DOD – On the National Security Beat http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat On the National Security Beat Tue, 29 Sep 2015 20:29:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Agile Acquisition to Retain Technological Edge Act: A Journalist’s Guide to H.R. 1597 http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat/agile-acquisition-to-retain-technological-edge-act-a-journalists-guide-to-h-r-1597/ Sun, 05 Apr 2015 15:51:20 +0000 http://onthebeat.nationalsecurityzone.org/?p=2417 WASHINGTON — Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, doesn’t want America to fear the future.

Terrorism, cyberattacks, epidemics and tumult in the Mideast and Africa threaten U.S. security, he says, and the Defense Department needs to be ready. To him that means reforms are needed in acquisition of goods and services, personnel and organization. Especially important is buying technology to keep pace with the changing environment.

“Nobody can foresee what’s going to happen over the next 16 months,” he said recently. “What we do know is the velocity of change is accelerating and that the unexpected will spring out on us.  The question is how well do we, or how well can we, respond.”

“Today you see countries like Russia and China trying to outflank us using technology, whether it’s deploying carrier-killing missiles or building radar that can detect stealth.”.

Thornberry, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. edge in technology is decreasing, citing “the general pace of change” and “our broken budget process and acquisition process” as factors contributing to what he calls “an eroding American technological superiority.”

“The only defense is to adapt quicker than they do,” he said. “I don’t want to see America outflanked.”

Thornberry has proposed acquisition reform legislation, co-sponsoring with Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., a bill called the Agile Acquisition to Retain Technological Edge Act, H.R. 1597.

According to a House Armed Services Committee press release, the bill’s introduction was timed so that the public’s feedback could be obtained before the legislative ball starts rolling on the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act.  This way, Thornberry explained at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on March 23, the bill could function as “a discussion draft for the first tranche of legislative proposals to fix our acquisitions system.” During his CSIS talk, Thornberry noted that the full committee markup of the newest iteration of the NDAA is slated to begin on April 29.

Here is an introductory guide to this legislation.

Full Text of H.R. 1597:

(Source: House Armed Services Committee)

 

Draft Report on H.R. 1597:

(Source: House Armed Services Committee)

 

A Quick Outline of What Reforms Thornberry Has Proposed

(Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies talk on March 23, 2015)

  1. People
    • Take away some barriers that make it hard for “top military talent” to have a role in acquisition process
    • Make Defense Acquisition Workforce Development Fund permanent
    • Enact mandatory commercial-market training to close industry-government gap
    • Enact mandatory ethics training for industry-government interactions
  2. Acquisitions Strategy
    • Every program needs to start with a written and “upfront” acquisitions strategy that is updated
    • Consolidates multiple reporting requirements
    • Choose types of contracts used on an acquisition-by-acquisition basis
    • Evaluate whether a multi-year plan is suitable on an acquisition-by-acquisition basis
    • Include risk mitigation strategies for acquisition plan
    • Consider incentives
    • Possibility of allowing shared savings on service contracts mentioned
  3. Chain of Command
    • Simplify chain of command for acquisitions decisions
    • Move from legal certification to a decision and decrease number of lawyers involved in process
    • Raise dollar thresholds on authorities to enable ease of getting things done
    • Keep testing/research community in R&D and out of decision-making
  4. Regulations & Paperwork
    • Pare down reporting requirements
    • Keep a single decision-maker accountable within the acquisitions process

Watch Thornberry’s full CSIS address here:

Expert Feedback

CSIS Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group Director Andrew Hunter praised Thornberry for capturing “both sides of the coin,” in the sense that the plan married good intentions with an awareness of the facts that other potentially positive plans of action are out there and a “silver-bullet quick fix to the system” doesn’t exist.  He said Thornberry’s “areas of focus and the way he’s thinking about the problem” were very optimistic, despite the fact that the language of the legislation was pending at the time of the interview.

Hunter said he interpreted Thornberry’s chain-of-command simplification goal to mean that every person in the acquisitions process would not have veto power versus experts being nixed from the process.

“At the end of the day, what you want is you want experts who come to you and say ‘no kidding, this is how we see it; this is, this is our vision of ground truth,’” he said, going on to explain that there needs to be an individual separate from the experts to distill various experts’ input and perspectives into a final, authoritative decision.

Hunter said he thinks Thornberry is on the right track, but that “acquisition workforce is critical” and that he wants program managers “to have good judgment” and a basic comprehension of the acquisitions-sector discipline. He also said he’d like to see defense acquisition reforms mirror changes occurring in technology and industry.

“The world of today and the world certainly of tomorrow is not the world of the 50s and 60s, and, so, we definitely want to make sure that we are adapting and adaptable to those changes,” Hunter said.

