Archive: April 3, 2023

Navy admiral wants data to decide ship decommissionings

NORFOLK, Va. — U.S. Fleet Forces Command head Adm. Daryl Caudle is working to develop a data-informed decision-making process that would settle ship decommissioning debates between the Navy and Congress.

Under the existing process, the Navy unveils in its annual budget request which ships it intends to decommission each fiscal year. By that time, the service has already determined which ships need to be crewed, which will need maintenance availabilities, which will need materiel for systems upgrades and more — which is all included in the budget for that year and years beyond.

If Congress opts to spare a ship from early decommissioning, it requires the Navy the adjust budget lines for personnel, training and operations, maintenance, logistics and more.

Caudle says this could be avoided.

“When they get in the window of their decommissioning, we start decrewing [a ship], start taking parts off it to cannibalize for other units, and get it to its place where it’s going to decommission and come off the registry,” he told Defense News in a March 30 interview. He said Congress blocking a ship from being decommissioned is “the most horrible thing you could do to a commanding officer and the crew.”

“If you can actually come together on a decommissioning plan that’s objectively based — even if some of those ships are not to the service life, there could be reasons why it did not make that — then it can be objectively looked at and critiqued and improved,” he added. “But we ought to be very one-minded on whether or not we agree to that list.”

Caudle said that if the Navy and Congress can agree on a decommissioning plan, both sides must stick to it.

“Two things should come from that: The Navy fully funds, crews, organizes, modernizes to the last day. You get it to the bitter end; we don’t go and short-circuit that in any way,” he said. “And Congress agrees we’re not going to [keep the ship in active service] when it gets to that date.”

Caudle told Defense News the first step he’s taking is trying to create a metric that considers the ship’s combat power, including its weapons systems, sensor package and magazine size; its level of modernization, including recent updates and lethality enhancements; and its material condition, major degradations and potential depot repair challenges.

These three factors are considered against how much money it would take to get the ship combat-ready, and how many more deployments the ship would be able to make for this investment.

For example, if it will take $200 million to fix up a ship for one more deployment before its planned end of life, is that combat power worth the money, or can the Navy decommission it early?

“Nobody has any question about decommissioning a nuclear submarine or a nuclear aircraft carrier; when the fuel is over, it’s done,” Caudle said. “Everybody slaps the table on that plan. It’s our surface navy that lives in this purgatory, that we could do more things with it” if only the Navy were willing to pay to keep it in the fleet.

“I’m trying to actually help build that business model that allows us to objectively grade out a ship in an objective way on its combat power versus the cost of the combat power.”

Caudle said he’s been working with the Center for Naval Analyses to create a figure of merit, or scoring metric, to assign to ships being eyed for potential early retirement. He’s also partnering with two deputy chiefs of naval operations, for warfighting requirements and capabilities and for fleet readiness and logistics, on this effort.

Once a scoring system is established, the Navy would have to work with Congress to agree upon a process that looks at ship decommissioning debates at the most appropriate time, rather than during the annual budget talks.

“Mature organizations have a divestment strategy that’s agreed upon — if you look at Congress as our board of directors, our board should agree with our divestment strategy. It shouldn’t be last-minute,” the admiral said.

Biden picks Heritage for Marine Corps info warfare post

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — President Joe Biden nominated Marine Corps cyber boss Maj. Gen. Ryan Heritage to be the next deputy commandant for information.

Heritage, who is expected to gain a star as a lieutenant general, has served as the commander of Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, since 2021. In January, he also took the helm of Marine Corps Information Command, an entity Commandant Gen. David Berger championed in an update to Force Design 2030.

Should the Senate confirm him, Heritage will succeed Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Matthew Glavy. Senators received the nomination March 30, one day before the Pentagon announced Heritage’s prospective move. The announcement did not say where Glavy is headed next.

Pentagon cyber policy post may stay unfilled during review

As the deputy commandant for information — a role created years go — Glavy oversaw the rollout of Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 8, or MCDP 8, a catalog of the latest philosophies regarding information warfare, military data and media literacy. It’s one of several MCDPs that outline the tactics, techniques and procedures of the corps, the first of which was published more than two decades ago.

“We’ve been complacent in just assuming information is like the air we breathe,” and that there is no consequence to using it incorrectly, Glavy told reporters in June. “History is telling us, current events are telling us, that approach will not work, either mid-term or long-term.”

