ftj fty

Navy Bets Big on Project Overmatch Pentagon Readies Hypersonic Weapons N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E M A G A Z I N E . O R G

THE

NEW SPACE ERA

INNOVATION DRIVING DEFENSE OF THE ULTIMATE HIGH GROUND PAGE 26

AUGUST 2021

The Business and Technology Magazine of

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Cover Story 26 n Leveraging the U.S. government as a steady customer, launch providers are investing in innovative ways to reduce the costs and difficulties of providing access to space. Meanwhile, the Air Force is looking at rapidly sending supplies to far away destinations on rockets. COVER: ULA concept of the Vulcan Centaur rocket

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Hypersonics 22 n The military is researching several ways to employ hypersonic weapons.

Launching them from jet fighters and bombers will be the easiest to achieve, said one top official. Land- and sea-based platforms will come later.

Project Overmatch 24 20 8

10

15

n Like the Air Force and Army, the Navy is seeking to tie together all its sensors and weapon systems. Its contribution to the joint all-domain command and control concept — Project Overmatch — is going full steam ahead.

AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

1

VIEWPOINTS 16 Hasten CMMC Compliance Through Zero-Trust

TRAINING AND SIMULATION

36 Air Force Looking to Boost Connectivity for Simulators

The service wants the Common Simulation Training Environment program to break down barriers between proprietary systems.

Zero-trust concepts may help companies earn their Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification.

By RyAN HEIDORN

18 How to Defeat the Info-Warfare ‘Triad of Disruption’

Social media, fake news and digital social engineering are combining to create a clear and present danger to the United States.

By MEREDITH ROATEN

COMMENTARY

38 DoD Must Go Beyond PT to Support Cognitive Strength

Cognitive training improves warfighters’ psychological well-being, helping them think and learn faster.

By JAMES CURTIS

20 Accelerated Training Program A Boon to Defense Industry

An innovative pilot program is teaching advanced welding and sending graduates to shipyards.

By IRIK JOHNSON

39 Navy Reorganizing to Accelerate Sailor Training

The sea service wants to rapidly integrate live, virtual and constructive training methods.

By TOM KEARNEy

By MANDy MAyFIELD

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES

4

22 Air-Launched Missiles Slated as First U.S. Hypersonic Weapons

Officials like the ease of integrating hypersonic weapons onto military aircraft.

By STEW MAGNUSON

The Navy is working on three classified projects to connect its sensors and weapon systems.

By yASMIN TADJDEH

COVER STORY

26 Ready for Reuse: Launch Program Leveraging Recycled Rockets SpaceX has led the way in developing reusable rockets, and competitors are keen to follow.

By MANDy MAyFIELD

SPACE TECHNOLOGY

30 Space Force Dreams of Using Rockets to Supply Warfighters

Researchers are looking at the feasibility of sending supplies — and perhaps troops — to the other side of the planet via space.

By JON HARPER

32 Space Force Has High Hopes for New Missile Warning Satellites The Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared spacecraft is receiving a big bump in funding.

By JON HARPER

34 U.S. Strengthening Space Domain Awareness

The Space Force is currently tracking some 30,000 objects in space and wants to find even more.

By yASMIN TADJDEH

2

N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 2 1

Industry Vital for Deterring Aggression in Space

By JOHN J. KLEIN

6

Up Front

Random facts and figures from industry and government

By STEW MAGNUSON

COMMAND AND CONTROL

24 Navy Dedicates More Resources To Secretive Project Overmatch

NDIA Perspective

8

2021

vo l u m e c v i n u m b e r 813

EDITOR IN CHIEF Stew Magnuson (703) 247-2545 SMagnuson@NDIA.org CREATIVE DIRECTOR Brian Taylor (703) 247-2546 BTaylor@NDIA.org MANAGING EDITOR Jon Harper (703) 247-2542 JHarper@NDIA.org SENIOR EDITOR Yasmin Tadjdeh (703) 247-2585 YTadjdeh@NDIA.org STAFF WRITER Mandy Mayfield (703) 247-9469 MMayfield@NDIA.org EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Meredith Roaten (703) 247-2543 MRoaten@NDIA.org

Editor’s Notes

By STEW MAGNUSON

9

August

Emerging Technology Horizons Lessons Learned from an Earlier Age

National Defense 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700 Arlington, VA 22201

By DR. MARK J. LEWIS

10 Budget Matters

Who’s funding what in Washington

By JON HARPER

12 News Briefs

By MANDy MAyFIELD AND MEREDITH ROATEN

NDIA MEMBERSHIP: The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) is the premier association representing all facets of the defense and technology industrial base and serving all military services. For more information please call our membership department at 703-522-1820 or visit us on the web at NDIA.org/Membership

15 Algorithmic Warfare

What’s coming in artificial intelligence, big data and cybersecurity By yASMIN TADJDEH

41 NDIA Policy Points

Energy Policies to Impact Defense Contractors

By NICK JONES

42 Government Contracting Insights New Guidance on Domestic Sourcing Waivers

CONTRIBUTED By COVINGTON & BURLING LLP

43 NDIA News 44 NDIA Calendar

Complete guide to NDIA events

48 Next Month

Preview of our next issue

48 Index of Advertisers

National Defense (ISSN 0092–1491) is published monthly by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22201–3060. TEL (703) 522–1820; FAX (703) 522–1885.

Advertising Sales: Kathleen Kenney, 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22201–3060. TEL (703) 247–2576; FAX (703) 522–4602. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of NDIA. Membership rates in the association are $40 annually; $15.00 is allocated to National Defense for a oneyear association basic subscription and is non-deductible from dues. Annual rates for NDIA members: $40 U.S. and possessions; District of Columbia add 6 percent sales tax; $45 foreign. A six-week notice is required for change of address. Periodical postage paid at Arlington, VA and at additional mailing office. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to National DEFENSE, 2101 Wilson Blvd, Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22201–3060. The title National Defense is registered with the Library of Congress.

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Perspective

BY JOHN J. KLEIN

Industry Vital for Deterring Aggression in Space

4

N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 2 1

or degraded, commercial service providers can reroute satellite communications through their own networks, or potentially through the networks of another company using a different portion of the frequency spectrum.

All these commercial capabilities and services can help convey the futility of hostile action by any would-be adversary.

To address an uncertain future and deter aggression, the following recommendations are provided.

First, both the forthcoming National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy should emphasize the benefits of commercial space capabilities and services in strengthening deterrence by denial.

Second, military planners should determine in peacetime which commercial space systems are critical due to their associated products or services, along with whether and in what manner the United States should extend national security protections to defend them during times of conflict.

Third, the defense community must ensure sufficient commercial licensing or service level agreements are in place well before the onset of potential hostilities, because companies will seek to honor pre-existing contracts and agreements during a conflict.

Fourth, military space professionals need to understand the importance that commercially enabled space mission assurance and resiliency initiatives have in mitigating the consequences of hostile actions in space — both for the United States and for its competitors.

U.S. security and defense strategies need to address strategic competition with China, while promoting peace and stability. The commercial space industry can help in this regard by conveying the futility of conducting hostile acts in space and causing a potential adversary’s leadership to avoid military confrontation in the first place.

Finally, as the capability of the commercial space sector continues to grow — whether in reusable launch vehicles or proliferated low-Earth orbit constellations of imaging and communications satellites — it will become more difficult for potential adversaries to deny space services on which U.S. national security relies. Consequently, deterrence by denial may play a greater role than deterrence by punishment in future competitive strategies. There is an unintended benefit in this approach. A strategy fully incorporating industry into deterrence strategies can provide additional space capabilities and services, encourage greater cooperation with allies and partners, and allow more of the global community to enjoy the benefits that space affords. ND Dr. John J. Klein is a senior fellow and strategist at Falcon Research Inc., and adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute and Georgetown University’s Strategic Studies Program. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Falcon Research, George Washington University, Georgetown University, or the U.S. government.

iStock illustration

n The White House issued its interim national security guidance in March, which addressed strategic competition with China, deterring and defending against aggression, and ensuring the safety, stability and security of the space domain.

From this initial guidance, U.S. policymakers and military leaders will soon begin formulating a new National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. To ensure U.S. competitive advantage and protect national security interests in space, it is paramount that the writers of these documents fully integrate the benefits coming from trusted industry partners into national security and defense strategies.

While the national security community generally appreciates the value of the services and capabilities derived from the commercial space sector — including space launch, Earth observation and satellite communications — it often overlooks one area of strategic importance and benefit: deterrence.

Many within the national security community often consider deterrence as the threat of credible and potentially overwhelming force or other retaliatory action against any would-be adversary sufficient to deter most potential aggressors from conducting hostile actions. This idea is also referred to as deterrence by punishment, which is a central element in nuclear deterrence strategy.

A lesser known — but equally important — aspect is deterrence by denial of benefit. This refers to the capability to deny the other party any gains from the action which is to be deterred. Denying benefit to potential adversaries can help convey the futility of conducting a hostile act. To be effective, this form of deterrence should be pursued in peacetime well before a threat manifests itself. It is in this area that commercial space capabilities and services can greatly contribute to deterring aggression.

In the space domain, industry partners contribute to deterrence by denial through the increased mission assurance and resiliency provided by space-enabled capabilities and services.

This is due, in part, to the distributed and diversified nature of commercial space launch and satellite services. Distribution refers to using a number of nodes, working together, to perform the same mission or functions as a single node; diversification describes contributing to the same mission in multiple ways, using different platforms, orbits, or systems and capabilities.

Industry also contributes to deterrence by denial through multi-domain solutions and services. These solutions and services can deter potential adversaries from pursuing offensive actions against purely space systems. Moreover, both commercial launch providers and satellite operators enhance deterrence by providing options for getting payloads into orbit.

These launch options include diverse space launch capabilities such as small and responsive launch vehicles, along with larger, reusable launch vehicles; launch rideshares for secondary payloads; and government payloads on commercial satellites.

Lastly, having a variety of commercial on-orbit systems also promotes deterrence. If satellite communications are jammed

ALWAYS THE

PERFECT POUR

NEXT GENERATION

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5

UP FRONT

COMPILED BY STEW MAGNUSON

CMMC Internal Review Drags On

n As of press time, the Defense Department’s internal review of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program was not finished and its oft-quoted point person Katie Arrington was at least temporarily out of a job as she allegedly disclosed classified information to the wrong people.

