New National Defense StrategyPrioritizes High-Tech Equipment,Acquisition Reforms1/19/2018 By Jon Harper

DEFENSE DEPARTMENT

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The Pentagon’s new national defense strategy, an unclassied summary of which wasreleased Jan. 19, prioritizes the procurement of high-end capabilities and streamliningbusiness practices.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis outlined the areas of emphasis in a speech at the JohnsHopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., which hedelivered the same day that the unclassied summary was released and the classied versionof the strategy was delivered to Congress.

“Today America’s military reclaims an era of strategic purpose,” Mattis said. “We willcontinue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists… but great power competition — notterrorism — is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”

The United States faces growing threats from near-peer competitors like China and Russia,as well as “rogue regimes” like North Korea and Iran, he said.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis announces the National Defense Strategy, Jan. 19.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military’s warghting edge has been eroding in multiple domains, hewarned.

The new defense strategy calls for pursuing three primary lines of eort to restore the UnitedStates’ comparative military advantage.

One is enhancing lethality by investing in new high-end capabilities.

‘Investments in space and cyberspace, nuclear deterrent forces, missile defense, advancedautonomous systems, and resilient and agile logistics will provide our high-quality troopswhat they need to win,” Mattis said.

Improving readiness for major combat will be prioritized, he noted.

When it comes to procurement priorities, the strategy sends “a clear message … that thosesystems which have great applicability to a high-end conict will do well under thisstrategy,” said Thomas Spoehr, director of the Center for National Defense at the HeritageFoundation. “Those which are less well suited to that will not come out well,” he added.

Given the strategy’s focus on China, Spoehr said he expects to see additional spending onundersea warfare capabilities and electronic warfare-resistant technologies.

Evan Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,said: “There’s always the potential that big-ticket items that are principally useful for low-end contingencies are going to be more at risk [of losing funding] than they were in the pastif you shift your focus to great power competition.”

However, some of the emerging technologies that will be invested in for potential high-endwarfare could also have value in the counterterrorism ght, such as articial intelligence fortarget identication, he noted.

If forced to make tradeos between capability and capacity, Mattis said he would prioritizemodernization over building up the size of the military. During his political campaign and ascommander-in-chief, President Donald Trump promised a major expansion in the size of theforce.

“Capabilities are: 'What does the force bring?'” Mattis explained during a Q&A session afterhis speech. “Then you have capacity. In other words, 'How big is the force that you have?' Ibelieve at this time in this age that emphasizing the capabilities that the force brings isprobably the predominant eort that you’ve got to make.”

The second line of focus in the strategy is strengthening alliances and cooperation withforeign partners and helping them modernize their forces.

“In consultation with Congress and the Department of State, the Department of Defense willprioritize requests for U.S. military equipment sales, accelerating foreign partnermodernization and ability to integrate with U.S. forces,” the strategy summary said.

However, overseas partners should shoulder a greater share of the burden for commondefense, Mattis said. Trump has accused NATO allies and other countries of underinvestingin their militaries. Previous administrations have also called on them to spend more.

The third line of eort in the strategy is reforming the Pentagon’s business practices.

“Our current bureaucratic processes are insuciently responsive to the department’s needsfor new equipment,” Mattis said. “We will prioritize speed of delivery, continuousadaptation and frequent modular upgrades.”

The Pentagon must shed outdated management and acquisition practices while adoptingindustry’s best practices, he added.

“The department’s leadership is committed to changes in authorities, granting of waiversand securing external support for streamlining processes and organizations,” the summarysaid. “A rapid, iterative approach to capability development will reduce costs, technologicalobsolescence and acquisition risk.”

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Prototyping and experimentation should be used prior to dening requirements. Platformelectronics and software must also be designed for routine replacement, it noted.

The document outlined several additional steps that the Pentagon plans to take to reform theacquisition process and nurture a healthy industrial base.

Incentives and reporting structures will be realigned to increase speed of delivery, enabledesign tradeos in the requirements process, expand the role of warghters and intelligenceanalysts throughout the acquisition process, and utilize non-traditional suppliers, it said.

It also emphasized the need to send clearer signals to industry.

“The department’s technological advantage depends on a healthy and secure nationalsecurity innovation base that includes both traditional and non-traditional defensepartners,” it said. “The department, with the support of Congress, will provide the defenseindustry with sucient predictability to inform their long-term investments in criticalskills, infrastructure and research and development.”

Partnerships with the commercial sector will be critical, it noted.

“New commercial technology will change society and, ultimately, the character of war,” thedocument said. “Maintaining the department’s technological advantage will require changesto industry culture, investment sources and protection across the national securityinnovation base.”

Eorts will be made to streamline processes in order to help new entrants and small vendorsprovide cutting-edge technologies, it said.

Additionally, to reduce excess property and infrastructure, the Pentagon will provideCongress with options for a new round of base realignment and closure, also known as BRAC,it noted.

“I love the emphasis Secretary Mattis has made on improving the business processes and theeciency of the Pentagon, and I loved the fact that it was elevated to one of the top threethings in the strategy,” Spoehr said. “If you don’t x these business processes and the wayyou do business, you’re not going to be able to do a lot of the [other] things in the strategy.”

Analysts noted that the language in the new strategy diers from the Obamaadministration’s rhetoric in several signicant ways. One is the urgency with which itdiscusses the erosion of the United States’ military edge, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviserat the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“From the very beginning they say … we need a long-term investment program to regainthat,” he said. “There’s not a hint of accepting multi-polarity, there’s not a hint of acceptingsome measure of decline. … It’s about reestablishing American military dominance.”