Information warfare is a fusion of offensive and defensive electronic capabilities and cyber operations. It combines data collection, awareness and manipulation to gain an advantage before, during and after battles.

SpaceX rocket launches Space Development Agency’s first satellites

LOMPOC, Calif. — A SpaceX rocket launched the Space Development Agency’s first satellites April 2, sending a mix of 10 missile tracking and communication spacecraft into low Earth orbit in the agency’s highly anticipated debut mission.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the U.S. Space Force’s West Coast range at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Following the flight, the rocket’s booster — which provides thrust to the launch vehicle — returned to its landing zone at the base. The mission was scheduled for March 30, but SpaceX delayed the launch for three days and has not disclosed the reason.

The rocket carried two SpaceX-built satellites that will detect and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, which can travel and maneuver at Mach 5 speeds, and eight spacecraft built by York Space Systems that will use optical links to transfer data from space-based sensors to users on the ground.

SDA was created in March 2019 to help the U.S. Department of Defense build a more resilient space architecture in low Earth orbit — located within about 1,200 miles of the planet’s surface — and demonstrate a new way to develop and acquire space systems.

Modeled after the Missile Defense Agency, which tests and fields ballistic missile capabilities, SDA’s acquisition strategy is defined by two key concepts: “spiral” development and proliferation.

The vision is for hundreds of small, relatively low-cost satellites to augment Pentagon constellations of large, expensive spacecraft. While it typically takes the military five to 10 years to conceive and then launch a satellite, SDA wants to shrink that to about two years, fielding new technology at a regular pace, or spiral.

This first mission is proof the agency can meet that timeline, according to SDA Director Derek Tournear. Despite schedule challenges that pushed the launch from October 2022 to December and then to March, the Tranche 0 satellites are launching just over two-and-a-half years of the agency’s initial contract awards in August 2020.

“We’re pretty excited to show that the model actually does work — to be able to do that proliferation to get the capabilities to the warfighter at speed,” Tournear told reporters March 29 during a pre-launch briefing.

The 10 vehicles are part of SDA’s initial batch, dubbed Tranche 0. A second Tranche 0 launch of 18 satellites built by Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, York and SpaceX is scheduled for June. According to Tournear, the total cost to develop, launch and operate the first 28 spacecraft through fiscal 2025 is $980 million.

Together, the spacecraft will provide a baseline capability that military users can begin to test and train with, Tranche 0 Program Director Mike Eppolito told reporters.

“The satellites that we have up there, the intent there is to get them in the warfighters’ hands so they can start developing their techniques to be able to use them,” he said during the same March 29 briefing. “It’s intended to be the demonstration tranche that allows them to sort of get their feet wet and start using the capabilities that we’re putting on orbit.”

Future tranches will bring additional satellites and incorporate new technology.

Tournear and Eppolito said SDA has learned a lot from its work on Tranche 0 — from working with commercial providers to navigating schedule challenges and a global pandemic to adapting to supplier issues. Eppolito recalled that at one point, forest fires in France caused one of the program’s antenna’s suppliers to have to shut down its factory.

“I think we solved a lot of those problems because of how agile we are,” Eppolito said.

Execs at Austal, which builds LCSs for U.S. Navy, indicted for fraud

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Three current and former former executives of a shipbuilder that constructs vessels for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard have been indicted on accounting fraud charges accusing them of falsely inflating the company’s reported earnings, federal prosecutors said.

Craig Perciavalle, 52, Joseph Runkel, 54, and William Adams, 63, all of Mobile, Alabama, where Austal USA LLC is based, are accused of misleading shareholders and investors. They are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud affecting a financial institution, five counts of wire fraud, and two counts of wire fraud affecting a financial institution, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release Friday.

LCS shipbuilder president resigns amid US and Australian financial investigations

Court records were not immediately available to show if the men had attorneys to comment on their behalf.

Austal USA LLC is a subsidiary of Australia-based Austal Limited and builds littoral combat ships for the Navy. The ships are designed to operate in shallow coastal waters.

Perciavalle resigned as Austal USA’s president in 2021 following an investigation by federal and Australian authorities into practices dating back more than four years, the company said at the time. Adams is the former director of the littoral combat ships program, according to the SEC. Runkel is the director of financial analysis.

Prosecutors alleged the three men manipulated an accounting metric to hide growing costs in order to maintain and increase the share price of Austal Limited’s stock, hurting U.S. investors.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a news release that the three “engaged in a scheme to artificially reduce the cost estimates to complete certain shipbuilding projects for the U.S. Navy by tens of millions of dollars.”