 5 Questions Reporters Could Ask About the Bill:

  1. What is the timeline for the rollout of the reform if the bill is ratified?
  2. During his CSIS address, Thornberry discussed the minimization of pre-acquisition “paperwork” in order to streamline the defense acquisitions process.  
    1. What types of documents, in particular, are set to be minimized?
    2. Will there an alternative source or process by which journalists covering acquisitions could theoretically obtain that quantitative and/or qualitative data if the research is being done but reports are not issued for the sake of reducing this bulk?
  3. In the same CSIS address, Thornberry said that the decrease in pre-acquisition reporting was intended to reduce “second-guessing” on the part of program managers within the acquisitions process.  
    1. How do Thornberry and Smith define the line between responsible research and second-guessing?  
    2. What is a real-world example of a line of research that would be nixed vs. one that would be preserved for the sake of checks and balances remaining in the process?
  4. Will there be any shift in the hiring process for program managers within the acquisitions process in response to the increased level of responsibility and authority that the proposed legislation would afford them?
  5. How would the streamlined chain of command proposed by the legislation impact employment rates in the defense sector?
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SOCOM Commander: Serving Special Ops members and families, readiness among most important storylines for coming year http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat/socom-commander-serving-special-ops-members-and-families-readiness-among-most-important-storylines-for-coming-year/ Tue, 24 Mar 2015 23:03:12 +0000 http://onthebeat.nationalsecurityzone.org/?p=2396 WASHINGTON – U.S. Special Operations Command’s dedication to providing resources to its members and their families is “perhaps the most important” story that needs to be told by military journalists writing about Special Operations forces, said Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of SOCOM, in an interview Wednesday.

After testifying before the House Armed Services Committee’s Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee about the SOF’s posture ahead of the creation of his command’s FY16 budget, Votel underscored this loyalty as a vital thread in SOF’s current story.

“Combat deployments come along with a lot of stress and a lot of invisible challenges,” he said in an interview. “We are very attuned to those and we are focused on those to make sure that we are doing the very best things we can for our people and their families to have those things offered.”

Votel’s testimony highlighted the burden that repeated deployments since 2001 has taken on SOCCOM’s uniformed and civilian ranks, as well as their families.

Other SOCOM storylines he said he’d like to see explored by the press are special operations’ contributions to supporting America’s objectives in areas where it is currently engaged, its future-minded approach to readiness and its capability to handle “very, very complex missions.”

“We want people to understand that SOF is ready to do the missions the nation requires,” he said in the interview. According to Votel’s testimony, special operations forces capabilities are uniquely tailored for gray-zone operations, which he described as existing “between normal international competition and open conflict.”

When asked what forms of nonmonetary support he felt SOCOM might need – since talk of the sequester’s impact on the military was a primary theme of his testimony – Votel stressed the importance of government funding of other service branches to SOCOM’s success.

“If there was one more dollar, we should give it to the services,” he said in the interview. “We are dependent upon the services to help us accomplish our mission, and, so, I would like to… make sure they’re taken care of, because I’m very dependent on them.”

In his testimony, Votel said SOCOM is “absolutely dependent upon” the other services for “mission support.”

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) Michael D. Lumpkin echoed this concept in his congressional testimony, telling the subcommittee that “the changing nature of the threats we face today demands SOF attention and engagement through agile authorities that enable us to remain ahead of our adversaries.” Increased authorities, Lumpkin testified, result in increased capabilities.

Votel also told the subcommittee that he is concerned about international cyber and social-media-based threats to U.S. national security during his Congressional testimony, a point which could also be a compelling angle from which to report on SOF.

Watch the full hearing here:

To help you glean even more story ideas, check out Votel’s and Lumpkin’s submitted written testimonies from the hearing below.

Gen. Votel’s testimony:

ASD SO/LIC Michael D. Lumpkin’s testimony:

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Military gear caches at the local level http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat/military-gear-caches-at-the-local-level/ Fri, 15 Aug 2014 22:04:56 +0000 http://onthebeat.nationalsecurityzone.org/?p=2311 New York Times today published a great interactive resource for finding out how militarized your local police departments have become, courtesy of Washington. http://nyti.ms/1t2BM79

NYT military gear interactive map

Click for interactive map showing surplus military gear local departments have gotten from Washington.

UPDATED 8/18 MuckRock.com has handy links to state totals for 1033 distribution, by item type, from 2011 thorough March 2013. While the data doesn’t break down by department level, that MuckRock post has a link to a spreadsheet that shows agencies in your state (although not what they received). MuckRock said it has filed a FOIA request for expanded data.

And the Washington Post’s Wonkblog has some interesting tables, including state breakdowns on value of the surplus property by sworn officer. Alabama is No. 1, at $10,000 per officer, compared to Hawaii, in last place, at $161.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Homeland security grants at work protecting pumpkin festivals, Easter egg hunts and spring training games.

And finally, John Oliver’s take last night on police militarization.

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Pentagon’s annual report on sexual assaults http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat/pentagons-annual-report-on-sexual-assaults/ Thu, 01 May 2014 17:50:09 +0000 http://onthebeat.nationalsecurityzone.org/?p=2043 We won’t bother with a recap because there are plenty of stories out there summarizing the findings, but here are some links to the Department of Defense’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military and related documents. All were released just a few minutes ago. The first three are PDFs, and the report itself is beefy (39MB).