While she may be cleared of all charges and reinstated, the Pentagon’s silence and the leadership vacuum puts the program in an unofficial state of limbo.

Meanwhile, “NDIA, and the entire defense industrial base, are increasingly eager to see the results of the internal DoD review of the program,” said the association’s resident expert on all things CMMC, Corbin Evans. “We understand the Biden administration’s desire to take ownership of the program, but are concerned the lack of transparency will result in a shortened compliance timeline or lead to significant changes to the program that disadvantage those companies already taking steps to comply,” he said.

For more on CMMC, see page 16.

No ‘Carrots,’ Maybe ‘Sticks’ to Cut F-35 Sustainment Costs

n The Pentagon should incentivize F-35 fighter jet contractor Lockheed Martin to cut sustainment costs, said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash. They can run as high as $36,000 per flying hour, according to recent congressional testimony.

Lockheed Martin has pledged to help reduce that to about $25,000 by 2025.

Smith pointed to the B-52 bomber program as an example of a successful campaign to lower costs. He noted that defense contractor Smith Boeing had been slow to reduce the sustainment price tag until the Pentagon threatened to stop flying the plane.

“Those are the types of incentives that I’m looking for,” he said. “We’ve got to get those [F-35] costs under control.”

Beleaguered Afghan Forces to Get More Aircraft

n The Taliban are making territorial gains as the U.S. military completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan, but the Biden administration is hoping that the Afghan government’s air force can help stem the tide.

“They have an air force — a competent air force. The Taliban has none,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters. “We’re going to continue to work on improving their air force and their air force capabilities, … and we’re also going to be working to provide logistical or maintenance support for their forces going forward.”

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III has approved the delivery of two refurbished UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters to the Afghan military with another 35 to come. The U.S. will also purchase another three Super Tucano A-29 close-air support platforms for the Afghans and help manage an overhaul of their Mi-17 helicopters, Kirby noted.

“It’s not like, you know, we’re clapping hands and walking away,” he said.

Contractors: Understand the ‘Fury of Violence’

— Reporting by Jon Harper, Stew Magnuson and Meredith Roaten 6

N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 2 1

Air Force B-21 Raider Long-Range Strike Bomber

By Jeremiah Gertler Congressional Research Service n Any scrap of information on the Air Force’s secretive B-21 Raider program is news — even a relatively dry and neutral Congressional Research Service report.

“Details such as the projected weapons and onboard sensors remain classified, which makes evaluating the proposed cost difficult,” the report’s author CRS aviation specialist Jeremiah Gertler wrote. The Air Force has released a list of subcontractors, but without mentioning what subsystems they are supplying.

However, the report includes an updated artist’s rendering, which made a small splash in aviation circles when it was released in early July.

The B-21, projected to enter service in the mid-20s, will have both conventional and nuclear deterrence roles, with the capability of penetrating advanced air defenses.

It will initially be a manned aircraft with unmanned operation possible at some point in the future.

The question before lawmakers with all this opaqueness is how many platforms they will be able to afford.

The Air Force wants to buy at least 100. Some officials have suggested as many as 165 bombers.

Another issue is how many legacy B-52, B-1s and B-2s the Air Force will keep on hand and for how long.

Congressional oversight and budgeting are difficult with all the secrecy and unknowns. The project is also considered a rapid acquisition program — although the plane was first conceived in 2004 and won’t fly until the mid-2020s. That’s 21 years — at least.

“Congress has relatively little experience overseeing rapid acquisitions processes. At $3 billion a year, this program is significantly larger than those that have traditionally been the subject of rapid acquisition,” the report said. — Stew Magnuson

Defense Dept. photos

n Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Minihan, deputy commander of Indo-Pacom, was asked what industry can do to help a sprawling combatant command that is charged with going head-to-head with China.

His answer: It’s important to understand “what the fight would really look like out here, and how you contribute and how your product contributes to the long lines of communication that are contested,” he said at NDIA’S JADC2 conference.

Minihan Pilots, for example, may be threading through contested environments for 60 hours, sleeping in their aircraft and “fly until they’re dead or their planes don’t work,” he said. “Understanding how that fury of violence relates to your product and what you’re developing, selling … is incredibly important.”

FURTHER READING

By the Numbers North America Average Salaries by Level for Procurement Professionals in U.S. Dollars $154,736

ADVANCED PROFESSIONAL PROFESSIONAL

$118,333

MANAGERIAL

$84,088

OPERATIONAL TACTICAL

$61,392

TOO FEW RESPONSES

The average salary for procurement and supply professionals rose 4.6 percent in 2020, according to the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply’s annual salary survey. Salaries averaged $96,361. There was also a gender pay gap of 15 percent in 2020, the survey found.

Hello, Goodbye

Volansi photo, Defense Dept. photo, Ball Aerospace photo, NDIA photo

n Former Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper is now CEO of Roper Volansi, a Concord, Californiabased maker of commercial and military delivery drones.

The Office of Naval Research Global welcomed new leadership during a change of comFarr mand ceremony at the Admiralty House Garden in Portsmouth, United Kingdom, while also commemorating its 80th anniversary. Capt. Matthew Farr was sworn in as ONR Global commanding officer, taking over for Capt. James Borghardt.

Ball Aerospace appointed Dr. Jeanne Atwell as its vice president and chief engineer. She has spent 20 years at the Colorado-based contractor.

Frequentis, an Austria-based specialist in voice communications and air-traffic control, has appointed Jay Balakirsky as president of Frequentis Defense Inc. USA, a newly created position. He was previously its U.S. vice president of sales. Frequentis recently acquired the air-traffic control voice communications and arrival management product business from L3Harris Technologies Inc. Kleos Space S.A, a German spacepowered radio frequency reconnaissance data-as-a-service company, has appointed co-founder Miles Ashcroft

to the role of chief innovation officer to oversee the company’s research and innovation activities. Kleos’ U.S.-based technical director, Vincent Furia, has been promoted to chief technology officer.

The Government Accountability Office’s deputy assistant general counsel for procurement law and bid protest hearing ofAtwell ficer Stephanie Magnell joined law firm Seyfarth as counsel in the firm’s litigation department and government contracts practice group. She presided over some 500 bid protests during her GAO tenure.

The Center for a New American Security announced that Rachel Brandenburg, associate vice president at The Cohen Group, has joined the think tank as an adjunct senior fellow in the Middle East Security Program, where her research will primarily focus on defense and the Middle East.

Munich, Germany-based Rohde & Schwarz technology group is entering the field of quantum computing by acquiring the Swiss company Zurich Instruments AG. Zurich Instruments AG will be run as a full subsidiary. The company has over 100 employees at its Zurich headquarters and regional offices in China, the United States, France, South Korea, Japan and Italy. ND

Coming Soon n August sees the return of NDIA’s CBRN Defense Conference and Exhibition as an in-person event in Baltimore, Aug. 16-18. Max Rose, COVID advisor to the secretary of defense, is one of the keynote speakers.

This month’s space issue is timed for NDIA’s Space Warfighting Industry Forum, Aug. 18-20, and the Space Symposium one week later,

Aug. 23-26 — both in Colorado Springs.

They are also in-person events.

National Defense correspondents will be attending the DSEI show in London, Sept. 14-17 — assuming it moves forward as planned — and the Air Force Association’s AirSpace-Cyber conference at National Harbor in Maryland, Sept. 20-22. ND

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Editor’s Notes

BY STEW MAGNUSON

We Must Do Right by Our Afghan Friends, Allies

8

N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 2 1

Fast forward 10 years when I decided my life as an international vagabond was over. I ended up in Washington, D.C., where Zia had also relocated. Our friendship grew over the years as we bonded over our mutual love of Afghan food.

Zia was an eternal optimist, always positive and truly believed that Allah had blessed him by bringing him to this great nation.

He worked as an accountant but eventually found a job where his passions lay, teaching economics and finance at private schools such as Strayer University. He loved his chosen field of economics and for some 20 years he shared that passion with his students.

Zia married an Afghan woman named Masuda, and they had three children. I, too, started a family and we saw a little less of each other over the past decade.

It was in early May when I received a call from Zia. He was at Georgetown University Hospital, and he was sick. Something was wrong with his liver. The doctors were telling him it was cancer, but he didn’t believe them.

I couldn’t visit because of COVID protocols and neither could his family.

Being an eternal optimist, I couldn’t get a straight story from Zia when I called. He was convinced that if he reduced his salt intake, it would clear up. From his hospital bed, he continued to grade his students’ papers and post treatises on Facebook about economics as if nothing was wrong.

The doctors eventually let him go home. He told me he was going to start chemo soon, but he never did. I was glad he could at least be with his children.

I called to check in on him as I was driving to North Carolina to visit a new GM Defense manufacturing plant. He sounded weak, not himself. He told me he couldn’t talk much and was tired. The line went dead. I was hoping I had caught him waking up from a nap, but feared the worst.

He passed away that night.

One less friend for life. One less person who would give you the coat off their back. A devoted father of three young children. Gone.

I have other Afghan friends here — all successful and contributing to our nation. One teenager who cleaned the USAID house where I Iived — now a middle-aged man — was chased out of Kabul by the Taliban 20 years ago. He now has two homes, a security clearance, and children attending some of the top universities in Virginia.

Our big-hearted Afghan friends and allies will soon arrive in the United States, and when they do, we need to do whatever we can to help them get on their feet.

I ask this in the memory of my friend Ahmad Zia Rawish. ND

iStock illustration

n Sometimes an issue in the news hits a little too close to home. I pride myself in employing logic and reason in these columns, but sometimes emotion gets in the way.

For months, some 18,000 Afghan interpreters and their families waited for visas to escape a possible Taliban takeover of Kabul — something that isn’t inevitable — but “hope for the best, plan for the worst,” as they say.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle pleaded with the Biden administration to do something to help these allies and avoid another Saigon, April 30, 1975 type of situation, but for weeks and months nothing happened. I felt myself grow angrier and angrier every day. Finally, a few days before press time, President Joe Biden announced that the State Department would begin airlifting those who are at risk out of the country.

The reason I had such an emotional response to the issue was because of my friend Ahmad Zia Rawish.

They say when you make an Afghan friend, you’ve made a friend for life. They would give you the coat off their back — take a bullet for you.