Ingalls nabs $1.3B deal to build next San Antonio-class amphib ship

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy on Friday awarded Ingalls Shipbuilding a $1.3 billion contract for the detailed design and construction of the next San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, just weeks after Navy and Marine Corps leaders got into a debate about the ship’s cost.

This announcement comes after the Navy awarded Ingalls $240 million in advanced procurement funds in June 2022 for long-lead-time material and conducting advance construction activities.

In total, the Navy will pay Ingalls $1.54 billion for LPD-32 construction, though the total cost of the ship is higher as the service will buy some systems separately as government-furnished equipment.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday earlier this month said the Navy hadn’t awarded this deal yet because of concerns about the program’s rising cost.

Speaking at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference, Gilday said LPD-32 would cost $1.9 billion to $2 billion, which he said is more than past ships in the class.

Ingalls spokeswoman Kimberly Aguillard told Defense News at the time the shipbuilder had held its costs steady, despite changes the Navy incorporated into the LPD design and external challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic, labor shortfalls and rising inflation.

“In 2016, LPD 28 was awarded for $1.47B (shipbuilder cost) and seven years later LPD 32 was negotiated with additional scope for $1.54B (shipbuilder cost), or within 5% of the LPD 28 award,” she wrote in an email.

Fiscal 2024 Navy budget documents indicate the service expects to spend $1.50 billion, $1.53 billion and $1.56 billion, respectively, on LPDs 30, 31 and 32.

Their planned total cost, including government-furnished equipment, is listed at $1.86 billion, $1.96 billion and $1.92 billion, respectively.

Gilday said rising costs contributed to the Pentagon’s decision to truncate the production line after LPD-32 and seek a less expensive way to buy future amphibious ships. Under consideration are scaled-down designs for the ship that a Marine Corps leader called unacceptable to the service.

Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger, criticizing the pause, said at the McAleese event the Ingalls workforce is “right at the point in the curve that’s the most efficient, and we’re going to take a timeout.”

LPD-32 will be the 16th San Antonio-class ship and the third of the Flight II configuration. The Defense Department’s contract announcement notes work on the ship will be completed by September 2029.

The EU is finding its voice on defense. The US should embrace it.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been called a “wake-up call” for Europe to step up on defense. But in the last year, Europe has grown even more dependent on U.S. military capabilities. Yet appearances are deceptive. A stronger European defense is in the making, emerging in fits and starts from the war in Ukraine. European countries still need to invest more in defense, but they are finally starting to spend smarter, in a more coordinated and efficient way.

Last week, EU countries approved a plan to “speed up the delivery and joint procurement of ammunition for Ukraine” over the next twelve months. The EU initiative earmarks a billion euros ($1.1 billion) to send artillery to Ukraine from existing stockpiles and another billion to jointly procure ammunition, primarily 155-millimeter rounds, needed both to replenish their own stocks and supply Ukraine. It also supports the rapid ramping-up of Europe’s defense manufacturing capabilities, with the European Commissioner Thierry Breton touring member states to visit companies which could increase their production.

The ink is barely dry on the deal, yet some pundits are already warning Brussels “might not be up to the task.” They fail to see the potential of this initiative: It is not only about meeting Ukraine’s artillery needs, it is also about laying out a way forward for greater burden-sharing within transatlantic relations.

First, the EU initiative establishes an important precedent addressing supply chain and interoperability issues. As NATO’s efforts to deliver tanks to Ukraine have shown, pooling European military resources results in duplication and other inefficiencies – they collectively have 17 different types of main battle tanks. For years, advocates of European defense reform have called for the EU to have a greater role in addressing this problem. Over the last few years the EU has established the European Defense Fund and Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) to enhance joint capability research and development.

What makes this new initiative on joint ammunition procurement so groundbreaking is that it will be the first time the EU will fund joint arms contracts. EU policy is often path dependent, meaning states build on past policy accomplishments. Indeed, the proposal for this initiative referred to the EU’s unprecedented decision to collectively buy Covid-19 vaccines. By continuing to break new ground, the EU may have found a scheme it can reproduce to rationalize and integrate its efforts.

