Congressional Leaders Working on Compromise NDAA, Hope to Pass It in Early December

Congressional Leaders Working on Compromise NDAA, Hope to Pass It in Early December

Nov. 16, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Leaders on the Armed Services Committees in both the House and Senate are crafting a compromise National Defense Authorization Act and still hope to pass the annual policy bill before the end of 2022, HASC chair Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said Nov. 16.

Once more, lawmakers are scrambling to pass the NDAA at the end of the calendar year—and after the fiscal year has already turned over—as Congress sorts through a massive to-do list while running up against a deadline.

Both the House Armed Services Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee passed their respective markups of the 2023 NDAA in June, and the House passed its final version in July. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the chair and ranking member of the SASC, introduced the bill on the Senate floor in October, and Senators proposed hundreds of amendments.

But just like last year, the Senate never took action in considering those amendments, consumed by other priorities. In 2021, that included President Joe Biden’s massive proposed “Build Back Better” bill, among other pieces of legislation. This year, the midterm elections kept lawmakers on the campaign trail for much of October.

Now, with the holidays approaching, time is running short to get the NDAA to Biden’s desk, especially if the Senate passed its own version, which would require a conference process to reconcile it with the House bill.

Instead, leaders from both parties and both chambers are crafting a compromise bill outside of the conference process, as they did last year, with the intention of passing it unchanged in both the House and Senate.

That process is led by Reed, Inhofe, Smith, and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the ranking member in the HASC.

“We’re making progress. We’ve got another meeting tomorrow, and I’m pretty sure by the end of this week, we will have a bill that the House and the Senate, Democrats and Republicans, agree upon,” Smith said on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Nov. 16. “And the plan would be to pass it the first week of December. So we’re making good progress and are confident that we’ll get it done.”

That plan for quick passage could be in jeopardy, however. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), currently the House Minority Leader and likely to be Speaker of the House in the next Congress, reportedly said the legislature should wait until January to move on the NDAA, according to States Newsroom.

Speaking at Politico’s Defense Summit, Smith pushed back on that idea and called out McCarthy by name. 

“I hope Kevin McCarthy understands. … He claims to care about national defense. You are damaging the United States military every day past Oct. 1 that you don’t get it done. And certainly more so every day past Jan. 1,” Smith said.

Passing the NDAA every year has become a rite of passage for Congress, one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement over the past six decades. 

As of late, though, that rarely has gotten done before the start of the new fiscal year each Oct. 1. There have even been a few recent examples of the NDAA not being finalized until the new calendar year—the Senate voted to override a presidential veto on the fiscal 2021 bill on Jan. 1, 2021. The 2008 NDAA didn’t get through Congress until Jan. 22, 2008.

Still, national security experts, Pentagon officials, and lawmakers focused on defense overwhelmingly prefer to pass it before the end of the year. While the NDAA does not appropriate funding for the Pentagon, it is often tied closely to that funding and directs how the Defense Department can and should spend its money.

Without an NDAA or a new budget, the Pentagon is stuck under continuing resolutions, which keep funding levels frozen at the previous year’s levels and prevent new programs from starting. It’s an issue Air Force leaders and others have frequently bemoaned, and it was cited by two other Congress members at Politico’s summit: Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) and Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.).

“The annual passage of the NDAA is the beating heart of Congress,” Cooper said. “It is over half of the discretionary work that Congress does during the whole year. This one bill has been passed reliably for six decades. If this process were to stop due to partisanship, due to whatever, that cripples our nation’s ability to respond to threats. [Continuing resolutions] are bad enough. They interrupt the process—they’re kind of like arrhythmia. But not passing an NDAA? That’s more like a heart attack.”

When asked about McCarthy’s proposal to wait until January, Lamborn said, “I mean, there are some things I didn’t like, some amendments, but that’s inevitable when you have a large piece of legislation like that. I think it’s important to pass the NDAA as soon as possible and get the funding as soon as possible so that contracts can be let out and new programs can be established and opened up instead of continuing in a sort of hibernation where nothing is happening and they are frozen in place under an existing funding stream where they can’t start anything new.”

In addition to the NDAA, Congress will have to act fast to avoid another continuing resolution—the current one is scheduled to expire after Dec. 16.

