategy and an execution plan for preparing logistics operations in contested environments, it will focus specifically on the Indo-Pacific theater with an eye on fully fleshing out capabilities across the force by 2040, Mohan said.

“We’re really focused on INDO-PACOM. That is probably our hardest fight to sustain just based upon the sheer geographical distances and the fact that there’s so much water out there,” he said.

This doesn’t mean the Army isn’t focused on other regions like Europe or on what it is doing to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders, he noted, “but increasingly you’ll see budget decisions are being made that are starting to steer us towards our pacing threat and that’s no surprise.”

The National Defense Strategy, released in 2022, is focused primarily on an increasingly aggressive China as that pacing threat.

A series of war games will begin in a few weeks in the INDO-PACOM theater that will be focused on sustainment, according to Mohan, and AMC will participate and work through major issues to consider.

The U.S. continues to announce additional basing and is working to develop relationships in the region that will aid the Army’s logistics tail there.

“Every time we have an additional base is an additional potential dilemma for our adversary,” Mohan said.

The Army is also considering how it will modernize prepositioned stocks there from the possibility of expanding the amount, to the potential of expanding locations where equipment is stored.

“Maybe not in large sites like we have in some places, but maybe in smaller locations that are more dispersed,” Mohan said.

US Army seeks new watercraft to beef up Indo-Pacific capability

The service has also learned and demonstrated through its support to Ukraine that it can rapidly move stocks of both munitions and equipment around the world, which is triggering conversations such as how much can be prepared in the states before sending overseas and how much should be put in large stockpiles regionally, he said.

“Should we prepare the theater to receive … munitions and equipment and really build that skeleton of access, of partnership, through exercises and the ability to know where we need to go and what we need to put out here,” Mohan said.

Predicting battlefield needs

Thinking across the entire logistics chain, AMC Commander Gen. Charles Hamilton is focused on establishing robust predictive and precision logistics.

The effort will provide better visibility into the condition of weapons, equipment and parts across the force and could even help to automate some of the processes resulting in streamlined delivery of stocks to where they are needed. The capability “will enhance our ability to deliver selected stocks autonomously, over longer distances with an increased payload,” Mohan said.

Another key piece to managing logistics in a contested environment is being able to see it all in real time using data flowing from live operations, something the Army experimented with during its last Project Convergence.

“How do we build the combat power for U.S. forces and coalition forces and how do we then get the right kind of data analytics and pull the right data to monitor the health of that equipment?,” Mohan said. “Most of our systems have that capability built into them. … Can we automate routine things like the provisioning and shipment of service kits?”

For example, Mohan said, can data coming from a tank indicating an issue with a transmission get processed through a system where, using artificial intelligence, a service kit automatically is sent out to the maintainer along with a message to fix the transmission?

“Those are things that we’re experimenting with,” he said.

US Army to ‘overhaul’ recruiting school amid personnel shortage

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — As the U.S. Army tries to reinvent recruiting after falling short of its goal, the service will “overhaul” how it selects and trains recruiters, senior officials told Army Times.

The service’s undersecretary, Gabe Camarillo, characterized the effort as part of a broader recruiting reform process in a Tuesday media event at an Association of the U.S. Army event. The stakes are high, he acknowledged, given the service missed its fiscal 2022 recruiting goal by about 15,000 new soldiers, leaving it shorthanded.

“We face an unprecedented recruiting challenge in the Army,” Camarillo said. “It took more than one year to get here. It’ll take several years to get out of it.”

He explained the Army is reevaluating how it selects, trains and assigns its recruiting force; some of those changes are already underway.

The service has implemented “interim” curriculum adjustments at its Recruiting and Retention College at Fort Knox, Kentucky — the headquarters of Army Recruiting Command — said Gen. Gary Brito, head of Army Training and Doctrine Command, speaking Tuesday afternoon. Brito’s headquarters oversees Army Recruiting Command.

For now, officials have extended new recruiter training by two weeks. Brito said the extra time includes instruction on sales and negotiation techniques, as well as a “people week” that’s “focused on things that are unique to the recruiter lifestyle [such as] living in a rented house that’s not close to a military installation,” among other practical considerations.