Zia was one of my students when I was a young man in 1989-91 working with Afghan refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan. I was a 26-year-old teaching English to a bunch of fierce looking bearded men in their 30s and 40s. But looks deceived. They were mostly doctors and engineers, hoping to earn a scholarship to an American college, part of a USAID program organized by the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Center for Afghanistan Studies.

I have never in all my travels — before or since — met a kinder and bigger-hearted people. For a nation whose factions are always at war with each other, I admit this is a paradox.

Zia was a former Kabul University professor of economics who had fled the Communist regime and ended up as an accountant for the United Nation’s demining program in Peshawar.

A mutual friend-for-life I made there was Army Staff Sgt. Frederick “OT” Otero, part of a Special Forces A-team that taught Afghans to dismantle mines under the U.N. program.

Zia ended up earning a scholarship to Park University in Kansas City, not far from where OT settled after he retired from the Army following the Gulf War. I returned to my hometown Omaha and drove to Kansas to meet with OT and Zia a few times.

Afghanistan by that time was a mess. With the Soviet puppet regime out of the picture, Kabul was being shelled daily by one side or another. Ideally, the students I prepared for college life in the United States were meant to return to Afghanistan and take what they learned in America to rebuild the nation. It couldn’t have been worse timing. Most of them — like Zia — applied for green cards and stayed.

Emerging Technology Horizons

BY DR. MARK J. LEWIS

Lessons Learned from an Earlier Age

U.S. Naval Historical Center photograph

n The National Defense Industrial Association has established the Emerging Technologies Institute to help our nation’s leaders understand the importance of investing in key technologies that will enable us to prevail on any future battlefield.

As previous columns have described, history offers notable examples of leaps in military technology that changed the nature of war. One of my favorites is the development of ironclad warships during the Civil War, a story that provides lessons that are directly applicable to our modern era.

In April 1861, after Virginia seceded from the Union, the U.S. Navy evacuated the Norfolk Navy Yard before the ships there could fall into Confederate hands. The steam frigate USS Merrimack was in the yard undergoing repairs following service as flagship of the Pacific Squadron and could not be sailed. Rather than allow the ship to fall into Confederate hands, the Navy decided to set her afire. The Merrimack was also scuttled, so the masts ignited but the hull sank before it could burn. When the Confederates took Norfolk, they assigned Lt. John Mercer Brooke the task of rebuilding the remains of the Merrimack not as a sailing ship, but as an ironclad ram. The 35-year-old Brooke was an excellent choice; the Naval Painting of the CSS Virginia Academy graduate was an accomplished scientist and engineer who had made important discoveries about the ocean floor that ultimately enabled the laying of early undersea telegraph cables.

First lesson: the military services must have the best and brightest technical minds available. The quality of our scientific workforce matters.

It’s also worth stepping back and asking, why did the Merrimack and similar steam-powered ships of her time still have masts with sails in the first place? The answer is that the early steam engines were unreliable, difficult to maintain, and dependent on an unreliable fuel supply. In fact, in the British navy it took the advocacy of one of the Napoleonic era’s foremost sailing captains, Lord Cochrane, to introduce steam power against the objections of many of the naval leaders of his day. Second lesson: sometimes it takes a strong advocate to introduce a new technology; even better if that advocate has established credibility with the previous generation of technology. Modern examples of this include Gen. Bernard Schriever and the Air Force’s ICBM fleet, and Gen. John Jumper who oversaw the addition of weapons to unmanned aircraft.

Back to the Merrimack. In my mind’s eye I always imagine the Confederate forces entering the navy yard and realizing they could repair the damage to the Merrimack, including the masts and yardarms, and add it to their nascent fleet. Someone — perhaps John Mercer Brooke himself — might have said something along the lines of, “Excuse me, it has an engine, why do we even need the sails?” And the ironclad was born.

But the key point is every once in a while there is a technological epiphany, a realization that a previous way of doing

something that once made sense is no longer the best solution.

A modern example is the growing acceptance that big, expensive space systems are vulnerable and can be superseded by smaller, less expensive proliferated spacecraft. Arguably, such epiphanies tend to come from individuals who view a problem with a fresh set of eyes, and who are willing to question established wisdom. That’s why, for example, the Space Development Agency was created to deliver defense satellites outside the established pipelines.

This leads to lesson three: question why we do things a certain way, especially for defense technologies that have advanced since the guidelines were first established.

The rest of the Merrimack story is well known. The Confederate navy successfully rebuilt the vessel as the ironclad CSS Virginia, with an array of cannon projecting from small ports in an impenetrable shell mounting a front-facing — and anachronistic — ram. But note that in rebuilding the Merrimack, the Confederate navy undertook a rigorous research-and-development effort, experimenting for example with different iron thicknesses to ascertain the best design.

The results were devastatingly effective; the Virginia was unleashed against the Union blockade fleet off Hampton Roads on March 8, 1862. Within hours, she had defeated the USS Cumberland and the USS Congress, and would have sunk the USS Minnesota had not her captain run the Minnesota aground out of reach of the Virginia’s weaponry.

Lesson four: it is important to get the research-and-engineering steps right, including developmental test and evaluation.

As a result of the construction of the first ironclads, naval technology was changed forever. In total, the Union and Confederate navies built about 70 ironclads, and the concept propagated rapidly to navies around the world. Just 16 months after the end of the Civil War, the Battle of Lissa between Italy and Austria included no less than 13 ironclads.

Leading to lesson five: military technology spreads quickly.

Other nations will watch what we do and how we do it, and adopt it quickly.

For me, the most amazing lesson of the CSS Virginia is that she was technologically superior to anything else afloat for only one day. On her second day of combat, Virginia was confronted by the Union’s more advanced USS Monitor, and the infamous battle of the ironclads ensued. The story of the Monitor’s development is fascinating in its own right. Thus proving lesson six: technological superiority can be fleeting and we can never rest on our laurels. ND Dr. Mark J. Lewis is executive director of NDIA’s Emerging Technologies Institute, a non-partisan think tank focused on technologies that are critical to the future of national defense.

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BUDGET MATTERS

BY JON HARPER

Air, Naval Forces Eating into Army’s Share of Budget

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public commentary and debate about whether or not funding should be reallocated from the Army and the ground forces to the other services. And so I expect that that will be one of the big questions and big debates, both in this budgetary year as well as in future years.”

Biden’s 2022 request would reduce Army funding to $173 billion, a $3.6 billion cut relative to the amount appropriated for 2021.

People, readiness and modernization are the service’s top priorities, said Brig. Gen. Michael McCurry, director of force development in the office of the deputy chief of staff, G-8.

“The pressure on the [research, development and acquisition] accounts was felt in FY ‘22 with a $4.2 billion reduction,” he said during a recent panel hosted by the Association of the United States Army.

The service tried to protect its “31-plus” modernization priorities and key enablers from the budget axe, he noted.

Since 2018, Army leaders have been “looking under the couch cushions for funds” through their “night court” program reviews that are aimed at freeing up money for top modernization projects in an era of fiscal constraints, he noted.

In the first few years of night courts, the Army shifted about $30 billion from other programs to its modernization priorities, according to McCurry.

Those efforts will continue. However, “the struggle there is we have picked all the low hanging fruit … and cut most of our [lower priority] programs about as far as we could go,” he said.

“Further reduction would force us to make some hard choices between modernization priorities and sustainability of those enduring programs” for upgrading older systems. ND

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Alex Perlman

n President Joe Biden’s 2022 budget would continue a trend of providing a growing portion of the military’s resources to air and naval forces — raising questions about how low the Army’s topline will go as a share of the Pentagon’s fiscal pie in coming years.

Air and naval forces went from a 48 percent share of the defense budget in 2013 to a 52 percent share in 2021, while the portion going to ground forces shrank from 35 percent to 32 percent during that same time period, said Travis Sharp, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“The fiscal year ‘22 request continues this trend, providing 53 percent of the topline to air and naval forces and 31 percent of the topline to ground forces,” he said during a recent panel hosted by CSBA. The Air Force’s share has been increasing the most, while defense-wide accounts have remained relatively constant, he added.

The shift coincides with the United States’ refocus on great power competition with China, which the Pentagon has identified as the primary “pacing threat,” he noted.

“Most experts agree that military competition and conflict with China will primarily — although not exclusively — occur in air and naval” domains, Sharp said. “For that reason, I think it’s logical to expect that DoD would be allocating a bigger share of its budget to air and naval forces relative to ground forces.”

The Army in particular has been the bill payer for the other services’ fiscal plus-ups, he said.

“For me that sort of raises the question of whether or not there’s a floor on how far ground forces can go in terms of their share of the budget,” Sharp said. “We’ve already seen some

An F/A-18E Super Hornet and an EA-18G Growler take off from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.

NATO Decision Portends Boost in Space Investment

iStock illustrations

n NATO’s recent announcement that it will add space warfare to its Article 5 collective defense mechanism is a harbinger of a boost in alliance spending on space capabilities, according to big data analytics firm GlobalData.

Article 5 is based on the principle that an attack against one NATO member is an attack against all, and it would prompt an allied response to adversary aggression.

“At the 2021 Brussels Summit, NATO recognized that attacks to, from or within space present a clear challenge to the security of the alliance and could lead to the invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty,” according to a NATO statement issued in June.

Information gathered and disseminated through satellites is critical for NATO activities, operations and missions.

Russia and China’s development and testing of a wide range of counter-space technologies are cause for concern, the statement noted.

More than half of the 3,000 active satellites orbiting the Earth belong to NATO members or companies based in those countries, and the alliance will continue to rely on the national space assets of its members, the statement added.

“The decision to add space conflicts to Article 5 marks a significant shift in the perceived threat of military space activities,” said Madeline Wild, associate defense analyst at GlobalData. “The need to respond to any space-related conflicts means NATO members are likely to increase spending on technologies capable of monitoring and launching both offensive and defensive attacks.”

The military satellite market is currently worth about $9.4 billion — with the United States and European Union together accounting for 47 percent — and was previously forecasted to be worth $13.7 billion by 2031, according to GlobalData. The market is expected to grow even more following the NATO announcement, Wild said.

To allow its forces to communicate more securely and quickly, NATO will invest over $1.2 billion to procure satellite communication services in 20202034, the alliance’s largest-ever investment in satcom, according to the NATO statement.