Serious Shortcomings in DOD’s Cyber Incident Reporting, GAO Says

Serious Shortcomings in DOD’s Cyber Incident Reporting, GAO Says

Nov. 16, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The Government Accountability Office found significant deficiencies in the Department of Defense’s cyber incident reporting practices, deficiencies the GAO said prevent the DOD from fully understanding and preventing cyber breaches, according to a report to Congress released Nov. 14.

According to the report, DOD reported 948 “cyber incidents” in 2021, an increase from 812 in 2020. However, DOD has made significant progress in the past few years, from a high of 3,880 recorded incidents in 2015, with more than 12,000 incidents between 2015 and 2021. The report is the latest GAO finding that has criticized the Defense Department’s cybersecurity efforts.

The GAO said the “deployment of defense mechanisms during this time period” since 2015 helped the DOD improve its cybersecurity. For example, the department now has processes to manage all incidents and ones it deems “critical.” But GAO said DOD has yet to fully implement its own plans and still has no consistent guidance for managing cyber incidents across the department and the defense industrial base. The GAO also said DOD lacks appropriate practices for notifying affected individuals whose personal information may be accessed in a cyberattack.

“DOD has taken steps to combat these attacks and has reduced the number of cyber incidents in recent years,” the GAO said in a summary of its 70-page report. “But we found that DOD: Hasn’t fully implemented its processes for managing cyber incidents; Doesn’t have complete data on cyber incidents that staff report; Doesn’t document whether it notifies individuals whose personal data is compromised in a cyber incident.”

The GAO drew on DOD’s own data in arriving at its conclusions. It found that 91 percent of reports did not include information about when the cyber incident was discovered, making it difficult to determine whether threats are being detected quickly. Sixty-eight percent of reports did not include information on the incident’s “delivery vector,” inhibiting the DOD’s ability to shore up its defenses.

In addition to national security and intellectual property that cyber incidents might threaten, the GAO said DOD may be leaving individuals open to identity theft or other risks by not notifying them when their personal information is compromised.

“DOD has not consistently documented the notifications of affected individuals, because officials said notifications are often made verbally or by email and no record is retained,” the GAO said. “Without documenting the notification, DOD cannot verify that people were informed about the breach.”

The GAO also identified problems outside DOD with the defense industrial base, the vast array of private companies that supply and sustain America’s military. While the DOD requires companies to report cyber incidents within 72 hours, about 51 percent of incidents were submitted to DOD after more than four days, according to the GAO. In addition, the information companies provide is often not detailed, and reports are sometimes unclear on whether DOD programs, platforms, or systems were involved.

“Unfortunately, there’s only one thing that is required of the vendors right now, and that’s reporting if they have an incident,” the Department of Defense’s acting principal chief information officer David McKeown said at a Politico event Nov. 16. “There is a little bit of reluctance for a company to share anything with us. If we were to go in and take a look at their network and find out that it is abysmal, they wouldn’t want that information to be leaked out that there’s a problem here.”

The GAO offered a number of recommendations, which it says the DOD agrees with. It charges that the CIO, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), and the commander of Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network assign responsibility for overseeing cyber incident reporting and notification, ensure the DOD has better visibility over cyber incidents, and issue new guidance that has more detailed procedures for notifying leadership of critical incidents. The GAO said DOD should review its practices regarded incidents related to the Defense Industrial Base. Finally, DOD should ensure that individuals affected by data breaches are notified.

“DOD does not have assurance that its leadership has an accurate picture of the department’s cybersecurity posture,” the GAO report said.

Without specifically addressing the GAO report, McKeown acknowledged deficiencies in the DOD cyber incident reporting practices.

“We’ve made progress on our normal networks to try to secure those and secure the data and make sure that those weapons systems that are actually computers are operational in a time of war,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done on other things.”

Air Force Fails Audit Once More, But Kendall Claims ‘Considerable’ Progress

Air Force Fails Audit Once More, But Kendall Claims ‘Considerable’ Progress

Nov. 16, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Department of the Air Force once again failed its audit but made progress in cleaning up its books, according to a report announced Nov. 16.