Second, Estonia’s leadership on this initiative reinforces the idea that European countries do not have to choose between the EU or NATO when it comes to defense and security. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was the first to propose the idea of jointly buying ammunition for Ukraine. In the past, Paris has often led the way in trying to bolster European industrial capabilities, but its efforts have often encountered pushback from eastern European countries. The idea that a stronger European defense pillar will come at the expense of American involvement in NATO dies hard.

Estonia’s taking the lead on this initiative demonstrates that addressing a lack of industrial defense capacity is a shared priority across the continent. It also challenges the false dichotomy between pro-EU and pro-NATO countries that has long impeded greater European defense integration. Critically, this initiative hints at an alternative narrative, one in which bolstering European capabilities is meant to ensure that in any future conflict, the decision to support or to act is not limited by industrial weakness but only by strategic interest.

Finally, the initiative lays bare that if the United States is serious about burden sharing, it will need to embrace EU defense cooperation. For too long, the United States has criticized NATO allies for not spending enough on their defense, while insisting American defense companies be able to compete for European contracts. But buying American-made weapons limits the ability of Europe to be the key defense player Washington needs. The good news is that this time, the Biden administration refrained from making a heavy-handed intervention to nip this new initiative in the bud; contracts are only open to European firms. Still, US Representative to NATO Julianne Smith expressed some muted regret that US firms could not participate in the initiative. It would seem American ambivalence about a stronger European pillar within NATO dies hard, too.

But Europe is adapting to a new strategic environment, and Washington ought to embrace it. Europeans are not doing so because they want to act without the United States, but because failing to do so is actually costly to both European and American security.

Kelly A. Grieco is a Senior Fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center.

Marie Jourdain is Visiting Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. Before that, she worked for the French Ministry of Defense’s Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy.

Space Force seeking more narrowband communication satellites

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force is moving forward with plans to buy two more Mobile User Objective System satellites, which provide secure narrowband communication for military users.

A March 24 solicitation kicks off the first phase of the effort, which is focused on early design and risk reduction work. The service plans to award a 12-to-18-month contract to as many as two companies in September. By fiscal year 2025, the Space Force will select a single company to deliver the satellites, the first of which it wants to launch before the end of FY30.

The satellites will join an active constellation of four MUOS spacecraft, plus one orbiting spare, all built by Lockheed Martin. The narrowband communication satellites operate in a frequency range — 300MHz to 3GHz — that makes them less vulnerable to poor weather or difficult terrain and is ideal for transferring information securely.

The Space Force projects it will need $2.5 billion for the program between FY24 and FY28, including $230 million next year.

The acquisition is meant to extend the life of the constellation until the service crafts a longer term plan for narrowband communications, which could include integrating commercial satellites. Space Force officials have said the additional satellites will bring resiliency to the MUOS program and keep the spacecraft flying into the 2030s. The solicitation doesn’t offer details on what new capabilities they’ll carry.

MUOS satellites were built to replace the Ultra High Frequency Follow-on system, known as UFO. They feature two payloads — one to maintain the legacy UHF network and a second that provides a new Wideband Code Division Multiple Access capability. The system is designed to provide 10 times the capacity of its predecessor.

Along with Lockheed, potential bidders include Northrop Grumman and Boeing. The three companies participated in a series of studies initiated by the Navy and continued by the Space Force that considered options for keeping the system active.

Army Materiel Command boss says logistics are key to future warfare

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Russia’s attack on Ukraine has served as a stark reminder of the importance of logistics and sustainment on the battlefield. The invaders were focused on bringing in firepower for a quick victory, but instead the world saw a stalled-out, 40-mile-long convoy with broken tanks and soldiers running out of rations.

The U.S. Army is renowned for its logistics capability, but is acknowledging how much more challenging and contested it will be to move weapons, equipment and people from fort to port, and into theaters of operation.

The newly confirmed head of Army Materiel Command, Gen. Charles Hamilton, is focused on overcoming logistical problems, improving how the service predicts operational needs, and more precisely carrying out the delivery and maintenance of supplies and equipment.

Defense News sat down with Hamilton at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium here on March 29. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

What do you mean when you say “predictive” and “precision” logistics are key priorities? What do you need to accomplish these efforts?

What you’re going to hear from me is “precision sustainment” and “predictive sustainment.” Basically, they’re interchangeable. But the mechanics of it involves getting that logistics tail a little leaner and a lot more agile. And precision comes in at the tactical level.

Gone are the days when we had everything down to your favorite ice cream. It’s going be a lot more expeditionary and, in a lot of cases, you may get what you need just in time for that next big move.