In addition to satellites, there will need to be investment in a variety of ground-based supporting technologies, as well as numerous “up-and-coming” capabilities to ensure the alliance will be capable of engaging in space warfare, Wild said.

Areas that may see enhanced funding include anti-satellite weapons, artificial intelligence, smallsats and space-based quantum computing, she said.

“Emerging technologies are transforming the space domain and NATO will take advantage of these developments to maintain its technological edge,” according to the alliance statement. ND

2020 Was Good Year for Contractors n Federal contract obligations reached a record high of $682 billion in fiscal year 2020, the fifth straight year of spending growth, according to Bloomberg Government.

The recently released “BGOV200 Federal Industry Leaders Study” ranked the top 200 vendors by value of prime, unclassified contracts awarded by U.S. agencies. The annual report analyzed the top contracts at 92 agencies and departments, in 20 different purchasing categories.

Total federal contract spending increased by 14 percent in fiscal year 2020, up from $599 billion the previous year, the study found.

“The federal government spent $83 billion more on federal contractors in fiscal 2020 than it did in fiscal 2019,” the report said.

“The money for contractors primarily came from the $1.6 trillion in discretionary funding enacted for fiscal 2020, including $714 billion for defense and $914 billion for non-defense,” it added. “However, the $2.3 trillion COVID-19-related stimulus package signed into law in March 2020 provided a boost well beyond forecasts.”

The share of obligations won by the top 200 contractors was 65 percent, about the same as in 2019, according to the report.

As the COVID-19 pandemic raged, the medical spending category soared 50 percent, it noted.

Other categories that saw large percent increases include: aircraft, ships, subs and land combat vehicles, 41 percent; clothing, textiles, and subsistence supplies and equipment, 32 percent; research and development, 26 percent; industrial products and services, 16 percent; weapons and ammunition, 13 percent; information technology, 10 percent; and professional services, 7 percent.

Defense contract spending rose to $447 billion in fiscal 2020, a $42 billion, or 9 percent, bump from the previous year, according to the study.

Among the military departments, the Navy and Army increased obligations by 23 percent and 9 percent, respectively, while the Air Force remained flat. The Navy accounted for $156.7 billion, the Army $115.9 billion and the Air Force $83.5 billion.

Civilian agencies accounted for the remaining $235.2 billion in contract obligations.

“Nearly all agencies had an uptick year over year,” the report said.

The COVID-19 pandemic put the Department of Health and Human Services “in overdrive,” it noted, with HHS spending increasing by $14.6 billion, for a total of $41.2 billion.

Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs boosted spending by $8.3 billion, for a total of $37 billion. The Department of Energy also saw a significant uptick, going from $28.2 billion to $35.6 billion, according to the study. ND AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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NEWS BRIEFS

BY MANDY MAYFIELD AND MEREDITH ROATEN

Digital rendering of the Hypersonics Center of Excellence

Northrop Grumman Breaks Ground on New Hypersonics Facility

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Northrop Grumman illustrations

n ELKTON, Md. — Defense contractor Northrop Grumman unveiled a new Hypersonics Center of Excellence in July that will provide 60,000 square feet for manufacturing the cutting edge weapons.

Four buildings — a case preparation space, propellant machining space, classified engineering office and energetic final assembly — will comprise the facility, which is expected to be fully completed by 2023, company executives said at a groundbreaking ceremony in Elkton, Maryland.

Hypersonic missiles, which are expected to travel faster than Mach 5 and be highly maneuverable, are a top research-anddevelopment priority for the Pentagon. The department has a number of projects underway to pursue the technology.

While Northrop Grumman executives declined to share what hypersonic programs the contractor will be working on in the new facility, they said their weapon production will focus on greater affordability and faster delivery.

Rebecca Torzone, vice president of missile products, said the need for investment in hypersonics is driven by adversaries’ progress with the technology. The Pentagon has to become more adaptable to keep up with the threat environment, she said.

During a military parade in 2019, China showcased a hypersonic glide vehicle known as the DF-17. Russian President Vladimir Putin reported that same year that his country’s military had deployed the Avangard hypersonic weapon.

“It’s really important that we can meet those adversaries and not only meet them, but leapfrog ahead of where they’re at,” Torzone said. “We’ve got to build precise and accurate weapons … to do that.”

Advanced capabilities such as digital engineering will help the facility achieve its goal of creating products faster for the warfighter, she added.

“The quicker that we can do this with the [fewer] people touching the system, so to speak, not only do you get a higher quality system, but you get it coming off the production line much quicker,” she said.

Northrop Grumman plans to automate case preparation and non-destructive inspection technology such as X-rays, as well as deploy “autonomous guided vehicles” to improve safety and reliability, according to a press release.

Torzone declined to provide an exact cost estimate for the compound’s construction, saying “it’s hard to give an all-inclusive number.” She added that the investment was “eye-watering” for the company “when we think about growing the kinds of capability and facility that we’re going to be growing here.”

The company will be ready to meet the military’s requirements, she said.

“Through its investments in digital engineering and smart infrastructure at its Elkton, Maryland, facility, Northrop Grumman will provide full lifecycle production for hypersonic weapons, from design and development to production and integration,” the company said in a press release.

Dan Olson, general manager and vice president of weapon systems at Northrop Grumman, said making affordable weapons would be a keystone of the facility’s efforts. The compound will support building weapons from design to prototyping all in one place, he noted.

“That allows us to move with speed and bring something from design to test to field, and then back to test and then back to field, and do that more affordably,” Olson said.

Mike White, principal director of hypersonics at the office of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, praised the center as “what we need to be doing across the nation.”

He noted that the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2022 budget request includes $3.8 billion for hypersonics efforts — an increase of about $600 million from the fiscal year 2021 request. (See story page 22) “Congress is going to be absolutely pivotal in making us successful and enabling us to be successful by accelerating the delivery of transformational capabilities,” White said.

John Hayes, director of propulsion systems and controls at Northrop Grumman, noted the new facility was planned with community in mind. Because it is located near the Chesapeake Bay, environmental protection was a particular concern for the company, he said.

A solar field will also provide electricity for the compound, he noted.

“The infrastructure, the buildings, everything we’re putting in place here at Elkton, we work closely, both with the county and with the state, to make sure that basically we leave a green footprint behind,” Hayes said.

The facility will bring between 200 and 250 jobs to the region, he added. - MR

Teledyne FLIR to Develop Wearable Chemical Detector

Teledyne FLIR concept, iStock illustration

n The Pentagon is contracting with industry to develop a “mass-wearable” device for U.S. troops that will better protect them from chemical and biological threats on the battlefield.

In June, Teledyne FLIR announced the Defense Department had awarded the firm a contract worth $4 million to develop a small, lightweight chemical sensor intended to be worn by soldiers and Marines.

Under the Compact Vapor Chemical Agent Detection, or CVCAD program, the company will produce a unique dualsensor device that detects chemical warfare agents, toxic chemicals, flammable gases, and enriched or depleted oxygen levels that can indicate an explosive atmosphere, according to Teledyne FLIR. The device can “tell a specific soldier that they’re in a horrible environment of some kind, be it something that can kill them quickly, like a chemical warfare agent, or an environment that’s explosive … that might be dangerous,” said David Cullin, vice president of global business development for Teledyne FLIR’s detection sector.

The technology will let troops know if it is safe to breathe or fire a weapon.

In addition to being used as a soldier-worn device, it will also be integrated onto unmanned platforms such as drones and ground robots, Cullin said.

As a soldier-worn system, size, weight and power considerations must be taken into account so as to not make it burdensome for troops to carry, Cullin noted during an interview. The company is aiming for the device to be approximately four inches long and one inch wide.

The five-year program is being funded and jointly managed by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Joint Science and Technology Office and the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical Biological and Radiological/Nuclear Defense. CVCAD is the fourth installment for the Pentagon’s Next-Generation Chemical Detector program, which is a series of efforts aimed at fielding a family of improved chemical detectors to the armed forces, according to the company. This is the third contract award Teledyne FLIR has received in the series.

The company is collaborating with a firm called NevadaNano to develop the sensor for its offering, Cullin said.

“We’re taking some of their micro-electromechanical systems … and doing some work on the chemistry and the physics of those chips so they specifically interact with the agents that we’re interested in looking at in very specific ways,” he said. “Once we get these chips optimized to respond to the materials we want to detect, then we’ll be working with algorithms to make sure that the sensor can give out the right kind of responses.”

Teledyne FLIR plans to employ artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies with the device to help distill information, he said. - MM

India Deemed ‘Vital’ AI Partner for U.S. n India has become an important strategic partner to the United States in the field of artificial intelligence as the government in New Dehli moves forward with plans to embrace AI-based innovation and infrastructure, according to a new report.

The Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a Washington, D.C.- based think tank run out of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, recently released a study titled “Mapping India’s AI Potential,” which examined India’s potential for AI development across a number of indicators including talent, research, patents, cloud computing, and companies and investment, said Husanjot Chahal, a research analyst at CSET and co-author of the report.

“These five elements are widely regarded as crucial enablers of AI, and they also represent CSET’s own active lines of research and studying the technology,” Chahal said during a panel discussion hosted by the think tank.

The report revealed that India benefits from “having a huge tech talent pool, being one of the top producers of AI research and having a rapidly growing innovation scene,” she said.

However, areas where it is lacking include cloud computing, research, collaboration and investment flow into its tech sector, she added.

“We also saw that there are strong arguments in favor of an India-USA partnership with extensive evidence of existing ties between the two countries across most of these five levels,” Chahal said.

India — the second most populous country in the world and with over half of its citizens under the age of 25 — could play an important role on the global stage as a consumer, data creator and developer of AI. It will be among the key voices setting the norms surrounding the technology, Chahal noted.

“It is certainly important for us to know what is the level of preparedness in a country that will be providing AI to one-sixth of … humanity, and what is the state of the tech sector in this region that will be providing over a billion data producers and owners to this world potentially,” she said.

The United States is currently partnering with India on emerging technologies via initiatives such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which is an informal strategic dialogue between the United States, Japan, Australia and India.