Brito said the interim curriculum shift will buy time for his command’s planners to bring a “dry erase board approach” to bear for a comprehensive overhaul of the recruiting college. He described the move — and today’s moment — as “an opportunity to look at things differently.”

Brito added that the service is implementing “common sense talent management practices” to find better recruiters and match them with roles where they’ll find success.

The command developed a noncommissioned officer special assignment battery to determine whether a soldier has the personality and skills to succeed as a drill sergeant or recruiter, two common paths for the Army’s staff sergeants.

But another step will involve aligning prospective recruiters with geographic areas where they might succeed, or where their community ties could help them achieve their recruiting goals, Brito said.

The ultimate goal is to achieve “a great match of talent, background and connection to the community” for each recruiter, he explained.

Army Times has contacted Recruiting Command for additional details.

The plans were developed in conjunction with a Pentagon-level recruiting and retention task force, Brito added. The task force, led by Army Reserve Maj. Gen. Deborah Kotulich, makes running recommendations to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth and the service’s chief of staff.

The service already launched other ideas, including a recruiting referral program and performance bonuses for recruiters.

While efforts to shore up recruiting in the long term remain underway, Wormuth told lawmakers Tuesday that there’s cause for optimism sooner. Appearing before a panel of the House Appropriations Committee, the Army’s top civilian said the service is seeing “positive momentum” on recruiting.

“Our recruiting numbers right now look better than they did this time last year,” Wormuth said, without offering further details.

The secretary cautioned that continued recruitment problems could force the service to lean more on the Army National Guard and Army Reserve — both of which are experiencing end strength shortfalls of their own — or even make force structure cuts to avoid becoming a “hollow Army.”

Senate votes to repeal Iraq war authorizations

WASHINGTON — Mario Marquez still carries the hardship and memories of his four deployments to Iraq with the Marine Corps between 2002 and 2009. He said he doesn’t understand why America still holds onto its military authorizations to wage war there, more than a decade after the fighting officially stopped.

“Millions of servicemen and women answered a call to serve in Iraq, willingly and without question, and we did so without ever knowing a definitive end to our service,” Marquez told reporters outside the Capitol on March 16. “However, our force is not built to remain in a perpetual state of war.”

Lawmakers took their first real steps in addressing that this week as the Senate voted 66-30 on Wednesday to repeal the authorization for use of military force it gave to former President George W. Bush 20 years ago to invade Iraq.

Senate eyes repeal of Iraq war authorization

It’s the first significant movement on the issue in years, and it comes just days after the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. More than 4,500 U.S. military members died there in the following decades.

The Senate’s vote to repeal of the 2002 bill — alongside a 1991 Gulf war authorization to defend Kuwait against Saddam Hussein — marks a significant milestone in congressional efforts to claw back lawmakers’ warmaking authorities from the White House, ensuring that future presidents can’t invoke them as a justification for military intervention in the Middle East.

“The enemy against whom we declared war in 1991 and [2002] is no more; Iraq is a very different nation,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told reporters.

Only 36% of Americans believe the U.S. was right to invade Iraq, according to an Axios/Ipsos poll conducted this month. That figure stands in stark contrast to a 2002 Pew Research survey conducted in the months before Congress’ authorization, which found 73% of Americans supported invading Iraq.

Kaine and bill cosponsor Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., said that the move is important not just for wartime bookkeeping purposes but also to help signal a sense of completion to the millions of service members like Marquez who fought in the Middle East.

“For veterans, we have to get a sense, and a feeling that our service in country meant something,” said Marquez, now director of the American Legion’s National Security Division. “By closing these existing authorizations, it gives us that closure … a sense that our mission was worthy of our cause and our sacrifice.”

Former President Donald Trump invoked the 2002 Iraq war authorization as part of his legal justification for killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, then the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, via airstrike when he was traveling inside Iraq in 2020.

“Leaving outdated authorizations on the books can lead to abuse,” Kaine said. “The president should have to come to Congress to start wars, but if there’s authorizations on the books that are outdated, the president can try to torture its meaning.”

