Marines want 31 amphibious ships. The Pentagon disagrees. Now what?

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of Americans trapped in war-torn Sudan last month needed a way out of the country, but the U.S. Marine Corps, the go-to service for such rescues, couldn’t help.

Typically, this kind of mission would be standard for the Navy and Marine Corps’ amphibious ready group and Marine expeditionary unit, made up of 2,300 Marines aboard three ships who are trained to fight their way into and evacuate citizens from dangerous locations.

Instead, as violence surged, the Pentagon relied on drones to monitor a 500-mile escape route from the capital of Khartoum to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan. For the Americans who fled to the coast, the Pentagon sent an auxiliary transport ship to shuttle them to safety in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

It was a complicated and risky self-evacuation.

At the same time, off the coast of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the Bataan ARG and 26th MEU were conducting a noncombatant evacuation simulation — training for the very operation Americans in Sudan needed. But the group stayed put because it wasn’t yet certified for global missions.

The Navy didn’t have another set of ready amphibious ships to deploy from the East Coast on short notice.

All of this followed a similar situation a few months earlier, when service leaders were unable to send a team to Turkey and Syria to provide aid after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked the region.

Maj. Gen. Roger Turner, the Marine Corps’ operations division director, told Defense News the naval forces “have this razor-thin capacity” with amphibious ships, and when emergencies arise, “there’s no capacity to react.”

It’s a trend that could continue.

Today, the Navy has 31 amphibious ships — what the Marine Corps considers the bare minimum it needs — but the Pentagon plans to shrink the fleet below that number in fiscal 2024. As a result, Turner anticipates the Corps will be more challenged to respond to global crises.

Throughout last year and into this spring, that number — 31 — has been at the center of debates, as the Navy, Marine Corps, Defense Department, Congress and industry weigh in on how many amphibious ships the military needs, what they should look like and how much they should cost.

Now, the argument is about to come to a head.

In June, the Pentagon is expected to complete a study on whether to continue buying amphibious ships and, if so, what capabilities those vessels will have.

The final decision is expected to have major ramifications for the Marine Corps and defense contractor Ingalls Shipbuilding, a division of HII.

For example, the study might back a requirement for 31 ships and recommend continuing to build San Antonio-class vessels at a cost of about $2 billion each. Or the report could recommend a new design that would cost less per ship — an idea the Corps already rejected, and one that could disrupt Ingalls’ production line.

Or there’s a third option: The report could call for a continued pause in the Pentagon buying amphibious ships, which could force Ingalls to close its production line and would force the Marine Corps to reevaluate its amphibious operations plans.

But unless the Office of the Secretary of Defense approves the continued construction of ships, or unless Congress overrides the Pentagon, “trying to maintain even a minimal [amphibious] presence is going to be really difficult,” Turner said.

This comes at a time when he said “aggressive behavior of the [People’s Republic of China] is driving people to us; they want us to be the security partner of choice,” making American amphibious presence all the more important today.

Outsider observers like Mackenzie Eaglen, an expert in military readiness at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, believe the debate itself is problematic.

“Funding disagreements signal indecision to our adversaries on the role of this capability,” she warned.

A 31-ship requirement

For years, the Marine Corps had a requirement of 38 amphibious ships, with the caveat it would accept 34 in a fiscally constrained environment.

This requirement was based on the rationale that the service needed 38 ships to move two entire Marine expeditionary brigades into combat for a forcible entry.

In July 2019, Gen. David Berger took command of the service and quickly released a document titled “Commandant’s Planning Guidance” that backed away from the requirement of transporting those two brigades, saying the Corps would fight differently in the future.

Since then, a range of concepts have emerged, focused on the idea that small units would already be dispersed throughout the Pacific region to be able to tamp down an emerging conflict until additional forces arrive.

The Marine Corps began talking publicly about a 31-ship requirement in 2021, and the Navy acknowledged that requirement in 2022.