The U.S. National Security Commission on AI — which released its final report to Congress earlier this year — has also proposed creating a U.S.-India strategic technology alliance, citing the country’s tech talent, innovation and infrastructure, particularly when paired with its shared commitment to freedom and democratic principles, Chahal said. - MM AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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News­Briefs

Next-generation­joint­ tactical­terminal

Contractor­to­Upgrade­ Joint­Force­Radios­by­2025

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n The Coast Guard will make a digital copy of its only — and rapidly aging — heavy icebreaker as part of an effort to extend its service life.

Canada-based manufacturer Gastops will collect data on the USCGC Polar Star — a ship built in the 1970s — to create a computer model that can undergo risk assessments at a relatively low cost, said Shaun Horning, president and CEO of the company.

“The value is that if we find an issue ... it can be fixed and resolved, and the cost is probably two orders of magnitude less than if you found it when you had equipment on the ship and then you had to go and make physical changes,” he said during an interview.

Engineers will be able to test the icebreaker’s performance during various maneuvers such as turning and navigating in icy environments. Based on the trials, engineers can suggest improvements to the platform’s design, he said.

Icebreakers are a priority for the service. President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget request included $15 million to support the Polar Star’s life extension effort. The Coast Guard is working to build a new fleet of heavy icebreakers known as Polar Security Cutters. In 2019, VT Halter Marine was awarded a $745.9 million fixed-price, incentive-firm contract for the detail design and construction of the first Polar Security Cutter, which is scheduled to start construction this year in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and be delivered in 2024.

Meanwhile, replacing the Polar Star’s 30-year-old analog control system with a digital control system will be one aspect of the reCoast­Guard­ furbishment that will need cutter­USCGC­ to be tested extensively, Polar­Star Horning noted.

“The control system is a particular challenge because you have this machinery built and designed in the 1970s,” he said. “There are all sorts of intricacies in the existing control strategies that we’re going to be able to test and exercise with the computer model, and identify gaps that they have in their current design with that digital system and give them the opportunity to fix those.”

Because of the ship’s age, it will be challenging to find all of the data necessary to build a digital replica of the vessel and some of it will have to be estimated, Horning said.

Gastops will finish the creation of the digital twin this fall, giving the Coast Guard about a year to assess the ship’s new capabilities before the project’s expected completion. ­-­MR

Leonardo DRS photo, Coast Guard photo

n A Virginia-based defense contractor will provide a smaller, faster radio system with upgraded capabilities to the U.S. military in the next four years.

Leonardo DRS revealed its new technology, the next-generation joint tactical terminal, in June. The system is 60 percent lighter and smaller than the legacy terminal it produced for the joint force in recent years, according to company officials.

The integrated broadcast service transceiver provides near real-time battlespace awareness of millions of threat and survivor tracking reports daily and will be used for planning and executing missions.

Production orders will start in July 2022 and continue through 2027. The Army awarded Leonardo DRS $250 million for the effort.

John Trube, Leonardo DRS business development lead, touted the system, noting that he personally used a legacy version of the system while flying as a member of Air Force Special Operations Command.

“It was invaluable in terms of situational awareness that it provided,” he said in an interview.

However, not all personnel have access to the integrated broadcast service, he said. There is a “severe shortage” of terminals which has required joint forces to operate with a reduced integrated broadcast service intelligence dissemination capability, according to a 2019 Army solicitation document.

“A smaller, better, faster capability … allows the dissemination of IBS intelligence to the force that keeps everybody on the same page, and in my mind, will dramatically increase mission effectiveness by increasing situational awareness,” Trube said.

The upgraded terminal’s modularity offers users a choice between different configurations depending on their needs, he added.

“Anything that frees up the space inside of a combat vehicle is going to be appreciated by the soldiers,” he said.

Paul Niedermier, Leonardo’s program manager for the joint tactical terminal next-generation program, added that modularity for the terminal could cut down on maintenance. Warfighters wouldn’t have to be trained on configurations unnecessary for their missions, and there would be fewer parts to replace.

“Because we use the same base transceiver unit between all three configurations, it’s going to lower the sustainment cost,” he said.

Additionally, the terminal was built with ruggedness in mind. The module the terminal is built around has a seven-year battery life, and the batteries can be replaced in the field, Niedermier said. It can also withstand extreme hot and cold temperatures. -­MR

Coast­Guard­ To­Build­Digital­ Twin­for­Polar­Star

Algorithmic Warfare

BY YASMIN TADJDEH

Russia Expanding Fleet of AI-Enabled Weapons

iStock illustration

n Russia — which has made no secret of its artificial intelligence ambitions — is building a cadre of AI-enabled, autonomous weapon systems that could one day threaten the United States.

“The Russian military seeks to be a leader in weaponizing AI technology,” Lt. Gen. Michael Groen, director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told National Defense.

The JAIC — which has been working to facilitate AI adoption across the Defense Department since 2018 — recently commissioned a report by CNA, a research organization based in Arlington, Virginia, to examine Russia’s developments.

The report — titled “Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy in Russia” — identified more than 150 AI-enabled military systems in various stages of development, Groen said in an email in June. Key areas of interest include autonomous air, underwater, surface and ground platforms.

The nation wants to use AI for electronic warfare, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strategic decision-making processes as leaders pursue information dominance on the battlefield, Groen said.

While Russia is not a leader in commercial and academic AI research — as the United States and China are — it would be a grave mistake for the Pentagon to take its eyes off the threat, he said.

“Russia was not a major leader in the development of the internet or computer networking, but Russia has become a leader in weaponizing those technologies for advanced cyberattacks and cybercrime capabilities,” he noted.

The Russian military has taken significant steps to reform and improve the organization of its research and development enterprise, he noted. This was done in part because Moscow believed its previous structures were stifling innovation in technology areas such as AI. The scale of these reforms — such as creating a new advanced R&D organization modeled on the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — demonstrates the nation’s seriousness about fielding an AI-enabled fighting force, he said.

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten noted that Russia has invested enormous resources into the development of artificial intelligence, big data and software technologies.

The country is moving quickly across many areas, including nuclear weapons, space and cyber, he said during remarks at the Defense Department’s AI Symposium in June. Embedded in each of those elements is new software, processing and artificial intelligence systems.

“Russia is a significant threat, especially in the near term,” he said. “It is a challenge to not just keep up with them but stay ahead of them.”

Like the United States, Russia is working to digitize its military. Its Ministry of Defense recently announced it intends to

create a specialized department to develop AI, according to the CNA report. It is even working on developing a military information sharing structure that resembles the Pentagon’s joint alldomain command and control, or JADC2, effort.

JADC2 has become a buzzword in the Defense Department and is intended to better link the armed forces’ sensors and shooters on the battlefield. Russia’s version is known as the automated control system, or ACS, the report said.

“ACS is not new, but the concept is the basis for how the Russian military is conceptualizing and using AI and autonomy to make Russian forces more efficient and more lethal,” the study said.

The Russian military has conducted real and simulated events implementing an ACS environment, according to the report. For example, during a 2019 Caspian Fleet drill, Russian air, land and sea forces were combined into a single information space.

“Data on detected targets were loaded into the system in real time and depending on the target type, the command chose the best attack methods,” the report said. “All information was received in real time and analyzed using an automated command-and-control system with AI elements.”

However, despite Moscow’s deep interest in AI, the nation faces challenges in developing the most cutting edge platforms, said two authors of the report, Jeffrey Edmonds and Samuel Bendett, who are both Russia experts at CNA and the Center for a New American Security.

Within Russia’s AI ecosystem, the leading companies are state sponsored, Edmonds said.

The Russian private sector lacks an environment that’s conducive to risk-taking and entrepreneurship in AI, autonomy and innovation, he added.

In the United States, some of the most important technologies started as U.S.-government projects, such as the internet and mobile communication systems, Bendett said. But after those systems were developed, the government moved out of the way to allow companies to further mature them.

“Russia doesn’t really have a high-tech private sector in the same sense” as the United States, he said. “Some of those private initiatives are only now starting to” be developed.

The country does not have an equivalent tech hub to Silicon Valley, Bendett said. There was the intention that the Skolkovo Innovation Hub — which was launched in 2010 — would emulate that model, but that vision has not come to fruition.

“It did for some companies and individuals, but probably on the whole it didn’t,” he noted.

Skolkovo includes five “research clusters” focusing on information technologies, including artificial intelligence, energy, nuclear, biomedicine and space, according to the report.

However, Bendett noted that the lion’s share of the nation’s AI-related activity comes out of three universities including Moscow State University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and Moscow Higher School of Economics. ND AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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Viewpoint

BY RYAN HEIDORN

Hasten CMMC Compliance Through Zero-Trust n It’s hard to have a conversation about cybersecurity these days without hearing about “zero trust,” a cybersecurity design philosophy that, although conceptualized over a decade ago, has reemerged as contemporary wisdom among security practitioners in both government and industry.

Zero trust has risen to prominence in the post-COVID world in part because, as a security engineering paradigm, it addresses the reality that corporate resources have moved to the cloud and users access them from anywhere, whether that’s at the office, home, or Starbucks.

For defense contractors preparing for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) — many of them facing an uphill battle after chronic underinvestment in IT and security — zero-trust concepts may hold the key to fast-tracking the implementation of technical requirements for protecting controlled unclassified information (CUI).

Leveraging a zero-trust strategy in the cloud can help contractors scope out technical debt, modernize IT infrastructure and accelerate compliance timelines.

But even as federal agencies rush to adopt a zero-trust architecture, as directed by President Joe Biden’s “Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity,” industry faces a potential hurdle in following suit: the cybersecurity rules may already be out of step with contemporary best practices.

In contrast to the adage “trust but verify,” a core concept of the zero-trust model is to never trust, always verify. John Kindervag, who coined the term “zero trust” in a 2010 paper, often states that “trust is a vulnerability that can be exploited.”

Without zero trust, an adversary who gains access to a trusted account or device is free to move around a network unchallenged.

Zero trust moves cybersecurity defenses away from networkbased security perimeters — characterized by firewalls, VPNs and intrusion detection systems — to user identities, devices and individual resources. Instead of broadly granting access within the protected boundary of a corporate network, zerotrust seeks to verify — authenticate, authorize and encrypt — every access request. In this way, a user’s identity becomes the new security perimeter.

Trying to log in with the correct password but from an unusual location? Prompt for multi-factor authentication. Logging in from outside the United States and your device is failing compliance checks? Block the connection and alert an administrator.