 

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$61 million in duplicate technology programs unearthed at Defense and Homeland Security http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat/61-million-in-duplicate-technology-programs-unearthed-at-defense-and-homeland-security/ Thu, 19 Sep 2013 13:10:59 +0000 http://onthebeat.nationalsecurityzone.org/?p=1246 The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Homeland Defense spent $61 million on six potentially  redundant information technology projects, a study by the General Accountability Office found.

GAO report on duplicative IT resources

Details directly from the report on what was found:

“Two potentially duplicative investments totaling about $30 million at DHS that are used to “book” and process apprehended illegal aliens who are suspected of committing criminal and administrative violations, commonly referred to as immigration enforcement booking management;

“Four such investments totaling about $31 million at DOD, which include two investments totaling $16 million that track health care status of warfighters and two investments totaling $15 million that manage dental care.”

The GAO said the Department of Defense cancelled one of the health care systems and will consolidate the dental systems “but had not developed a plan on how this was to be accomplished.”

Homeland Security cited “unique requirements” for the dual immigration booking systems, “but were unable to provide analysis showing why one system couldnot satisfy the unique requirements.”

Read the full GAO report (PDF)

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Worth a watch: good session on whistleblowers http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat/good-session-on-whistleblowers/ Wed, 17 Jul 2013 15:40:30 +0000 http://onthebeat.nationalsecurityzone.org/?p=901 There was a pretty good panel discussion a few weeks ago at the American Society of News Editors conference in Washington on whistleblowers. The archive has been posted and you can watch it below.

Here’s who you’ll see and hear in the session on “The Government vs. the Press:”

  • Kathleen Carroll, Associated Press executive editor
  • James Rosen, Fox News chief Washington correspondent/host of Foxhole
  • Thomas Drake, National Security Agency senior employee turned whistle-blower (his prosecution under the Espionage Act collapsed in 2011)
  • Moderator Marty Baron, The Washington Post executive editor
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DOD: Thanks for submitting to us http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat/dod-thanks-for-submitting/ Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:34:29 +0000 http://onthebeat.nationalsecurityzone.org/?p=867 Couldn’t help but chuckle when the Department of Defense web site thanked me for my “submission” after I sent in an e-mail question. . . Unintended double entendre, I’m sure, from an agency that is most certainly in the submission business.

Thanks for the submission

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Browse or download the DoD’s 2012 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat/browse-or-download-the-dods-2012-annual-report-on-sexual-assault-in-the-military/ Tue, 07 May 2013 21:20:17 +0000 http://onthebeat.nationalsecurityzone.org/?p=480 Department of DefenseAnnual Report on SexualAssaultin the Military -- FY 2012New data from the Pentagon shows a 6% increase in sexual assaults in the military between 2011 and 2012 — 3,374 vs. 3,192 the year before.

Some 6.1% of active duty women reported some kind of unwanted sexual contact — up from 4.4% the year before. The number for men was 1.2%, about the same as 2011.

Today’s release of the annual Department of Defense report on assaults, based on anonymous surveys, comes just days after an Air Force officer with responsibility for an assault prevention unit was arrested in Virginia on sexual assault charges, sparking outrage and fallout in Congress, at the Pentagon and across the country. There have been gobs of stories on the latter incident, as well as the reaction, so we’ll focus instead on making the new report available for review.

Both volumes can be browsed (or downloaded) by visiting our page here, or clicking on the image upper right.

Note: Earlier reports back to 2004 are available here.

Military sexual assaults since 2004

Military sexual assaults since 2004. SOURCE: Department of Defense

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One in five females in military have faced unwanted sexual contact, new survey reveals http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat/one-in-five-females-in-military-have-faced-unwanted/ Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:32:00 +0000 http://onthebeat.nationalsecurityzone.org/?p=8 Some 22% of women in the U.S. military said they have been victims of unwanted sexual contact by someone in the service, and the issues seems to be most significant in the Marine Corps, where 30% — nearly 1 in 3 — women reported unwanted advances.  Among men, by comparison, 3.3% said they were victims. 

The data is from a final version of a major global, anonymous survey of military personnel done every three years by the Department of Defense, TRICARE and others. About 40,000 participated in the survey, which was done in 2011 but was not made public until a few days ago.

The survey is exhaustive and covers many issues, including substance abuse, stress and mental health, including post-traumatic stress, depression, gender issues, suicide and traumatic brain injury.

Tables below are from the report, which is available in full as a PDF on in our DocumentCloud folder.  (The previous report from 2008 is available here.)

WOMEN

image


MEN

image

COMBINED

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New homeland defense strategy from the DOD http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/onthebeat/new-homeland-defense-strategy-from-the-dod/ Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:17:10 +0000 http://onthebeat.nationalsecurityzone.org/?p=20 The Department of Defense released a new version of its homeland defense strategic plan today, looking out toward 2020 (press release). It appears to be an update of its 2005 version. PDFs: 2013 | 2005

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