The Pentagon has been conducting full-scale audits since 2016, and the Air Force has financial statements dating back to at least 2008. 

Since 2008, the Air Force has never produced a clean audit for either its General Fund, which supports its core missions and overall operations, or its Working Capital Fund, which provides maintenance services, weapon system parts, and base and medical supplies in support of core functions. Prior to fiscal 2017, these disclaimers were all based on the department’s financial records not conforming to standard accounting practices.  

Last year, however, the Air Force touted its progress in reducing the number of major issues identified by independent public accounting firm Ernst & Young—called material weaknesses—from 22 to 19.

This year’s audit showed less progress on that front, with the number of material weaknesses only slipping from 19 to 18. But in a letter introducing the audit, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the department continues to be among DOD’s “leaders in audit remediation and material weakness reduction.”

The Air Force’s own management identified 17 material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting, chalking up the difference between their number and the 18 identified by auditors as a “function of timing between the Statement of Assurance issuance and the date of the Auditor’s Report.”

Overall, the Pentagon failed its audit for the fifth consecutive year, and in a briefing with reporters, comptroller Michael J. McCord acknowledged that he was not seeing “the progress I would have hoped for.”

In his letter, Kendall also noted that “though our progress has been considerable, we cannot take our hand off the throttle.”

Technically speaking, the auditors looking at the DAF’s general fund and working capital fund issued a “disclaimer of opinion,” indicating that they could not formulate an opinion on the department’s financial statements.

The basis for that disclaimer, the auditors wrote in their report, is “unresolved accounting issues and material weaknesses in internal controls,” meaning the Air Force could not provide the necessary documentation for “complete and accurate” financial records on a timely basis.

The department’s material weaknesses in internal controls range from problems with the integration and reconciliation of financial systems to inventory count procedures. Generally speaking, the issues involve the need for IT and systems modernization, improvements in assessing costs, and better documentation.

The one material weakness the auditors identified the Air Force as resolving in the past year was in oversight and monitoring of internal control, which was downgraded to the designation of “significant deficiency.” Particularly, the White House Office of Management and Budget has established standards and guidelines for agencies to monitor their internal financial practices, which the Air Force has worked to implement.

The Air Force’s previously stated goal is to get a clean audit opinion on its General Fund by fiscal 2026 and for its Working Capital Fund by fiscal 2028. That timeline is still intact based on the department’s projected correction dates for its material weaknesses. Indeed, many of those targeted corrections are scheduled to be completed in the next year or two—10 by fiscal 2024.

“We [continue] to push the Department of the Air Force closer toward a clean audit opinion by following our Audit Roadmaps and prioritizing activities that correct high-impact material weaknesses,” Kendall wrote.

AFSOC Commander Slife Nominated to Become Deputy Chief for Operations

AFSOC Commander Slife Nominated to Become Deputy Chief for Operations

Nov. 16, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife, currently the head of Air Force Special Operations Command, is slated to join the Air Staff. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III announced Nov. 16 that Slife has been nominated by President Joe Biden to become the Air Force’s next deputy chief of staff for operations.

Slife, who has commanded AFSOC since June 2019, will succeed Lt. Gen. Joseph T. Guastella, whose retirement was announced in May.

The deputy chief of staff for operations oversees a broad portfolio but is primarily responsible for “providing policy, guidance, and oversight for … operations, training, and sourcing of [Air Force] capabilities and personnel to support joint operations, and representing [Air Force] operations” to the broader Pentagon, according to Air Force policy.

The deputy chief also assists the Chief of Staff in “providing and allocating operationally ready … forces and capabilities in response to the needs of the combatant commanders.”

Slife comes to the position after more than 30 years in uniform, much of it in special operations. Before leading AFSOC, he served consecutive assignments as chief of staff and vice commander for U.S. Special Operations Command in addition to stints as a top planner for U.S. Central Command. He has also commanded special operations Airmen at the squadron, group, and wing levels.

Under Guastella, the Air Force introduced a new Force Generation Model in which Airmen cycle through ​​four “bins,” each lasting six months for a 24-month cycle. In a September event with the Air & Space Forces Association, Slife extolled the benefits of that model in the context of his own experience in AFSOC, saying it helped him to articulate risk to combatant commanders by simplifying terminology and timelines.