Continuous, automated verification of identity can minimize the impact of a breach. In fact, a key design principle of zerotrust architecture is to assume the network has already been breached by an adversary. This mindset, all too reasonable in today’s threat landscape, should prompt organizations to focus on security engineering concepts such as least privilege. For example, users only have the minimum permissions needed, and only at the time they need them. Or “least functionality” — systems are configured to explicitly block unnecessary applications, ports and protocols — or “defense in depth” where 16

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defenses are layered so there is no single point of failure.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Special Publication 800-207, “Zero Trust Architecture,” affirms these principles, stating that the complexity of modern IT operations “has outstripped legacy methods of perimeter-based network security as there is no single, easily identified perimeter for the enterprise.”

Traditional perimeter-based security is now an unacceptable security posture for most modern organizations, including the federal government, its military and supply chains. Biden’s recent executive order directs all federal agencies to develop a plan for implementing a zero-trust architecture, and many agencies already had efforts underway. In May 2021, the Defense Information Systems Agency released the DoD Zero Trust Reference Architecture, a collaboration with the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. In its revised strategic plan for fiscal year 2022, DISA declares zero-trust architecture as the cornerstone of its strategic focus on cyber defense.

Air Force Chief Information Officer Lauren Barrett Knausenberger has articulated a vision “for the future to be completely zero trust.” The Air Force is developing a maturity model to align its information systems with zero-trust principles.

And, in the wake of the SolarWinds attack, the Department of Homeland Security launched a Zero Trust Action Group to develop “reusable security architectures, policy guides … and reference implementations with a two-year plan to deploy zero trust department-wide.”

The writing is on the wall, or rather, in Executive Order 14028, for federal agencies. To “keep pace with today’s dynamic and increasingly sophisticated cyber threat environment,” agencies must accelerate adoption of zero-trust architectures and secure cloud services.

In a February report titled, “Embracing a Zero Trust Security Model,” the NSA “strongly recommends that a zero-trust security model be considered for … defense industrial base critical networks and systems.”

NIST SP 800-207 notes that “greenfield” zero-trust architecture, which is building it from the ground up, is likely not an option for federal agencies. It may be, however, the best option for the hundreds of thousands of subcontractors, suppliers and small businesses in the defense industrial base now preparing for CMMC. In his epic unraveling of the federal rulemaking processes and assumptions leading up to CMMC, “A Banquet of Consequences: The Story of CUI, DFARS, and CMMC,” Jacob Horne, managing partner at DEFCERT, illustrated the gap between what the federal government assumed industry was doing to protect its networks versus the reality on the ground, where technical and organizational debt — deferred costs and efforts — has piled up within industry for decades. The contractors’ self-attestation of compliance with DFARS 252.204-7012 did virtually nothing to abate this.

“Organizational debt accumulates as it is never the top priority, until it’s suddenly the only priority,” Horne wrote. Confront-

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ed with CMMC and its process maturity requirements, many contractors are being forced to come to terms with years of underinvestment in the people, processes and technology needed to effectively manage cybersecurity. Although he is quick to caution against reliance on technology, the majority of CMMC practices are nontechnical in nature. Horne sees zero-trust architecture as an opportunity to scope out technical debt: “For organizations that have kicked the can down the road for years, [zero-trust architecture] is the decision to ‘abandon ship’ and tunnel through corporate networks as if they are equally untrustworthy.”

Cloud-based information systems can be rapidly deployed and shift some of the burden of security and compliance to service providers. Amazon, Microsoft and Google — all of which offer FedRAMP authorized services — collectively spent $97 billion in capital expenditures in 2020 alone, while the manufacturing industry, in contrast, lags well behind average in spending on IT as a percentage of revenue.

A cloud-first strategy seeks to reduce and control technical debt by adopting cloud services wherever possible. By leveraging cloud services as the underlying architecture for organizational systems, an organization can effectively reduce the scope of technical responsibilities that must be performed internally such as maintenance, hardware refresh and physical security.

The application of a cloud-first strategy can result in reduced system complexity, decreased operational footprint, and allow an organization to inherit certain security and compliance practices from the cloud service provider in a shared responsibility model.

“Cloud service providers have scale and assets that promote constant advances in security to stay abreast of agile, persistent adversaries,” says Robert Metzger, a government contracts attorney at Rogers Joseph O’Donnell and co-author of MITRE’s “Deliver Uncompromised” report.

Adopting a zero-trust architecture in the cloud may be crucial to reducing the exposure of traditional perimeter defenses and accommodating today’s remote workforce, Metzger said.

So, what’s the catch?

The CMMC practice SC.3.180 requires organizations to “employ architectural designs, software development techniques and systems engineering principles that promote effective information security.”

As the dominant contemporary model for security architecture, zero-trust architecture is an obvious choice for promoting effective information security. But NIST SP 800-207 identifies a perceived gap between federal cybersecurity frameworks and the regime: "There is a misconception that [zero-trust architecture] is a single framework with a set of solutions that are incompatible with the existing view of cybersecurity. ... This gap is based on a misconception of zero-trust architecture and how it has evolved from previous cybersecurity paradigms," NIST said.

The CMMC model, like the NIST special publications it builds upon, contemplates a traditional, on-premises environment, where blinking boxes protect the network from adversaries on the outside. In that mindset, requirements like AC.2.015 "route remote access via managed access control points" set up organizations implementing zero-trust architecture for a tricky justification.

What exactly, in today’s cloud-first world, is remote access? In the CMMC clarification to AC.2.015, remote access is defined as “access to organizational systems by users (or processes acting on behalf of users) communicating through external networks” such as the internet. If, as in a zero-trust architecture, all networks are treated as inherently untrusted, are the underlying requirements satisfied?

Metzger argues that “while NIST SP 800-171 and CMMC are written around different principles and expecting different methods than zero trust, adoption of its technologies and techniques will undoubtedly contribute to compliance, with the added benefit of outcomes superior to the minimums that might be acceptable.”

Consider CMMC practice PE.3.136, which requires organizations to enforce safeguarding measures for controlled unclassified information at alternate work sites and clarifies that organizations should “define and implement safeguards to account for protection of information beyond the enterprise perimeter.”

In a zero-trust architecture, an alternate work site is no more or less trusted than a corporate network. With identity as the perimeter, zero-trust mechanisms like telemetry-based access control and encryption provide safeguarding measures for data, regardless of where the user is logging in from.

Zero-trust concepts and supporting technologies are not so far off from a literal, conservative reading of CMMC practice requirements, but it is apparent that it is not the architecture that the CMMC model had in mind.

Which begs the question, how can federal rulemaking and any attendant certification processes ever keep pace with the fast-moving cybersecurity domain?

Metzger suggests that a focus on security outcomes, rather than prescriptive methods, could address the problem. “Experience in recent years shows too painfully that the techniques, tactics and practices of adversaries outpace entirely the rate of rulemaking or the pace of certification regimes.

“Indeed, an excess of rules and surplus of process can increase opportunities for adversaries to find, study and exploit the ‘seams,’” he said. “That’s why it is important to think more about security outcomes than to rely upon rule-based regimes — especially those reliant upon perimeter security of on-premises networks.”

It is important to remember, as the DoD Zero Trust Reference Architecture points out, that “no single device or capability produces a zero-trust framework.” Similarly, CMMC is not a one-off project and cannot be reduced to technical implementations. We should be careful not to look to zero-trust architecture as a panacea for cyber and supply chain risk.

But, as the federal government pushes to adopt zero-trust architectures and secure cloud services, the defense industry should look to cloud-native zero-trust architecture as an effective strategy for meeting compliance requirements, protecting sensitive data, and modernizing IT infrastructure in one fell swoop. ND Ryan Heidorn is a co-founder and managing partner at Steel Root, where he leads the firm’s cybersecurity practice. He also serves on the board of the National Defense Industrial Association’s New England Chapter.

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Viewpoint

BY JAMES CURTIS

How to Defeat the Info-Warfare ‘Triad of Disruption’ “The very ‘rules of war’ have changed. The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.”

— Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the general staff, Military-Industrial Kurier, February 2013

“Russia is waging the most amazing information warfare blitzkrieg we have ever seen in the history of information warfare.”

— Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO Wales Summit, September 2014

result of the use of their media platform.

It is a flawed law requiring change; specifically, bipartisan legislation is required to find the balance between freedom of speech and responsible online social engagement. Without addressing this issue, the continued use of social media platforms as an attack vector seems to have no boundaries for the foreseeable future.

Next is propaganda and fake news. The spreading of rumors, ideas, information and lies in order to cause harm to nations, organizations or an individual is propaganda and is the “information manipulation” element. It has been used successfully for hundreds of years for purposes of evil. To support Adolf Hitler’s ascendance, the Nazis honed propaganda to an art form as they instilled their evil into every aspect of German society.

As dangerous and effective as propaganda has been throughout history, the introduction of social media amplifies the threat many-fold. Writing in a Strategic Studies Quarterly article, “Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare,” Air Force Lt. Col. Jarred Prier addressed this growing threat of unchecked propaganda and related attributes which contribute to its spread in the digital environment.

Figure 2 reflects this lethal combination and how the different technology tools, players and messaging combine to give propaganda a lifespan with amazing stamina using the representative social media platform, Twitter.

The primary sinister partner to propaganda is fake news.

Fake news serves as the energy source to complete this new weapon’s ability to sow discord, enable lies and motivate believers. Fake news is not a new term; and its recently mutated use is not the original meaning. Unfortunately, fake news has become a cottage industry to itself. It is now a favorite technique of some prominent politicians as a method to discount any news they don’t like. Issues that are factually provable are often tagged as fake news because the source is not considered credible solely based upon the receiver’s political persuasion.

Another factor is the rise of digital social engineering.

Social engineer Christopher Hadnagy defines his field as “the act of manipulating a person to take an action that may or may

n Seven years later, America faces a more skillful Russia experienced in modern information warfare leveraging three elements: social media, propaganda/fake news and digital social engineering — the “triad of disruption.”

The advanced persistent threat of the triad is a clear and present danger to national security because nation-states and terrorist organizations have learned to apply the ubiquitous power of social media technology, and “message” propaganda and fake news utilizing professional information warriors to manipulate the masses via the art of digital social engineering.

The U.S. government, and the Defense Department specifically, faces unprecedented challenges from this information weapon.