The White House has issued a statement endorsing the Kaine-Young repeal, noting that it would not affect the 2,500 U.S. troops currently stationed in Iraq.

Those troops are instead stationed there to fight Islamic State sleeper cells under a separate 2001 military authorization, which Congress passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to target al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Four presidents have since used the 2001 military authorization to justify more than 40 military operations in at least 19 countries across the globe, including Iraq and Syria.

Military Times Special Report: The Iraq War, 20 years later

The House will still need to pass the repeal before President Joe Biden can sign it, and the path forward in the lower chamber is less clear.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters Sunday that the repeal would need to go through the Foreign Affairs Committee, “but I think it has a clear opportunity to come to the floor.”

Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who oversees the House floor as Rules Committee chairman, co-sponsored the House version of the bill.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, opposed previous efforts to repeal the Iraq war authorization, pointing to Trump’s strike on Soleimani and arguing that the authority can be used to go after “the Iran-sponsored terrorist groups attacking our diplomats, our soldiers, our embassy and our citizens.”

The U.S. launched retaliatory strikes on Iran-backed militias in Syria last week after a drone attack killed a U.S. contractor and wounded several troops stationed there, citing the president’s Article II self-defense authorities under the Constitution. The Iran-backed militias responded with another spate of attacks over the weekend.

“Tehran wants to push us out of Iraq and Syria,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement on Tuesday. “Why should Congress make that easier? While the Senate’s been engaged in this abstract, theoretical debate about rolling back American power, Iran has continued its deadly attacks on us.”

The global nuclear energy market is a geopolitical battleground

Competition with Russia and China is no longer a game of Monopoly; it’s a game of Risk. And with a multibillion-dollar global civil nuclear market up for grabs, it’s time we recognize that competition with autocratic regimes is more than economic rivalry, it is fundamental to American national security.

Long before invading Ukraine, Russia weaponized civil nuclear exports to bind countries into decades-long energy dependencies, particularly when it comes to fuels — around 40% of the world’s uranium fuel supply comes from Russian facilities. With Russian nuclear exports continuing to surge, up more than 20% since the Ukrainian invasion first began, and China following suit, the U.S. has an imperative to secure the global civil nuclear supply chain, for both our energy and national security interests.

Given the geopolitical significance of nuclear commerce and our continuing struggle against authoritarian influence, ceding control of this market to Russia and China will not only imperil opportunities to secure wealth, jobs, and sovereignty, but also our ability to impart our values and standards on the safe and peaceful use of this critical technology.

The U.S. is in a good position to bring American-made advanced nuclear technology to market, but this is not a fair fight. Russian and Chinese nuclear energy companies are as much extensions of their respective governments as they are corporations, and thus, the highest levels of state will strategically direct their activities and support their efforts to win projects — and wars — abroad.

Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear power conglomerate, has been involved in Moscow’s brutal and ongoing campaign of subjugation, acting as a lifeline to Russian military units and sanctioned arms manufacturers. The state-backed entity also was involved in Russia’s capture of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station and military activities around the plant. And despite worldwide condemnation and outrage, global reliance on Russian nuclear reactors, equipment, fuels, and services has only increased.

Rosatom’s business model is effective because it functions as an arm of the Russian government, something China echoes. Neither country is bound by Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development export financing restrictions, and each brings government-backed financing to export deals. In some instances, these governments will simply bankroll entire reactor projects and derive profit over time from power revenue, as is the case with Rosatom’s Akkuyu project in Turkey. Officials in Moscow and Beijing often aggressively court prospective markets well in advance of any reactor deals and have allegedly “sweetened” export bids with arms transfers and other government concessions.

Commerce is more than financial gain but a tool of geopolitical influence as civil nuclear export deals lock-in extended energy and diplomatic ties. For our nuclear industry, this is not merely a competition against firms, but nations.

Our geopolitical adversaries do not view nuclear commerce as strictly a business endeavor, and with what is at stake, neither should we.