Predictive is more back toward my end at the strategic level, what we’re calling the joint strategic support area. What’s in that space is the organic industrial base and the defense-industrial base as well as a bunch of enterprises that are similar to Army Materiel Command.

How it works is when something happens at the tactical end today, it doesn’t inform the strategic end. It could take a day, or it could take a couple of days, for the information to allow me to react to it. The must-do is when it happens at the tactical end; it’s got to inform a decision at my end.

I’ll give you an example: If I have 20 airplanes at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois with “Class 1″ food and water rations getting ready to take off, and something happens at the tactical end with ammunition, I need to be able to have something that tells me in real time that just happened and gives me courses of action.

One course of action from my device would be: “Hey, let that Class 1 go forward.” Although they already have 10 days of rations, that makes sense. It could be: “Take off half the Class 1 and put the ammo that they need on it.” That’s a good mix. Or it could say, “Offload all the Class 1 and put the ammunition you need,” getting to what they really need in theater, what’s the priority. That’s what we must do in the future to get to predictive sustainment.

Regarding the precision sustainment side — being able to, for instance, lighten the logistics tail — what are you looking at doing to achieve that?

I’ll just use this rudimentary example: Right now, a division or brigade is required to take so many generators. Well, I’d like to use that space to get to the right commodities they need — ammo, food, water. So through technology, perhaps, as opposed to 30 or 40 generators, they have one or two of these new batteries that don’t run off fuel, are quiet and provide the power grid for those units to operate. That’s just one way to cut down on the fuel requirements.

You’ve been tasked with leading a strategy for contested logistics. What are you doing to figure out a path forward?

We’ve got to almost redo the entire way we support. We’ve got some great platforms in place. As seen in Ukraine, it’s almost like giving support while you’re modernizing at the same time. The whole U.S. Army is doing that, and AMC is not absent from that equation.

We’ve got to rewrite our doctrine. For instance, no longer are the days when I could just — like I’ve done many times downrange — send convoys out to resupply. It’s too dangerous to do that.

What we might do in the future is use an autonomous resupply of some kind. It might involve putting those supplies along the route that I know they have to support, unsecured, but I have sensors there that are able to say: “Hey, your operation has been compromised.” … We’ve got to totally rethink the whole way we resupply, and that’s kind of at the tactical level.

The center of gravity for the next fight? To me, it’s the joint strategic support area, right where we sit, because it’s got some vulnerabilities that I need to work on with industry to fix. So the organic and defense industrial bases, they are where we’ve got to … focus through technology. Then we’ve got to shorten that gap, close that gap, with industry on how they get requirements so they can make investments to increase capacity.

Sustainment has to be bad for our enemies. If they see that we have the capacity through our industrial bases, they’re going to think twice about taking that next step.

What observations in Ukraine are driving the way you view future logistics?

After [Russia] decided to take on Ukraine, we’ve all been surprised at the logistics side of it, basically how they were landlocked and didn’t plan for the weather, the fuel, etc.

So we would do a little Monday morning quarterback on that, me and my fellow logisticians. But on Tuesday, we were looking at ourselves, looking at our processes and making sure that we were, in fact, doing what we said we can do.

But here is the big difference: It came down to leadership. As you know, they had to move some senior officers to the front to direct traffic. That will not happen in the United States Army.

We have some very capable junior leaders and an incredible noncommissioned officer corps that could do those tasks. I’ve watched staff sergeants lead convoys in combat, certainly young officers do that. I think probably part of our secret sauce is that we have a great noncommissioned officer corps, and we entrust and train our junior leaders to perform those tasks.

With the Army focused on contested logistics, especially in the challenging Indo-Pacific theater, how are you rethinking the logistics tail in that region when it comes to Army pre-positioned stock or other strategies to get equipment to the right place at the right time?

It was a huge mission — just the distance, the time-distance math problem you have to [solve to] get stuff there. In about three weeks, there’s a summit on Army pre-positioned stocks that’s going to happen, and that’s going to drive our strategy for what we do with that stock.

Once we narrow down some more of the agreements for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s area of responsibility, that would allow us to better posture our pre-positioned stock in that theater.

We always use terms like “set the theater.” Having done that a couple of times, I always remind my team it’s about not just setting the theater, but about resetting the theater. Because it changes almost weekly, you’ve got to be very flexible.