“We’ve been unable to talk about our capacity in a way that resonates with the Joint Force. It becomes too technical and complicated. And so when we migrated to a four-cycle force generation model, it allows us to have these conversations very unemotionally and very fact-based and allows us to articulate risk and capacity in a way that has really eluded us,” Slife said.

At the same time, Slife came out strongly against the centralization of resources, saying he was on a “jihad” against it within AFSOC.

When the Air Force or major commands consolidate all of one capability into one unit, it may seem that there is enough capacity to go around, Slife said. But when “maximum effort and deploying” are required, the shortfall becomes clear.

Instead of organizing units around capabilities, Slife wants to organize around mission sets, which “[highlights] the shortages we have,” he said.

Such a mindset will likely inform his approach to his new job, where he’ll also be responsible for helping guide the Air Force’s transition toward agile combat employment, the operational concept in which smaller teams of Airmen operate out of remote or austere locations, sometimes perform jobs they don’t typically do, and can move quickly as needed.

ACE has become a key part of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s push for “multi-capable Airmen” who encourage innovation and change, and at AFSOC, Slife operationalized the concept with Mission Sustainment Teams—groups of Airmen with different speciality codes who can support themselves and other units anywhere in the field.

Slife’s nomination has been submitted to the Senate, where he’ll have to wait for confirmation. The process might take some time, as lawmakers face a lengthy to-do list after the midterm elections but before a new Congress begins in January.

Slife wasn’t the only Air Force nomination announced Nov. 16. Maj. Gen. Steven S. Nordhaus has been tapped to receive a third star and take command of 1st Air Force (Air Forces Northern), as well as the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s continental U.S. region. Nordhaus is currently in the Air National Guard, serving in the National Guard Bureau as the director of domestic operations and force development.

Brookings Panel: Pentagon Progressing Slowly in Meeting New Challenges

Brookings Panel: Pentagon Progressing Slowly in Meeting New Challenges

Nov. 15, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Four years after the National Defense Strategy reset the American military focus from counter-extremism to “Great Power Competition”—and two weeks after the Pentagon’s new NDS named China the pacing threat—the Defense Department is only sluggishly taking concrete steps to change its operating constructs, although the Air Force is setting the right tone, defense experts said in a Brookings Institution webinar.

In a Nov. 14 program titled “U.S. Defense Innovation and Great Power Deterrence,” experts said the U.S. is not yet fielding the right equipment or moving quickly enough to change its way of war.

“The legacy approach we took to the ‘junior varsity’ adversaries—the Iraqs, the Serbias, the Libyas—consistently fails when it’s tested in our wargaming against a China or Russia; at least, pre-2022 Russia,” said David Ochmanek, senior researcher at RAND Corp. and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for force planning.

“We need to buy more and better stuff … but that in and of itself is not going to move the needle,” Ochmanek said. “In addition to changing what we buy—accelerating the purchase of certain things; buying less of old things, more of new things—we have to think about the new concept of employing them,” he said.

Ochmanek said the Joint Staff has been laboring over a new Joint Warfighting Concept (JWC) for three years, but the document, which he said is now in its third draft, is “a pretty well-informed essay about the demands of fighting in the highly contested environment that can be created by China, or Russia,” but it is “not a blueprint for how to fight.”

The gold standard for such a blueprint was the AirLand Battle concept of the 1980s, which “actually told combatant commanders how to employ forces at their disposal to locate, engage, and destroy the enemy,” Ochmanek said. “It drove posture … modernization … training and doctrine. I am not aware that we have that today,” he said. “And, without that, force planning … is a little hard.”

The NDS released last month did not specify a force-sizing construct for the armed forces, except that they must be able to fight an undefined major war with one peer adversary while deterring a second.

The JWC should precede “the equipping and the posturing of the force,” Ochmanek said, but he has not seen any actions that would “move the needle” on posture, either. The Navy will add a fifth submarine in the vicinity of Guam, he said, but the Air Force is removing its F-15s from Kadena Air Base, Japan. They are important to reassure allies, he said, but would be “targets, not assets” in a war with China, which has hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles aimed at Kadena.