According to the director of the Maritime Expeditionary Warfare Division, Shon Brodie, the 31-ship figure is based on an idea that the fleet should do three things:

Keep two three-ship amphibious ready groups at sea at any given time.Support contingency plans that call for five three-ship amphibious ready groups to deploy on short notice.Allow for enough ready ships — those not tied up in maintenance — that some would be available for training Marines in events like fleet exercises.

The requirement is specifically divided up into 10 amphibious assault ships (made up of the America-class LHAs and Wasp-class LHDs that host fixed-wing jets like the F-35B), and 21 medium-sized amphibious vessels (either the aging Whidbey Island-class LSDs or the newer San Antonio-class LPDs). An amphibious ready group includes one amphibious assault ship and two medium-sized ships.

Brodie told Defense News this 31-ship requirement is backed by studies undertaken from 2008 to 2022, and reflects ships’ recent maintenance readiness rates, which hover around 40%.

That rate means in a fleet of 31 ships, 12 or 13 might be available at any given time. If six are supposed to be deployed, and another six are getting ready to deploy next, that leaves little to no additional capacity for training or surging in response to natural disasters or conflicts.

This low readiness rate has complicated the discussion and is a key reason the Marine Corps considers 31 ships the bare minimum.

Bryan Clark, director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute think tank, said 31 ships is the right number, but noted “presence is now the driver, rather than warfighting lift requirements.”

While the amphibious ready group and Marine expeditionary unit, or ARG/MEU, team still can storm an island and take it from enemy forces, the group is most often used to train alongside partners and allies, respond to friendly nations after a natural disaster, or rescue American citizens trapped in dangerous countries.

Eaglen said this emphasis on presence as a means of deterrence has contributed to the disagreement with the Pentagon over the 31-ship requirement.

“The rub as I see it between the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Marine Corps is over amphib ship requirements for operational plans, versus the additional duties of crisis response (and to a lesser extent building partner capacity) the Marines have on a daily basis,” she told Defense News. “To me, the commandant is saying he wants and needs more ships for tasks scoped outside [of warfighting].”

Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow for defense programs at the Heritage Foundation, acknowledged concerns over the amphibious ships’ survivability against Chinese anti-ship missiles, but said “large-scale combat operations against a highly capable enemy like China is only part of the story.”

“Much has been made about China being the most substantial security challenge for the U.S., but Navy-Marine Corps forces, made possible with Marines embarked aboard Navy amphibious ships, have repeatedly [proved] their worth across a range of small crises in various parts of the world,” he told Defense News.

Fleet under fire

Though the Marine Corps maintains it needs 31 ships, the Pentagon has not committed to that requirement.

DoD officials have not spoken publicly on the matter. Asked by Defense News whether the Office of the Secretary of Defense backs the 31-ship requirement, Pentagon spokesman Chris Sherwood said the requirement can’t be considered in isolation and the department is “focused on having the right mix of capabilities to meet the objectives of the 2022 National Defense Strategy.”

The Navy’s fiscal 2023 budget request, shaped by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the White House before going to Congress, called for truncating the San Antonio-class production line after one final ship that fiscal year. This move would end the San Antonio program after 16 ships, rather than the planned 26.

The FY24 request advances that plan, including no additional LPDs in the five-year spending plan.

With the Marine Corps and the Pentagon at odds, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the services are conducting a capability and cost analysis to consider alternative ship designs and acquisition strategies that might lower the cost of future amphibious ships. That study is set to conclude in June.

Marine Corps, and later Navy, leaders have pushed to buy these ships in multiyear procurement contracts, which must generate cost-savings as a condition of service secretaries approving them. These savings are often on the order of 10%. But a top Marine general told Defense News that the Office of the Secretary of Defense wants larger savings by paring down the ship design and capability.

Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told Defense News in March that Pentagon officials had presented him with several rough drawings of ship designs that would be cheaper than the current LPDs.

“None of them are acceptable,” he said. “They’re trying to reduce cost by reducing my requirement. The answer to reduced cost would have been to exercise [two previous congressional authorizations for multi-ship contracts], one of which was a five-ship and would have saved the American taxpayers almost $900 million.”