EU scrutinizes Emirati takeover of Estonian robotics firm

MILAN and WASHINGTON — The European Commission is investigating the February takeover of Estonia’s Milrem, deeply rooted in EU collaboration on defense robotics, by Edge Group, a state-owned conglomerate of the United Arab Emirates.

The move follows concerns that defense cooperation projects meant to advance European security interests could be tapped by businesses and governments outside the EU to extract knowledge and exert influence.

“As standard procedure applied to projects benefiting from grants under EU defense funding programs, ownership changes trigger an assessment by the Commission,” a European Commission spokesperson told Defense News. “In particular, the impact on the eligibility of acquired entities for EU funding is assessed considering that an acquisition by a third-country controlled entity could be contravening the security and defense interests of the EU and its member states.”

Milrem leads the European iMUGS project, which came with a $40 million grant in 2020. The project aims to create something of a plug-and-play architecture for future military robotic vehicles of the member states.

Edge Group acquired a majority stake in Milrem last month, a transaction meant to accelerate the Estonian company’s growth and provide the new owners a foothold in Europe, particularly northern Europe, the two firms announced on Feb. 15. They did not disclose the value of the deal.

Estonian firm’s takeover by Emirati group tests joint EU defense rules

EU officials only learned about the takeover that month, according to the commission spokesperson. And an official at the Estonian Ministry of Defense said they were informed mere days before the public announcement.

The case stresses loopholes written into EU regulations on collaborative projects when companies under foreign ownership are involved. Participation in bloc-funded projects is still permitted, but only as an exception. Foreign-owned companies, along with their host governments, must make the case in Brussels that they won’t jeopardize European security interests or drain intellectual property gained in the process of bloc-wide collaboration to their new bosses.

Milrem has pledged to put safeguards in place to that effect.

The company’s takeover barely beats a new law approved by the Estonian parliament on foreign direct investment screening. The legislation is meant to close a loophole for foreign influence through commercial back doors, one long decried by Brussels.

But the law will take effect in September, meaning the Estonian Ministry of Defense had no role in reviewing the deal, a spokesperson there confirmed.

It remains unclear how much power the European Commission holds in situations like this. There appears to be no precedent for the mid-project takeover of a prominent consortium leader by a country outside the EU and even outside the NATO alliance.

What complicates the matter is that some European defense companies may see Edge as a springboard for their business interests in the Arab world, according to industry insiders speaking on condition of anonymity while discussing sensitive business considerations.

What Brussels can do, however, is withhold future funding for EU defense projects or exclude companies outright if requisite safety guarantees are deemed insufficient, according to a guide for applicants to the multibillion-euro European Defence Fund.

That fund is in line to finance future EU robotics work, including iMUGS, with decisions coming up this summer.

Pentagon cyber policy post may stay unfilled during review

WASHINGTON — A newly created senior cyber oversight position at the Department of Defense will likely remain unfilled until the end of the year at the earliest, as the Pentagon works with an outside group on the officeholder’s responsibilities and objectives.

A federally funded research and development center, or FFRDC, was selected to examine the assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy role, carved out by the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, according to John Plumb, the assistant secretary of defense for space policy and the principal cyber adviser to the defense secretary.

While the ball is already rolling, results aren’t expected for months, Plumb told members of the House Armed Services Committee on March 30. The Rand Corporation is involved in the assessment, the cybersecurity publication The Record reported.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican at the head of the Cyber, Information Technology and Innovation panel, said at the hearing he’s disappointed by the timing.

“I’m confident that the Senate is ready to rapidly confirm a nominee,” he said. “I’ve had many conversations to that effect.”

Hackers probing contractors for path to Pentagon, DISA chief says

A deputy assistant secretary for cyber policy already exists. The position is held by Mieke Eoyang.

Interest in and spending on cyber has boomed in recent years. The Pentagon’s fiscal 2024 budget blueprint includes $13.5 billion for so-called cyberspace activities, such as zero-trust implementation. The sum is nearly 21% more than the FY23 ask.

The assistant secretary gig may include aspects of electronic and information warfare, according to Plumb, who described the forthcoming review as “deliberate.”

“What we are doing is following the template that was used to create my current position, ASD for space, which is putting an FFRDC on contract to examine what is the proper structure, are there different pieces required, what things should be in this,” said Plumb, who was confirmed in March 2022. “That is on contract now. We expect that the study should be done around September. But we are moving forward on it.”