To get a sense that things are really changing, “watch posture,” Ochmanek said.

He noted that it took five months in 1990 for the U.S. and its coalition forces to get ready for the war to eject Iraq from Kuwait, but “We may have [only] five days to get our war-fighting posture together in a future … fight with China.” The old “expeditionary approach to power projection … is not appropriate for defeating aggression by highly capable adversaries” who can create a highly contested environment and “make it very difficult to deploy forces into the theater, and then employ forces once they arrive.”

Ochmanek assigned a letter grade of “D” to the armed services on posture but said the picture is “a little better” with equipment.

He gave high marks to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall for being “highly focused on China” and redirected resources to “several priority areas” he thinks are key to deterring the People’s Republic.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David H. Berger also “seems to get it,” proposing some “fairly radical changes” to the Marine Corps force structure and spending priorities, Ochmanek said, which have largely been met with criticism from former Corps leaders.

The Air Force and Navy are also pushing toward the right munitions with the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), which is a variant of the stealth Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM); and the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile-Extended Range (AARGM-ER).

The Air Force is also “investing in those prosaic things that make air bases harder to kill,” such as fuel bladders and greater agility for forces. He also praised the Air Force’s efforts toward low-cost attritable autonomous aircraft, especially those that can take off without a runway.

“The words coming from Secretary Kendall are fairly encouraging,” he said.

Christian Brose, chief strategy officer of Anduril Industries and a former Senate armed services expert who has written a book called “The Kill Chain,” said, “we’re starting to make progress, but it’s not as much or as fast as it needs to be.”

He noted that the notional date of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan “keeps moving to the left,” though not as fast as it needs to be.” The signs of a new peer threat “were there” in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and China was well into its island-building campaign, so the Pentagon is behind the power curve, he said.

“Where we are right now … is positive,” he said, with three Administrations in a row, across the political spectrum, now agreeing that China is the priority and the way to frame reform of force sizing, posture, and equipment.

“It feels like a pretty enduring consensus around the most important strategic priority,” he said.

The big question, he said, is “are we serious or not?” Because there have been other “pronouncements” of new directions that were then followed by adherence to entrenched ideas.

He praised the approach of Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William A. LaPlante, who is focused on “production of capability. We can talk all we want about new ideas, new technologies, new R&D efforts … but it really only matters if we’re driving real investment into production … to have things at the ready.”

Brose said new things “take time. Even ramping up production of things we have takes time, as the war in Ukraine has put into high relief. You want more Javelins? You want ore GMLRS? Yeah, that’s going to take years.”

He also pushed for more low-cost, autonomous standoff weapons as a key item to deal with China, but urged that the military take a “realistic” view of what the industrial base is capable of. China has more than half the world’s shipbuilding, he noted, while the U.S. has less than five percent.

“Let’s be honest: We’re not going to win the shipbuilding race,” he said.

Instead, he urged increasing production of weapons “we’re going to need and would be able to have inside the next 2-4 years. And not just 20-year-old things … but new things … new capabilities in service of new CONOPS.”

If the services are “serious,” he said, “we’re capable of doing remarkable things on rapid timelines.”

Ochmanek noted that pursuing ideas such as the Air Force’s palletized munitions concept—launching volleys of cruise missiles or other munitions out the back of a cargo plane—are good ideas that impose costs on China to counter. He’s also keen on building the B-21 bomber.

Both Ochmanek and Brose said that if the U.S. military focuses on what it will take to deter or defeat China, then any other scenario will easily be managed as a lesser included case. A Chinese “multi-domain invasion of Taiwan is the appropriate scenario for evaluating our force,” Ochmanek said, because “it is, inarguably, highly plausible,” given long-term Chinese rhetoric about compelling unification by force if necessary. Also, China relying simply on “coercive strategies” could take longer than Beijing has the patience for: “They will be very uncertain in their effects, and I don’t think the Chinese are looking to get involved in a war that would involve the United States, where they can’t have some control over the end game.”

It’s also the most appropriate scenario “because it’s the most demanding,” he said. Even so, he said, “I think it’s more likely that we’ll end up fighting China over some issue in the South China Sea [or] some issue in the East China Sea that involves Japan, [or] something on the Korean peninsula.”