Heckl, speaking at the annual Sea-Air-Space conference in April, said the Marines had in 2014 worked with the Navy to scale down the LPD design to the cheaper Flight II design, now under construction at Ingalls Shipbuilding. “We drove out cost. We’re done.”

Berger, who was part of that 2014 effort, made the same point in an April 18 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, saying that “every bit of efficiency [was] squeezed out” of the LPD design.

“If there’s another effort to reduce that further, I know that we went to the minimums in 2014,” the commandant added.

When Navy leadership first rolled out the plan to nix future LPDs, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said that as the service prepares for a potential fight against China, it must prioritize programs most relevant to that conflict.

But more recently, top Navy officials said they would like to continue buying LPDs. Gilday told reporters in early April: “We agree on the 31 requirement, we agree on leveraging the multiyear procurement in terms of doing a bundle buy, and hopefully this study that ends in June informs these next steps.”

Sherwood, when asked about the Pentagon’s commitment to restart LPD buys in FY25 and to use multiyear procurement authority, said the Office of the Secretary of Defense plans to ”address the next purchase in our FY25 budget.”

Lawmakers last year included a provision in the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act giving the commandant of the Marine Corps the authority to set the requirement for amphibious ships. That effectively makes the congressionally mandated requirement 31.

Today’s plan

The Navy’s FY24 long-range shipbuilding plan, released April 17, envisions a dwindling amphibious fleet unless a compromise can be reached on building a future LPD-like ship.

Until the amphibious ship study determines the future of the San Antonio program — whether to continue or truncate it; whether to buy ships one at a time or commit to a multi-ship buy; whether to keep the Flight II design or pare it down further — the Navy’s existing long-range plan does not include buying medium amphibious ships.

It continues retiring the aging Whidbey Island LSDs, though, calling for six of the 10 remaining ships to be retired from FY24 to FY26.

Under the baseline plan — the long-range ship plan includes three potential options — the fleet of 31 amphibious vessels today would sit at 29 in a decade, 24 in two decades and 19 in three decades.

If the Navy were to continue buying the San Antonio-class LPDs every other year, for about a billion dollars a year, the fleet could instead sit at 34 in a decade, 34 in two decades and 33 in three decades.

Clark said the Office of the Secretary of Defense may not want the Navy to spend $2 billion every other year for a ship it doesn’t highly value right now, particularly because that cadence would generate a fleet slightly larger than the Corps’ 31-ship requirement.

On the other hand, if the Navy stops the production line, lets the fleet size shrink and then later opts to restart the production line, the cost might be exorbitant — if Ingalls could even reconstitute its workforce and supply base.

“Are you better off buying those ships? Is that actually cheaper in the long run than it would be to stop the production line and turn around and restart it?” Clark said. “It may be that it almost becomes a wash.”

That’s the case with aircraft carriers: The Navy essentially pays HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding to keep the production line “activated and fully manned” in order to keep the sole builder of nuclear-powered carriers viable, Clark said. The line isn’t perfectly optimized, as that would create a larger fleet than the Navy needs, but it delivers a new ship every five to six years, and the Navy retains the industrial base to produce these complex ships.

This arrangement “ends up being slightly cheaper than if you started and stopped and started the construction line multiple times,” Clark explained. “The question is: Does Congress or [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] — mostly Congress — want to take that longer term view and say, ‘We’re just going to keep building LPDs on two-year centers because in the end it’s cheaper than to stop and start this line, unless you don’t think you need LPDs [for future operations]?’ “

Several experts expressed concern the Pentagon won’t take long-term measures, like approving multi-ship contracts, to build and maintain a 31-ship fleet.

Brent Sadler, a senior research fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology at the Heritage Foundation, told Defense News that the Office of the Secretary of Defense and its Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office “don’t see value in amphibs in a China fight, and therefore [they are] not worth the money.”

Eaglen added that the the Office of the Secretary of Defense “is concerned some amphibs are too slow and therefore easy targets after the shooting starts” with China, despite the Marine Corps seeing amphibious ships and the surface connectors they haul as “critical to fighting inside the First Island Chain using Marines as a stand-in force.” (The first island chain stretches from Japan’s East China Sea islands through the Philippines.)