It also suggests that more resources are needed, he said. “This strategy is very clear thatyou’re going to need a lot more money — and the word on the street is that in fact, they gotit” in the president’s scal year 2019 budget request.

Another important dierence is that China was listed as the number one source ofcompetition, Cancian said. The Obama administration had put Russia at the top of the listafter the Russian invasion of Crimea, he noted. “But here it’s clearly China because Chinahas the ability for a really long-term competition [with the United States] the way thatRussia does not,” he said.

However, there is some continuity when it comes to the previous administration’s so-called“third oset” strategy, which emphasized the importance of autonomy, unmanned systemsand other cutting-edge technologies to outmatch advanced adversaries, analysts noted.

“It won’t be called the third oset” in the Trump administration’s strategy, Cancian said.“But the kinds of programs that came out of … the third oset are certainly consistent withthe thrust of this new NDS, because the third oset was aimed at high-end threats fromChina and Russia, and of course the strategy is also aimed at those threats.”

Spoehr said the ideas expressed in the third oset are likely to live on. “Probably most of theweapon systems that were initiated under the third oset continue as well,” even though“the phrase [third oset] is dead,” he added.

The classied version of the strategy delves into specic investments that the Pentagonwants to make, said Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst at the American EnterpriseInstitute who has spoken with ocials that are familiar with its contents.

Other analysts said 2019 budget request would shed more light on the investments that thePentagon is planning to bring the new strategy to fruition.

If “the secretary’s focus will be on this capability side … that suggests that they might belooking to initiate some new modernization eorts,” said Andrew Hunter, director of theDefense-Industrial Initiatives Group at CSIS.

Mattis noted that a failure to secure sucient funding would torpedo the new strategy.

“We recognize no strategy can long survive without necessary funding and the stable,predictable budgets required to defend America in the modern age,” he said.

The Pentagon chief blasted Congress for its repeated failure to pass annual defenseappropriations bills on time.

“As hard as the last 16 years [of war] have been on our military, no enemy in the eld hasdone more to harm the readiness of the U.S. military than the combined impact of theBudget Control Act’s defense spending cuts, worsened by us operating nine of the last 10years … under continuing resolutions, wasting copious amounts of precious taxpayerdollars,” he said.

Mattis said he hopes lawmakers will “do the right thing” and provide budget stability so thatthe U.S. military can modernize eectively and restore readiness.

Mattis’ speech and the unveiling of the new defense strategy came just hours before thelatest CR was set to expire, and as the federal government was facing a potential shutdownbecause Congress had yet to pass a new spending measure.

The Defense Department is expected to release its scal year 2019 budget request in earlyFebruary. As of press time, Congress had yet to pass an annual appropriations bill for scalyear 2018, which began in October.

Additional reporting by Vivienne Machi and Connie Lee.

Topics: Acquisition Programs, Acquisition, Defense Department

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Comments (1)

Re: New National Defense Strategy Prioritizes High-Tech Equipment, Acquisition Reforms

In addition, I recommend these pointers: • Listen to the troops. This “Top-down” strategy isall well and nice, but it’s the troops using the equipment that will tell the DoD how it is, whatthey need, what they want, and what doesn’t work. This is what USSOCOM does by listeningto their SOFs and buying equipment that addresses the issues. DoD can’t shrug o the troopswith: “You go to war with what you have, not what you want and what you wish you had.”

Some troops have been wanting and waiting for years to decades… • Fix issues with thecurrent and emerging foreign threats. Only now is the DoD seeing some huge gaps incapabilities and addressing them: SHORAD, long-range precision res, more ASW, a newfrigate, anti-missile defense, drone countermeasures, Electronic Warfare, long range SAMsand AAMs, anti-Stealth radar, NBC, etc. • Foreign nations are developing new threats tocounter our threat that needs to be examined, explored, and addressed. New icebreakers isone such priority---we haven’t built a new icebreaker in close to 40 years and now we have anew LCS stuck in the Great Lake due to ice until the ice thaws? That just sounds silly becausewe have no icebreakers to free it… • DoD’s going to need armor, that’s for sure. Don’t thinkthat no one is going to shoot at you and aim well. • DoD’s going to need more personnel orretain personnel • DoD’s going to need lighter, cheaper, and faster hardware. Not everythingneeds an M1A2 SEP rolling through the door • DoD’s going to need some new attitudes andvisions. Just because a soldier doesn’t want to use a robot doesn’t mean that this othersoldier doesn’t want to to save his life. • DoD’s going to need to address gender and equalityissues more • DoD should listen to its Think Tankers and public critics. Quite a few DoDprograms have been doomed or reshaped due to these comments. Don’t think that Defensereporters, public armchair quarterbacks, and bloggers don’t know what they’re talkingabout. Pay attention to what’s being said as many in the public foresaw these problems along time before DoD did. And then don’t always believe the comments because testing stillneeds to be done to verify if the system works • Some prototype equipment and hardwareshelved needs to be relooked at. Why reinvent the wheel if this prototype has been testedalready and proven to work but not elded? If it suits the purpose, and the DoD can aord it,and it didn’t get poor grades, then why not manufacture it? • DoD’s going to have to persuadeCongress for funding. Congress isn’t composed of youngsters, DoD, whereas the military hasa large percentage of teenagers and youngsters. DoD should know that. All of the above havebeen said before on public forums and blogs for decades.

trisaw at 2:12 PM

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