The Biden administration has moved the needle on federal nuclear energy programs, but considering the highly centralized, vertically integrated, and state-sponsored competition, we urgently need a strategic, whole-of-government approach to nuclear energy policy and civil nuclear exports.

A secure and reliable domestic nuclear supply chain is an essential component to our energy security and must be integrated with our larger national security strategy. Third Way, a center-left think tank, has an idea of where to start: quickly appoint a nuclear energy policy director within the White House. This role can serve a vital interagency coordinating function and provide a strategic and coherent vision of federal support for U.S. nuclear export. Perhaps even more foundationally, we must restore our domestic uranium fuel supply chain — the lifeblood of our nuclear energy sector that is currently reliant on Russian supply.

Federal programs are in place to kickstart infrastructure build-out for the production of low-enriched uranium and high-assay low-enriched uranium for advanced reactor types, necessary to support both domestic deployment and export competitiveness. Robustly funding and rapidly implementing these programs must be the first step of any effort to alleviate Russia’s extensive hold over the global nuclear fuel market.

This is a defining moment for how we think about energy, and how it shapes our geopolitics. Autocrats have learned nuclear exports not only represent commercial value, but can also be wielded as weapons of geopolitics.

As a result, transitioning to cleaner, more reliable energy sources has become a strategic imperative for the United States. If we can successfully build and supply nuclear technologies to the world, we can modernize our military fleet, build relationships and enhance our collective energy security as part of a broader integrated deterrence approach. By weaving energy security into the heart of our national security strategy, we can bolster our capacity to deter and resist authoritarian aggression.

Elaine Luria represented Virginia’s Second Congressional District from 2019-2023. While in Congress, she served as the vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee and as a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. She is a fellow at Georgetown University under the Institute of Politics and Public Service.

Josh Freed is senior vice president of Third Way’s Climate and Energy Program, advocating for the United States to reach net-zero by 2050 as equitably as possible.

US Army forms new modernization team to tackle contested logistics

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army is creating a new modernization team that will develop contested logistics capability, Gen. James E. Rainey, head of Army Futures Command told Defense News.

AFC, established in 2018 to tackle the service’s requirements for modernization, created eight signature cross-functional teams, each tasked with advancing one of the Army’s six modernization priorities or a capability considered to cut across a number of those.

The original CFTs are Long-Range Precision Fires, Next-Generation Combat Vehicles, Future Vertical Lift, the Network to include Precision Navigation and Timing, Air-and-Missile Defense, Soldier Lethality and Synthetic Training Environment. The idea was to convene a range of Army officials, from training and doctrine writers to sustainment experts to acquisition officers and even system operators, to ensure the success of a program.

Now AFC is adding a “contested logistics cross-functional team,” according to Rainey, which will “focus on tactical, division and below issues” in the realm, delivering capability by the 2030 timeframe.

The CFT will reach an initial operational capability next month and will reside in Huntsville, Alabama, at Redstone Arsenal where it will be nested with Army Materiel Command, which is in charge of the Army’s massive logistics and sustainment enterprise.

“There’s a ton of talent here in the logistics business,” Rainey said in an exclusive interview at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville.

Rainey said he and Gen. Charles Hamilton, AMC’s commander, will load the CFT with “three to five things” to work on to address logistics in contested environments, but is waiting for Army leadership’s approval of those lines of effort before publicly discussing them. He noted a director for the CFT has also been selected but that announcement will also come later.

CFTs need something tangible to work on, Rainey said, “part of this formula of success [for CFTs] is [having] a very specific problem statement.”

The teams need to be scoped properly, he stressed, so as the Army stands up potentially more teams going forward, “the very important critical step is accurately loading that CFT, what are the three to five specific, tangible things that they’re going to do?”

At a think-tank event in Washington this month, Rainey said that he would continually assess the future of the original CFTs – whether they need to be reloaded with new efforts or refocused – and the possibility of creating more CFTs to address emerging problem sets.

Some of the other possible CFTs could address deep sensing, adapting soldier lethality to focus more on formation-based lethality and even human-and-machine integration.