“Ultimately, Congress will be the adjudicator, and they will again side with the commandant,” she predicted.

The cost of falling short of a 31-ship fleet

Berger told the Senate committee that not having enough ships puts at risk Marines’ ability to deter or win a war, plus their ability to respond to global crises.

“You have to be there with allies and partners because they have to believe that the United States is not running away from them, is going to be there even when things get tough,” he said.

The commandant added that “if you still believe … three amphibious ships loaded up with 2,300 Marines, if they have a deterrent value, and I think they do, then you want them right in the adversary’s grill, right in their face where they can see them all the time. … Can we afford conventional deterrence? Absolutely yes, because the alternative is a lot worse.”

Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith during a panel discussion at Sea-Air-Space said the service is providing as much airlift as possible for its forces in the Pacific, allowing Marines to get to exercises and respond to problems.

But there are still gaps when no ARG/MEUs are patrolling the Pacific, and Smith warned those would increase if the fleet size decreases.

If Americans traveling or working abroad find themselves in the middle of a violent uprising, “you better hope it’s in the months that we have an ARG/MEU ready to come get you. If you’re a combatant commander and somebody tries to close down a SLOC, a sea line of communication, you’re going to want to hope that’s during the months that we’re there.”

Calling the ARG/MEU the “crown jewel of our expeditionary crisis response capability,” Turner said “with the minimum of 31 ships that has been established and the readiness challenges that we’re facing that we discussed, really the confluence between capacity and readiness has pinched that capability in ways that are really not helpful.”

If the Navy continues down its path of decommissioning the old LSDs and not replacing them with new LPDs, “trying to maintain even a minimal ARG/MEU presence is going to be really difficult.”

“At a time that we should be adding capability, we’re actually reducing capability,” Turner said.

Lockheed eyes new F-35 parts deal, but can it handle wartime demands?

WASHINGTON — By the end of the year, a new and unusual deal for the F-35 fighter′s spare parts could be in place — one that would flip the current supply model on its head.

If the proposed performance-based logistics contract works the way F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin has promised, it will save the government money, improve the availability of spare parts and give the company greater flexibility on how it assists repairs, such as making it easier to fix a broken part without fabricating a new one.

Lockheed has for years sought a performance-based logistics, or PBL, contract for the F-35, albeit in a different form. Instead of the traditional transactional model in place today, in which a contractor is paid for specific parts or services, a PBL deal pays the contractor based on how well it meets expected performance outcomes.

The PBL contract now in negotiations, referred to as a “demand reduction” deal, would be a more limited version of the “tip to tail” agreement Lockheed first proposed in 2019, and would cover only the spare parts needed to repair the fighter. Lockheed’s original tip to tail pitch would have also covered support and sustainment activities, and judged the company on overall mission-capable rates, but the Pentagon balked. The military’s F-35 Joint Program Office told Defense News it opted to scale back the deal’s scope to one “that incentivizes [Lockheed] to take risks in areas they have full control over.”

The JPO said it is on track to award the five-year deal to Lockheed by the end of this year, if a study using data from the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office verifies to Congress that a PBL deal would either reduce cost or improve readiness. A companion deal, for repairs and other nonmaterial sustainment support and services not covered by the PBL contract, would also be awarded at the same time.

Officials from the JPO and Lockheed said in interviews with Defense News that a performance-based logistics contract could be better for both parties than the transactional model, particularly by encouraging the company to reduce the demand for new spare parts for the F-35.

Ed Apollo, the JPO’s product support manager, said a PBL contract incentivizes Lockheed to invest in new processes and improvements to make parts last longer.

“The lower the demand, the more gravy for industry,” Apollo said. “The higher the demand, the less the [profit] margins. … That is the No. 1 benefit that we’re looking at in a performance-based logistics contract.”

But some experts said the deal could carry risk; most notably, could a PBL contract handle a surge in capacity required during a war?

Brad Martin, director of the National Security Supply Chain Institute at the think tank Rand, said some major programs have used PBL deals in recent years, including the Aegis weapon system and the P-8 Poseidon aircraft. But they’re not as common as they once were, he told Defense News, “and they have a lot of baggage.”