In his book, “Messing with the Enemy,” national security expert Clint Watts bluntly states that “America sucks at information warfare, absolutely sucks.” While the nation expends tremendous effort to develop kinetic weapon systems, it is clear it has yet to develop a comprehensive defense plan for its adversary’s Triad of Disruption strategy.

Figure one reveals how the three elements interact to produce the Triad of Disruption. It is the merged power of the overlapping elements used in the battle of influence, destabilization and intimidation that manifests as a weapon of mass destruction leading to the ultimate goal — the decline of American society into chaos. To appreciate the power of the Triad of Disruption, one needs to understand each element’s role in developing the weapon.

The weapon’s message delivery element, social media, continues to morph itself across every aspect of society. To date, relying upon social media sites to self-police propaganda and FIGURE 1 fake news has been ineffective.

TRIAD OF DISRUPTION Section 230 of the 1996 (Curtis, Webster University, 2018) Communications Decency Act has but 26 words. Section 230 reads, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." It is a blanket protection for social media providers from legal action as a 18

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not be in the target’s best interest.” Social engineering is simply the art of manipulating others to get them to do what you want. However, combining that skill with online technology produces the power of digital social engineering — the “pretext planning strategy” element. And, while the art of social engineering has been around as long as humans, the advent of the digital era provides the attacker the ability to reach a more expansive target set with rapid results. Russian social engineers are representative of this final piece of the weapon built to attack the United States in a manner unimaginable just a decade ago.

The 2017 Director of National Intelligence and the 2020 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reports outlined the unprecedented success of the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) in its use of the Triad of Disruption during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign.

Without a doubt, Russia’s attack had an impact on U.S. national security. Additionally, the IRA’s low investment costs/ high-yield return strategy to cause political chaos, weaken international alliances and sow discord among U.S. citizens may be one of the most successful long-term return on investment attacks in the annals of military history.

After 2016, Russia continued to reap benefits as it flaunted an alarmingly open Triad of Disruption strategy. Georgia, Ukraine, France, Great Britain and other nations have been targets of the IRA attack strategy. And yet, after years of “digital” bombardment by Russia, America and its allies have yet to find a counter-balance strategy to defeat this weapon.

As other adversaries have recognized the successes of Russia, almost without meaningful penalty, they too are applying the Triad of Disruption against their rivals. China, North Korea and Iran are increasing their information warfare activities. On the terrorism front, ISIS was already known for its sophisticated use of social media, and there can be no doubt they have studied the IRA’s strategies and are honing their battle plans for future information warfare attacks.

How can the nation defend itself against the Triad of Disruption?

The challenge to the Pentagon in building an effective defense against the Triad of Disruption is more complex and unique than any it has confronted. Building a new weapon system is not the answer — the fact is that the best defense against this weapon is education, good policy, effective laws, public-private partnerships, and international alliances and treaties.

It is imperative to understand that the Defense Department cannot counter this threat by itself. It requires all levels of government, private industry and academia.

As such, the following defensive plan requires an “all-in” government-wide commitment.

First, the Defense Department should partner with other agencies to fund and support a government-wide commitment to a cybersecurity education program for all Americans as early as the first days of school and continuing throughout adulthood.

Government should revisit the efficacy of laws and policy regarding private industry standards for social media, especially in regard to Section 230.

Next, private military contractor and academic communities should team with the government via public-private partnerships to develop technical processes which identify and coun-

FIGURE 2 Process map of how propaganda spreads via the trend - connections between the trend to journalists, outside network, and true believers (Prior, Strategic Studes, Winter 2017).

ter attacks such as deep fakes and other emerging digital social engineering methods.

The Pentagon should dedicate more resources toward detection, identification and authentication of online information warfare techniques. This cannot be done by technology alone.

It also requires a change in how the community conceptualizes this evolving weapon culturally and socially.

All levels of government should develop and commit to every American’s understanding of the elements of the Triad of Disruption. This includes establishing a national awareness campaign similar in scope and breadth to the anti-smoking campaign begun in the 1970s. Americans need to understand this weapon so they too can play a role in the nation’s combined defense.

Finally, the Defense Department should support an international cybersecurity treaty similar in concept to the U.S.-Russia nuclear treaties. The result would be an international cybersecurity convention applying to all nations.

To enforce such a treaty, the United States should support the establishment of a United Nations cybersecurity agency with the legal authority for independent monitoring, forensic investigation and identification, and the ability to impart punitive actions against countries guilty of wielding the Triad of Disruption weapon.

The elements of the Triad of Disruption merge to form an extraordinarily powerful weapon providing nation-states and terrorist groups with the capability to execute information warfare against a target on a massive scale, at low risk or cost.

The Russian attack against the United States’ 2016 presidential election was the most effective attack using the triad in history, but it won’t be for long. U.S. adversaries are capable of propagating damaging propaganda and fake news, utilizing the technologies of the internet’s social media, and then leveraging professional digital social engineers to attack the nation with devastating results.

The Triad of Disruption is a clear and present danger to America. It requires an entire nation to mobilize in defense. ND Dr. James Curtis is the cybersecurity program director and assistant professor of information technology at Webster University in St. Louis.

He is a retired Air Force officer who also served as a presidential communications officer in the White House under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

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Viewpoint

BY TOM KEARNEY

Accelerated Training Program a Boon to Defense Industry

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tors, but also the communities where they’re based. Who gains value for increasing manufacturing capacity? A variety of entities. Of course, the contractor gains skilled employees, but the federal government also benefits because it gets the products needed for warfighters. There’s also tremendous value to local communities. When a company expands its business, it creates a larger tax base that feeds back to the local schools and the public good.

ATDM also provides the defense industry with a solid workforce procurement path to allow contractors to properly plan for and execute the contracts they’ve been awarded and to confidently bid on new work, knowing they will have a better chance of finding skilled workers — something that hasn’t always been the case.

In the past, when a contractor won a defense-related procurement order, the hiring of qualified workers was their responsibility. And oftentimes, with constraints in the supply of domestic manufacturing and engineering talent, that has proven to be a challenge. These challenges were manifested in both schedule delays and quality assurance issues. However, with ATDM fully implemented, contractors will experience a paradigm shift in how the Defense Department does business.

By moving the training of skilled workers to more of a partnership model with costs shared by local, state and federal government, and the commercial manufacturers, companies will have a better idea as to whether they will have enough workers to successfully take on a project — regardless of whether that’s building ships, tanks or aircraft. This is especially important for smaller contractors that don’t have the resources to train or recruit their own workers.

In order for the program to be successful though, there needs to be advocacy and awareness of it at the defense leadership level. And on the government side, acquisition program managers need to know that this accelerated training program exists and could be an excellent source of talent for the manufacturers they closely work with.

Who exactly are the ideal ATDM recruits? Due to the intensity of the training and time commitment, more mature workers in their mid-20s and beyond are the primary candidates.

Spouse teams may also be interested. Other target candidates include veterans looking for an exciting way to work for a defense company as they transition out of the military.

Another group of workers who would benefit from the program are those already working for a manufacturing company who have the potential to move up from an entry-level position to one requiring a greater skill set.

This training program will play an important role in filling the large workforce gap in America, but it’s not the only one. We need thousands of skilled workers and ATDM, in concert with other programs, can and should be part of the answer for meeting the defense industrial base needs of the future. ND Retired Navy Rear Adm. Tom Kearney is a member of The SPECTRUM Group, one of the partners in developing the ATDM pilot program.

iStock photo

n While the final size of the Navy’s fleet remains a hot discussion topic, there’s little question that in the future it will be a lot larger than it is today.

In order to build these ships of tomorrow, the Navy needs to make sure there are enough certified welders and other skilled technicians to do the actual shipbuilding. Fortunately, that assurance is on the horizon thanks to an innovative pilot program known as Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing.

Made possible by a $7 million contract awarded by the Defense Department’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Office using the Cornerstone other transaction authority, this new fast-track training program will serve as a template for developing skilled workers quickly and at a large enough scale to significantly impact the defense industrial base’s manufacturing needs with the creation of regional training centers.

Launched in June in Danville, Virginia, the pilot program addresses skilled workforce gaps faced by defense companies and prepares those workers to be productive on the shop floor from day one. The focused curriculum — developed by the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research and Danville Community College, in partnership with The SPECTRUM Group and Phillips Corp., and through direct engagement with shipbuilders and the shipbuilding industry suppliers — condenses what would typically be an 18-month to two-year program into four months by training eight hours a day, five days per week.

The first 36 students to take the course since it began in June are on track to complete their training by the end of September.

Their 40-hour a week training focuses on the Navy’s shipbuilding and repair needs of welding, computer numerical control machining, quality assurance/metrology and additive manufacturing.

The pilot program has big potential. For example, if implemented nationally via regional training centers, eight centers could each produce 1,000 graduates a year, adding 8,000 trained personnel to the workforce pool in short order.

Today, vocational training in welding and other manufacturing skills is generally handled by community colleges where the skills being taught are for a broader industry pool and not specifically tailored to the needs of the defense industry. While some larger companies also run their own apprentice training programs, these can be expensive and most of the Tier 1 and 2 manufacturers can’t afford to do so.

Since the first ATDM pilot is focused on shipbuilding and ship sustainment, the training will focus on what’s needed by this segment of the industrial base and will include specific national level certifications relevant to shipbuilding and repair.

As ATDM rolls out nationally via regional training centers, the vision is for it to focus on the needs of local industrial bases. For instance, in Detroit, Michigan, a regional center could potentially support the Army by producing tanks and other land vehicles. In the Huntsville, Alabama, area, where aerospace is prevalent, the focus would be on rocket and missile-building skills.

These regional training centers will not just benefit contrac-

Air-Launched Missiles Slated as First U.S. Hypersonic Weapons

BY STEW MAGNUSON The Air Force’s AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon is poised to be the first hypersonic offensive system to move from development to procurement, the Defense Department’s point man on the technology said.

There will be a number of test flights for ARRW — pronounced “arrow” — over the next year with fielding planned in 2022, Mike White, principal director for hypersonics in the office of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said recently. The 2022 budget proposal released in late May supports an “accelerated buying strategy” that will transition some of the various research-and-development programs to weapons procurement, he added.

“All we need is our industry partner Lockheed Martin to deliver the capability, and then we’ll buy it,” White said at a talk hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Defense Department is prioritizing the development of air-launched hypersonic weapons such as the ARRW over land- or sea-launched systems, he said. There is also funding in the 2022 budget request to continue to develop the Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile and the Navy’s Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare Increment 2 airlaunched capabilities.