None of those other scenarios, though, “has the time pressure of a Taiwan scenario,” Ochmanek noted. The Chinese could land “100,000 troops on that island in two weeks. That is a tremendously stressing problem for the combatant commander.”

He agreed with moderator Michael O’Hanlon’s characterization that “the glass is a little more than half full” in regards to U.S. capability vis a vis China, but added that “there’s a hole in the bottom of the glass. They’re still cranking out hundreds and hundreds of accurate ballistic and cruise missiles every year. They now have the largest Navy in the world. And it’s not just hardware; their training is getting more realistic. They’re getting after their … human capital … So we’ve got to run pretty hard to stay even with that.”

Ochmanek said the Pentagon is on “Step 1 of a 12-step program: They recognize they have a problem,” he said.

Pentagon Says Ukraine Airspace Still Contested Amid Russian Missile Attack; Strike in Poland Being Investigated

Pentagon Says Ukraine Airspace Still Contested Amid Russian Missile Attack; Strike in Poland Being Investigated

Nov. 15, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A barrage of Russian missiles struck Ukraine on Nov. 15, causing widespread power outages. Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said U.S. officials assessed that the missiles were likely standoff weapons launched from Russian aircraft outside of Ukraine as airspace over the country remains contested.

But as reports emerged that at least one Russian missile had flown into Poland, killing civilians and damaging facilities in a small town near the Ukraine-Poland border, Ryder said the Department of Defense is still assessing the situation.

Ukrainian officials characterized the missile strikes, which Reuters and other outlets reported to be mainly targeting cities and energy facilities, as the most extensive yet in Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February.

They come just days after Russian forces retreated from the city of Kherson, a major strategic blow, and as global leaders—including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian ministers—gathered in Indonesia for the G20 Summit.

Yet despite the large wave of missiles—Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov wrote on social media that more than 90 were fired—the skies above Ukraine have not become more permissive for the Russian Air Force, Ryder said in a press briefing.

“The airspace over Ukraine continues to be contested. Again, without going into a lot of detail, I would say that we assess that these strikes are probably being conducted outside of Ukrainian territory. So in other words, standoff types of strikes,” Ryder said.

Ryder also said the Pentagon has assessed that the missiles were “launched from airborne platforms, so Russian aircraft,” but he pushed back on any assumption that Russia is leaning more heavily on its air force now.

Ryder also said he was unable to confirm how many of the missiles the Ukrainians were able to shoot down, but the Ukrainian Air Force has claimed it took down roughly 70.

The missile strike garnering the most attention, however, was the one that reportedly landed in the Polish village of Przewodów, some 15 miles from the Ukrainian border, the Associated Press reported.

The strike killed two Poles, and images of its destruction have quickly spread across social media, sparking alarm over the potential of NATO being drawn into conflict with Russia—U.S. President Joe Biden has previously pledged to defend “every inch of NATO territory.”

“We are aware of the press reports alleging that two Russian missiles have struck a location inside Poland on the Ukraine border. I can tell you that we don’t have any information at this time to corroborate those reports and are looking into this further,” Ryder said, while reiterating Biden’s pledge to defend NATO territory.

Throughout the rest of the press briefing, Ryder repeatedly declined to detail how the Pentagon would investigate the reports. He also wouldn’t speculate on what kind of response the U.S. and NATO might have if it is determined to be a Russian strike.

“We have a wide variety of means at our disposal to verify information, and so when we have something to provide, we will,” he said.

On social media, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson also wrote that the NSC is aware of the reports and is working to gather more information but cannot confirm anything at this time.

Russia, for its part, has denied that it was responsible for the strike, according to media reports.

Under Article 5 of the NATO alliance, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all, with member nations obliged to assist in whatever response is deemed necessary. Article 4, however, calls for consultation and discussion between member states before any action is taken.

Lunar Activities Advance as Cubesat Enters Orbit, AFRL Awards ‘Oracle’ Contract

Lunar Activities Advance as Cubesat Enters Orbit, AFRL Awards ‘Oracle’ Contract

Nov. 15, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

A cubesat sent to blaze a trail for NASA’s next space station arrived in lunar orbit Nov. 13—the first cubesat known to ever have done so—after a voyage that proved tense at times. Meanwhile, the small company that created the tiny spacecraft secured a new deal with the Air Force Research Laboratory to demonstrate more activities near the moon.