“It yields to the contractor an awful lot of discretion as to how they’re going to fill the orders and how they’re going to deal with the demand,” Martin said. “As a result, [the contractor] is in a position of managing things up to the point where there’s a crisis — and then when there’s a crisis, what are you going to do?”

Martin said PBL deals were more customary in the early 2000s, when the Pentagon sought to achieve efficiencies of the kind typical in a private sector business. The department in 2001 identified PBL contracts as its preferred weapon system support strategy, according to a 2008 Government Accountability Office report.

But they didn’t always produce the promised cost savings, Martin said.

He said a PBL contract would likely incentivize Lockheed to maintain an inventory of parts sufficient for normal, day-to-day operations, such as flying standard patrols, training sorties or test flights.

But during a war that causes F-35s to fly significantly longer and harder, while possibly suffering wear and tear from battle, hard landings and more sorties, he said, it’s hard to say what kind of supply inventory and pace would be required, and whether a PBL approach could keep up.

How would a PBL deal work?

The military has awarded Lockheed Martin multiple iterations of the current transactional contract to sustain F-35s since the fighter program’s inception, most recently in 2021. But for years the program has struggled to hold sustainment costs down and keep the plane’s readiness rates high enough. The average mission-capable rate for all U.S. F-35s is 56%, which falls below the 70% readiness rate the military wants for the Air Force’s F-35A, and the 75% goal set for the Department of the Navy’s F-35B and F-35C variants.

Today, Lockheed’s transactional sustainment contract spells out how many of the thousands upon thousands of spare parts needed to repair the planes will be on hand, Apollo said.

A supply chain-focused PBL contract would operate differently, Apollo added, as Lockheed wouldn’t need to keep specific numbers of parts on hand. Instead, the company would be judged on whether those parts are available when needed, or whether it can get those parts to the field within a certain amount of time.

Because PBL contracts are firm-fixed-price deals, he explained, Lockheed would bear the risk if it makes the wrong call on how many of each part to have on hand.

“They still have to provide … the products, the performance, but if they have to spend beyond the [firm-fixed-price], that is all industry risk,” Apollo said. “The benefit [to a PBL deal] is it incentivizes industry to reduce demand. A healthy supply chain system that we’re looking for is not one where industry is incentivized to buy more parts.”

There are several ways the JPO believes a PBL deal could push the contractor to reduce demand on parts. When the onus is on Lockheed Martin to keep demand low, the company will be motivated to have parts that last longer and to make process improvements that stretch out their time on the aircraft before repair or replacement, Apollo said.

For example, he added, if a part leaks due to a failing seal, under a standard transactional contract the government could pay Lockheed to fix the problem by removing it — sending it to the original manufacturer for repair before reinstallation.

But under a PBL contract, Apollo said, Lockheed would have a reason to pressure the subcontractor that makes that part redesign it to avoid frequent failures. With that redesign, “lo and behold, they reduce demand of that part by an order of magnitude, with some level of investment that was enabled by a firm-fixed-price PBL contract.”

Apollo also said a PBL deal offers industry more authority, accountability and ownership of the supply chain. In many cases, he added, it’s faster and cheaper to repair a part than making a new one. This will increase the “velocity” of the supply chain, he explained, and get parts on shelves quicker, which is financially advantageous for Lockheed.

While Lockheed would take on more risk, company officials said the flexibility of such a deal is worth it, and they have expressed confidence in their ability to cut demand for F-35 parts. Audrey Brady, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for F-35 global sustainment, said in an interview that about half the parts on an F-35 haven’t had to come off the plane for repair or replacement, and that more than 90% of parts on the average F-35 are staying on the aircraft longer than expected.

“Do we know exactly where the parts need to be and when?” Brady said. “When [maintainers] go to reach for the part, is it available to them? That’s what we’ll be measured on.”

Wartime surge

But Rand’s Martin said a PBL’s design could give Lockheed an incentive to keep its inventory — particularly of rare or expensive parts — near the minimum required. And the number of spares a defense program will need in wartime is almost always vastly more than in peacetime.

“When you need them, you really need them,” Martin said.

Dan Grazier, a defense analyst for the Project on Government Oversight, echoed those concerns.

“Imagine a contract like this being signed on Sept. 10, 2001, when no one could have foreseen what was [going to] kick off the next day,” Grazier said, referring to the 9/11 attacks on the United States. “And all those plans the day beforehand all of a sudden get thrown out the window.”

Grazier also said the global nature of the F-35 program could complicate the management of a performance-based supply contract. The JPO said earlier in April the supply chain-focused PBL would cover all F-35s worldwide.

“Who knows what some of these partner countries might get themselves into moving forward?” Grazier said.

At the Sea-Air-Space conference in April, Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the program executive officer for the F-35, criticized the program’s “just in time” supply chain, in which parts arrive right before they’re needed and little inventory is stockpiled.

“When you have that [just-in-time] mentality, a hiccup in the supply chain, whether it be a strike … or a quality issue, becomes your single point of failure,” Schmidt said.

Martin said a PBL contract could also lead to a “robbing Peter to pay Paul” situation, in which Lockheed might cannibalize parts from another aircraft or assembly line to meet supply requirements.

PBL deals “are almost the epitome of ‘just-in-time,’ ” Martin said.

Apollo and Brady said the PBL contract now under negotiation includes provisions for short-term fluctuations on a month-to-month basis. Brady noted that kind of short-term surge would cover a 10% fluctuation in expected flight hours.

Apollo said that “from a month-to-month standpoint, we have built in that capability [to] have industry execute these peaks and valleys and perturbations for higher demand” in flight hours than normal.

But Brady said the draft PBL deal doesn’t take into account longer-term surges that might come with a war or other event lasting one to six months, which could cause flight hours to significantly jump, and cause more wear and tear.

Lockheed and the F-35 Joint Program Office want to “wargame” those requirements, Brady and Apollo said.

“We’re working to … define: What does that surge look like?” Brady said. “And then be able to respond to what that would be. But the current construct [of the PBL draft] doesn’t have a war-level surge; it has a month-to-month flight hour surge.”

Brady said it will be important to look at different scenarios in which the U.S. military might use an F-35 in order to ensure a PBL deal can handle the requirements.

Apollo pointed to one option in an interview with Defense News that would see more funding added to the PBL approach to handle a lengthier surge. However, a follow-up email from the JPO explained the office could not address broader discussions at the Defense Department level in regard to requirements for a sustained surge environment.

Martin found it encouraging to hear Lockheed and JPO officials are considering wartime surge needs, but insisted they need to continue studying future needs, while also considering how to incentive Lockheed to meet a potential surge.

“If we had a war, God forbid, that builds up … to a fairly high-[operational] tempo — 10% [surge capacity] might be enough,” Martin said. “But we don’t know that, and we’re not going to know that without significantly more analysis. And then the problem will be that as that [conflict] occurs, it’s going to be too late to do much about it.”

US Army says open system requirements clear for next-gen helicopter

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — U.S. Army officials stressed the service was clear in laying out its requirements for a modular open systems architecture and what the service wants Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft competitors to provide in proposals to prove the capability.

Lockheed Martin-owned Sikorsky’s misinterpretation of the level of detail needed to prove its aircraft design had an open system architecture resulted in the disqualification of its proposal, according to Sikorsky’s president, and ultimately, the loss of a chance to win a contract potentially worth $70 billion over the life of the program.

Sikorsky won’t sue Army after GAO rejected protest over future helicopter

A Sikorsky-Boeing team lost the Army’s competition to build FLRAA in December to Textron’s Bell. Bell designed, proposed and will build a next-generation tiltrotor aircraft that will serve the long-range assault mission beginning in 2030.

Sikorsky protested the decision, which the Government Accountability Office denied in April, revealing that the team’s proposal received an “unacceptable” rating in the engineering design and development category’s architecture sub-category.

“Overall, the functional architecture provided by [Sikorsky] did not demonstrate an adequate approach to meet the requirements of the solicitation and deferred the work scope to the Weapon System Development Program where the functional architecture would be more fully defined,” the GAO report reads.