Owned and operated by Advanced Space and built by Terran Orbital, the CAPSTONE cubesat—short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment—launched June 28 via Rocket Lab on its NASA-backed mission. It’s intended to demonstrate the unusual near-rectilinear halo orbit envisioned for NASA’s Gateway, a future moon-orbiting station conceived as a place for astronauts to transfer from their transport ship to a landing craft that would take them to the moon’s surface.

Trying out the trajectory will help to hammer out aspects of mission design, navigation, and operations in the elongated orbit, which NASA says has never been attempted. 

The insertion maneuver to place CAPSTONE into its orbit represented “the most critical event of the entire mission,” said Advanced Space CEO and CAPSTONE principal investigator Bradley Cheetham in a news release. Two “clean-up maneuvers” were planned for the five days following the orbit insertion to “refine” CAPSTONE’s orbit, according to NASA.

While the insertion maneuver was considered most critical, it likely wasn’t the scariest moment in the mission, as controllers lost contact with CAPSTONE early on.

Advanced Space already had an agreement to freely share data from the CAPSTONE mission with the Air Force Research Laboratory. Then AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate announced Nov. 10 that it had awarded the company a $72 million contract to take part in the development of the lab’s Oracle spacecraft targeted to launch in 2025 (until recently called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System, or CHPS).

The contract is “to demonstrate space situational awareness, object detection, and tracking” near the moon to support “a resurgence of interest in lunar exploration and development across civil, commercial and international space agencies,” according to AFRL’s announcement. 

Space Force Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond said earlier this year that he thought the U.S. would need to be able to surveil the space relative to the Earth and moon within five years, and space domain awareness is part of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s No. 1 “operational imperative”: to “define resilient and effective space order of battle and architectures.”

Both the CAPSTONE and Oracle spacecraft have secondary missions. Advanced Space plans to also test navigational software, and Oracle will demonstrate a green propellant and refueling port being developed by AFRL. 

Ukraine War Shows Importance of Counter-UAS, Air Defense, Distributed Ops to Air Warfare

Ukraine War Shows Importance of Counter-UAS, Air Defense, Distributed Ops to Air Warfare

Nov. 14, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Even relatively unsophisticated drones are playing a critical role in modern air warfare, underscoring the importance of air defense systems that can cope with them, experts said in a Stimson Center streaming seminar, “Ukraine and the Future of Air Warfare.” Another theme: Distributed operations are clearly the way to go for militaries.

“We’re really witnessing a remarkable case study on the potential strengths and weaknesses of complex and integrated air and missile attack,” said Tom Karako, director the missile defense project and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And there’s a lot of lessons here.”

First, the intensity of air attacks by Russia and its use of drones—including those it imports from Iran—make air defense the “No. 1 refrain” in requests from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Karako said. Without sufficient munitions to counter these attacks, “that could portend another darker chapter in the war if Russia is able to operate in the air uncontested,” he said. He voiced approval for the approach being taken by William A. LaPlante, the Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment chief, to make sure key munitions are built in significant numbers and stay in production. LaPlante has been “very vocal” on this point, he noted.

“Another big takeaway is the importance of distributed operations,” Karako said.

“Some reports suggest that 75 percent of the fixed-site [surface-to-air missiles] were, in fact, destroyed in the first week” of the conflict. “But those that were moved … had a better chance of survival,” he said. This shows that the U.S. Air Force is going in “the right direction” with its agile combat employment scheme of spread-out basing and rapid movement.

“This is a good … indicator of the value of the distributed operations that the United States military services have been developing for the past number of years,” Karako said. It’s also a strong “reminder of the challenge of integration,” which he noted is a clear U.S. desire but “really tough in practice.” While Spanish Hawk missiles, American Stingers, and other NATO missiles can be “kluged together,” it’s a challenge, he said.

LaPlante, in a recent speech, said the Pentagon has adopted the term “MacGyver” to describe Ukraine’s use of dissimilar sensors and missiles, improvised into an air defense network.