“These significant weaknesses and weaknesses resulted from insufficient evidence and inadequately defined scope to determine how [Sikorsky’s] proposed architecture would meet the government’s [Modular Open System Architecture] and architecture requirements and presents a cost and schedule impact resulting in an unacceptable risk during the Weapon System Development Program,” it said.

“I want to be real clear that I’m not characterizing why Sikorsky or Lockheed lost … I don’t know why that happened,” Maj. Gen. Robert Barrie, the Army’s program evaluation officer for aviation, said in an interview with Defense News at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference last week.

“I was not part of the actual source selection,” he said, “so I had the same concern initially that probably everyone would have, like, ‘Hey, are we not communicating something clearly?’”

But, Barrie said, “we’ve done a very rigorous assessment of ourselves and our assessment is that, yes, we are communicating clearly,” based on consultation with a one-thousand members-deep Architecture Collaboration Working Group comprised of industry, academia and government subject matter experts.

The Army also received feedback from both teams competing that they did understand what the MOSA approach is across FVL’s suite of systems, Barrie added.

The Army “could not have been more clear over the last couple of years about the digital position that they were taking as it relates to modular open systems approaches,” Jeffrey Langhout, the services’ Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center director, said at the conference.

‘A fifth grader could understand it”

Last year, at the same event, his directorate put together a video using a fifth grader to explain MOSA, playing it during a panel discussion. “We intentionally made it to where a fifth grader could understand it… to try to help people understand it’s not nearly as complicated as it sounds, which is really just existing standards, not somebody’s special mouse trap [where] they are the only people in the world that understand how that mouse trap works,” Langhout said. “It’s really that simple, but yet it’s amazing how unbelievably complicated some folks try to make it.”

The two-star general in charge of the Army’s vertical lift modernization detailed the extent the service has worked to get MOSA right particularly within the mission system architecture over the past decade. The service conducted rigorous evaluations using technology demonstrators, which resulted in an Army Oversight Requirements Council approval in June 2020 to move forward on the program, Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen said at the conference.

Sikorsky President Paul Lemmo fired back on some initial reports where he felt it sounded like the team’s entire engineering effort and design was unacceptable “and that was not the case,” he told Defense News in an interview at the conference.

According to Lemmo, Sikorsky and the Army had different interpretations of the degree of information that was needed to prove it could be modular and open at lower sub-system levels within the mission system architecture for the aircraft and that resulted in the team not providing enough information where it was required within the submitted proposal.

“If you are deemed unacceptable in any one sub-factor, that means the entire factor is unacceptable and therefore you’re un-awardable,” Lemmo added. “It’s unfortunate, but that’s how it works.”

Lockheed knows how to design and operate within open architectures, Lemmo stressed, and has done so across many platforms.

Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft

Lemmo said the company has learned from the loss and “if there’s any good news coming out of a loss is that the Army’s feedback on X2 was positive.”

The team’s submission – Defiant X – was based on Sikorsky’s X2 coaxial rotor technology, which it has been working on for decades. The company has been flying smaller prototypes including the Raider aircraft. Raider is still logging flight hours and collecting data at the company’s West Palm Beach, Florida, flight test center.

Sikorsky is again facing off against Bell in the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft competition. Both teams have fully built competitive prototypes that await the Army’s next-generation Improved Turbine Engine Program, or ITEP, engine before a fly-off expected to kick off in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024.

“The capability that [Defiant X] provided for the mission areas that the Army wanted was very, very solid and the Army agreed with that,” Lemmo said. “We’re not deterred in any way as we look toward FARA in terms of what X2 can provide in that mission as well.”

Is America postured for a fight in the Indo-Pacific?

The Biden administration promised 2023 would be “the most transformative year” for U.S. force posture in the Indo-Pacific region in a generation. With a trio of major political announcements and a proposed budget boost, 2023 is off to a strong start. But there is no time for a scenic overlook of recent accomplishments. To achieve the transformative effect needed to bolster deterrence against China, the Biden administration needs to keep its foot on the gas.

In January, the United States and Japan agreed to keep the U.S. 3rd Marine Division in Okinawa (instead of Guam) and to replace it with the new 12th Marine Littoral Regiment in 2025. The two countries also agreed to share ammunition storage at Kadena Air Base.

In February, the United States and the Philippines agreed to designate four new sites as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA, which provides access for U.S. forces.

In March, the United States agreed as part of the AUKUS security partnership to increased U.S. submarine port visits to Australia and to rotate up to four Virginia-class submarines by as early as 2027.

Also in March, the Pentagon’s budget request included $2.3 billion for military construction west of the international date line — a $400 million increase from the prior year.

So far so good. But overcoming a decade-long “say-do” gap on Indo-Pacific posture and keeping pace with a rapidly evolving Chinese military threat will require sustained urgency matched by robust investment.

Building on recent political momentum is critical. With Japan, we need ambitious defense diplomacy to secure new access for U.S. forces and to make shared use of bases, ports, airfields and other facilities the rule, not the exception. And after years of legal and political challenges, the U.S. and the Philippines need to make up for lost time and maximize the potential of EDCA sites through accelerated investment and expanded combined training and operations.

More posture dollars should be focused directly on achieving a more distributed and resilient posture. Most investment in the Indo-Pacific is dedicated to maintaining existing facilities or executing legacy posture initiatives, some of questionable relevance to the current or future threat. That investment is also geographically concentrated. West of the international date line, the Pentagon plans to spend 75% of fiscal 2024 military construction funds in Japan and Guam — up from 66% the previous year. Going forward, more investment is needed in the second island chain, Oceania and Southeast Asia.

Beyond politics and budgets, achieving a “transformative” effect on Indo-Pacific posture requires actually moving forces. The Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” was matched with two additional destroyers and fifth-generation fighters in Japan; an additional submarine and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery in Guam; and rotational littoral combat ships in Singapore, among other moves. The Biden administration needs to demonstrate similar follow-through, and there’s plenty of options to do so.

The Air Force has operated fifth-generation aircraft for nearly two decades, but it has no plan to permanently station its most advanced fighters in the Indo-Pacific. The Air Force has promised to maintain a continuous fighter presence at Kadena Air Base in Japan, including fifth-generation aircraft, as it withdraws and retires F-15C/D aircraft. Beyond that, it has offered no specifics. Basing F-35As at Misawa Air Base in Japan would be a strong next step.

The Multi-Domain Task Force is central to the Army’s contribution toward joint operations in the Indo-Pacific. But while it has based MDTFs in Washington state and Hawaii, the Army does not yet plan to station an MDTF west of the international date line. The Army chief of staff recently hinted this may change. The Biden administration should ensure it does, including by prioritizing access for an MDTF in defense diplomacy with Japan.

The Navy has long pledged to send its most advanced ships and aircraft to the Indo-Pacific. However, of the Navy’s 20 commissioned Virginia-class submarines — critical to the U.S. military’s advantage over China — the Navy has sent 14 to Atlantic ports and just six to Pacific ports. And none of the Navy’s most advanced attack boats are homeported west of the international date line. While keeping pace with Russia’s submarine threat is critical, the Biden administration should rebalance that laydown by stationing Virginia-class submarines in Guam and San Diego, California.

The Biden administration should also accelerate investment in the logistics network that is essential for credible deterrence and effective warfighting. Fuel storage and distribution is critical, especially with the planned closure of Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. But the Pentagon is kicking the fuel can down the road. The Defense Logistics Agency plans to spend at least $360 million over the five-year Future Years Defense Program in projects for fuel facilities and storage west of the international date line. But it has requested no funding for those projects in next two fiscal years, and punted most projects to FY27 and FY28. Working with Congress, the Biden administration should accelerate these projects as able.

The weaknesses of U.S. force posture in the Indo-Pacific have contributed to the erosion of credible deterrence. But with sustained diplomatic urgency, robust investment and more advanced capabilities, a transformation of U.S. force posture can help restore and preserve credible deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.

Dustin Walker is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. He was previously a professional staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and an adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.