Karako applauded a move in the House to create a “Critical Munitions Fund” that would make monies available to step up production of staple weapons. It’s needed because munitions procurement has been on a seesaw and led to several instances of extremely low stocks, especially in the last administration.

“That ‘munitions minimalism’ … should be a cautionary tale for this administration and for future ones.” The Critical Munitions Fund “is a good start. But I think it’s going to take more. In fact, I suggest that we’ll [create] a strategic munitions reserve on the part of the United States, for ourselves and for our allies.”

Samuel Bendett, a Russia studies expert from another policy center, CNA, said Russia quickly turned to Iran for help with drones after realizing that Ukraine’s “integrated air defense is powerful enough to negate any significant Russian advantage in both manned and unmanned aircraft systems.”

Drones are made in many countries, and the cost of entry to this capability is very low, Bendett said.

Iran “has been able to manufacture a relatively light and cheap system,” costing between $10,000 and $50,000, he said.

A loitering drone with military capabilities can be made for $20,000 out of “almost entirely … civilian components and with light manufacturing that could be easily replicated in Russia,” he said.

The weapons are ideal for Russia’s tactic of trying to break Ukraine’s morale by “going after economic and civilian targets” to put pressure on Ukraine to “force them to the negotiating table, one way or another.”

The drones Russia has gotten from Ukraine are slow, “but they do have low radar signature” and are hard to track on radar, he said.

Bendett and other panelists said it’s unlikely that Russia has figured out how to use drones with an artificial intelligence such that they coordinate with each other through machine intelligence, but they are sometimes used in “swarms” that make targeting a challenge.

“A better word is, ‘mass,’” rather than swarms, he said. While many are shot down—Bendett said he’s seen figures from 60-90 percent—”all it takes its for one of these UAVs to make it through” to take out power plants, water distribution systems, and other civilian infrastructure.

“Russia is shifting its tactic as its military is getting pressed on the battlefield,” he said. There’s also evidence from Russian media that its industry “is capable of manufacturing these on a very large scale” with simple commercial components from Iran.

What’s lacking is Russia’s ability to operate such drones at long range or with heavy payloads, he said.

Margarita Konaev, deputy director of analysis and a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said the evolution of Russia’s air campaign is simple evidence that “Russia does not have the initiative in this war.”

The push against Ukrainian civilians, she said, is an indication of “the hope that the erosion of morale in the population will manifest itself in Ukrainian battlefield accomplishments.” This is unlikely, she and other panelists said, because the Ukrainians are fully mobilized, and they have high morale and a determination to defend their own land.

“Air defense isn’t going to win the war for you,” Karako said. “But the lack of it could lose it pretty quick. And so it’s having an effect, I would say, just by contesting and countering Russian aerial forces.” He added that “it doesn’t have to have a super-high [probability of kill] percentage to be able to have that effect. It deters certain activities or the freedom of action … [in] Ukrainian skies. That’s a pretty good effect.”

Space Force Makes Its Premier Exercise an International Affair

Space Force Makes Its Premier Exercise an International Affair

Nov. 14, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom are sending military members to join in the U.S. Space Force’s newly expanded Space Flag exercise next month.

Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM) confirmed the roster of international coalition partners joining Space Flag 23-1 in December. 

Space Flag exercises started in 2017 before the Space Force was established. Air Force Space Command led the original exercises, which USSF describes as “the tactical-focused exercise for space warfighters.”

Space Flag was accredited as a Joint National Training Capability this year, a prerequisite to inviting other U.S. military services to join. Space Flag events began incorporating more cyber and intelligence personnel this year, as well, STARCOM’s commander, Space Force Maj. Gen. Shawn N. Bratton, said in September.

Australia, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. were the first international partners to join the Combined Space Operations Initiative for national security, and are among seven nations that jointly published the “Combined Space Operations Vision 2031” earlier this year. The vision establishes a shared set of principles and objectives.

In addition to Space Flag, STARCOM is also beginning to stage a new series of exercises, known as the Skies Series. Black Skies, a live-fire electronic warfare exercise, took place in September. A new Red Skies exercise will focus on orbital warfare, and a Blue Skies series will eventually focus on cyber.