White mentioned reports that adversaries such as China and Russia have moved ahead of the United States in hypersonics, defined as platforms that can travel in Earth’s atmosphere over Mach 5 and have a high degree of maneuverability.

“As you understand that landscape, you really understand how real this is and how important it is — a national imperative in my mind — that we move forward and deliver to our warfighters this capability,” White said.

There are two primary types of offensive hypersonic weapon systems. One is boost-glide which calls for using a rocket booster to propel a missile to high altitudes and releasing a vehicle that glides down at high speeds. The other is airbreathing scramjet missiles.

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“Cruise missiles … are smaller and are more affordable because of that smaller size, and they’re more compatible with a wider range of platforms,” White said.

The Pentagon is prioritizing the airlaunched weapons because they will be easier to integrate onto jet fighters, he said.

“They allow us to bring in the fourthgen fighters into the fight on day one” to launch the weapons, he said, mentioning the F-16 and F-15EX aircraft.

The Navy and Air Force are working closely together to coordinate integration of hypersonic missiles into other platforms such as bombers, he added.

The ARRW boost-glide weapon has been carried by B-52s during test flights.

The Navy’s Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare Increment 2 missile is being designed to be compatible with an F/A18 jet fighter and aircraft carrier operations, he added.

“We’re looking at: how do we deliver air-launched cruise missiles to get effects in numbers in the battlefield to go after high-end integrated missile defense systems? How do we deliver a long-range hypersonic weapon … capability to have multi-domain options to do deep strike against targets of critical and strategic importance on the battlefield?” White asked.

Work continues on hypersonic weapons launched from land and sea platforms.

As for hypersonic boost-glide, the Army is producing the common glide body with Sandia National Laboratories as the government lead integrator. The Navy is responsible for future weapon design, White said.

“It’s not a joint program. It’s an integrated program of common interest,” he said.

The Navy is also pursuing a conventional prompt strike capability using a boost-glide system that will initially be launched from DDG-1000 Zumwaltclass destroyers and later Virginia-class fast-attack submarines in the late 2020s through the 2030s, he said.

Meanwhile, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working on the Tactical Boost Glide vehicle, which

will be integrated with the ARRW system.

“The ARRW program is pressing ahead. We’ve got confidence that the glide body will work, and so we will first fly the TBG program, then quickly thereafter integrate with the ARRW program and demonstrate that the weapon system is viable,” White said.

“Probably the biggest challenge we have is the supply chain and making sure that we instill quality into the systems engineering, the rigor into our weapon system build-ups and make sure that the subsystems that we integrate are ready to go when we integrate them,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Air Force in 2020 canceled the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW) — pronounced “hacksaw” — boost-glide platform that would have used a modified version of the Common-Hypersonic Glide Body and be air launched from the B-52. White said the Air Force decided to proceed with ARRW because it had more confidence in its design.

That doesn’t mean the HCSW program is forever dead, though.

“If ARRW fails, we can always pull HCSW off the shelf and use it, because we got it through a [critical design review] and we’re ready to go if we need to,” White said.

Another research avenue is the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment, or SCIFiRE, a partnership with Australia, which is funded through the office of the secretary of defense and administered by the Air Force, White said.

“It really is to bring the Australians into the fold relative to the development of the cruise missiles,” he added.

SCIFiRE is intended to push the development of a cruise missile weapon configuration, White said. The Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile “will pick that momentum up and accelerate it forward into a viable future weapon,” White said.

One issue with boost-glide systems is that as they descend, they lose velocity as they encounter atmospheric drag.

White said there are concepts that combine the two approaches.

“There’s this prospect of blending it.

There are concepts where you have very large hypersonic boost-glide systems that have a scramjet so you want to try to minimize that reduction in velocity,

AGM-183A concept art

Lockheed Martin artist’s rendering

and get very, very long ranges,” he said.

Meanwhile, White described an acquisition strategy for the emerging technology that sounded like it was inspired by the F-35 joint strike fighter.

“We made the decision as a department to parallelize the technology development and weapon system development, so we can field capability earlier,” he said.

“We’re accelerating the fielding of initial capability recognizing that that capability won’t be the end-all, be-all. And we will be putting together a capabilitybased [science-and-technology] strategy and a capability phasing plan strategy that will then look at block upgrades as we move forward,” he said.

A similar acquisition strategy known as “concurrence” is being used for the F-35. Secretary of the Air Force nominee Frank Kendall once called this “acquisition malpractice.”

Dr. Mark Lewis, a hypersonics expert and director of the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies Institute, said there is a fundamental difference between what White was describing for hypersonics and the F-35 approach.

“In the case of the F-35 we’re referring to a single program, where initially promised capabilities aren’t being delivered but instead deferred,” he said in an email.

Current hypersonics efforts are a series of multiple weapons and systems, including ground-, sea- and air-launched weapons. There are also the two approaches: boost-glide and air-breathing missiles.

“In this case, I think his approach makes perfect sense,” Lewis said.

“Given the timelines the department is trying to meet — responding quickly to the Chinese threat — it would be wrong to do these two development paths in a series,” Lewis added.

Doug Graham, vice president of advanced programs development at Lockheed Martin Space, said a 10-plus year acquisition cycle isn’t going to cut it.

“That just isn’t adequate to meet the needs of the nation,” he said at the CSIS event.

After years of seeing the government’s interest on hypersonics wax and wane, the fact that the Biden administration is continuing and building on the work of the Trump administration is “hugely important, because we have a significant challenge ahead of us,” Graham said.

White said the accelerated development strategy for hypersonics was planned during the Trump administration, but has also had strong support from the Biden administration to continue the momentum. He called the Biden administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 a “milestone” in hypersonics development.

“It really is an important statement that we’ve made in the department and the new administration to move forward,” White said. “Now it’s in the hands of Congress as we move forward to try to make sure that we can communicate the importance of this.

They’ve been very supportive thus far,” he added.

Graham said: “I’m confident that we are going to show some success at the flight testing ranges that are going to feed into prototype systems and then fielding these systems in volumes.”

Graham acknowledged that there is work to do on educating those in the public and Congress who think the military is pursuing too many hypersonics programs, rendering them redundant.

But they are a family of systems and complementary, he added.

“These are all very different systems.

In some cases, different platforms, ... different payload sizes, different speeds, different ranges and different survivability” and must attack different kinds of targets, he said.

There is also a lot of work to do on building up the test and evaluation infrastructure. Wind tunnels don’t just pop up overnight, he noted.

White said there are big plus-ups in the 2022 budget request for wind tunnels and flight-testing infrastructure, including converting a Global Hawk unmanned aircraft to monitor flight tests — called a Range Hawk — rather than a string of Navy ships, which White said was costly.

As for the costs of the weapons themselves, industry leaders said they know they have to work to keep the prices down so they can be produced in mass quantities.

Lisa Brown, vice president for missile defense solutions at Northrop Grumman, said companies have to work closely with the government to redefine requirements, which will keep costs down.

Building the missiles in volume drives affordability, Graham said. The Air Force and Navy working together on their air-launched systems also helps tremendously as they can invest in common systems.

Erin Kocourek, senior director and hypersonics campaign lead at Raytheon Missiles and Defense, said international cooperation is another way to achieve affordability.

“Allied cooperation could also play a role in affordability. We are starting to see that in SCIFiRE,” she said.

White emphasized the importance of civilian cooperation as well.

“NASA is truly a partner in hypersonics. We have a quarterly meeting where we coordinate … not only in the area of test facilities but in subject matter expertise. NASA researchers are involved in our DoD programs and give us advice and lend their expertise to their development activities,” White said. ND AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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Navy Dedicates More Resources To Secretive Project Overmatch

BY YASMIN TADJDEH The Navy is making headway in its secretive Project Overmatch, which is expected to be a key contributor to the military’s plans for joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2.

The sea service has stood up a new office specifically designed to tackle the challenge. Compared to the Air Force and Army, which are working on their own JADC2 efforts, the Navy has been relatively mum on details about its initiative. However, some information has been disclosed.

Project Overmatch “is a seamless network that will leverage demonstrated progress in command-and-control in all domains and facilitate the mannedunmanned teaming of the future that would be required for future warfare,” said Frederick Stefany, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition.

President Joe Biden’s proposed fiscal year 2022 budget request asks for funding for key enablers for Project Overmatch, he noted during a Senate Armed Services subcommittee on seapower hearing in June.

While the Navy shared few details about the effort in its publicly released fiscal blueprint, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Budget Rear Adm. John Gumbleton said the proposal includes three classified research-anddevelopment line items in support of Project Overmatch.

“Those values do increase,” he said in May during a briefing with reporters. “Project Overmatch is the priority right behind Columbia [submarines]. … It competes quite well for funds. I wouldn’t say it’s resource-limited at all.”

The Navy has said the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program — which is replacing its aging Ohio-class boomers — is its No. 1 priority, but Project Overmatch is high on the list at No. 2, according to Gumbleton.

According to budget documents, the Navy is increasing investments in the lethality of legacy platforms — through both system modernization and new capabilities — that will support Project 24

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Overmatch’s goal of creating a seamless network of sensors, manned and unmanned platforms and weapons for decision advantage.

The Navy asked for a small boost in its overall information warfare program portfolio — which will help support these efforts — in the budget proposal, going from $5.62 billion in fiscal year 2021 to $5.87 billion in 2022, according to service documents.

Project Overmatch was stood up

by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday in October 2020. Earlier this year, he visited with leaders and engineering experts at Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, or NAVWAR, in San Diego to discuss the initiative’s progress.

“As we adapt to an increasingly complex security environment, it is imperative that the Navy develop a warfighting network of networks to support a future fleet of manned and unmanned vessels,” Gilday said in a statement.

“Information has become the cornerstone of how we operate, and we need to be able to decide and act faster than anyone else,” he added. “Simply put, Project Overmatch will provide us a decision advantage over our adversaries and help us deliver a more lethal and better-connected fleet far into the future. This is a top priority — we must deliver it.”

While the Navy only kicked off its JADC2 program last fall, it already has experience connecting its platforms, said James Geurts, who is performing the duties of the undersecretary of the Navy.

“The Navy has had to solve some of this already,” he said during remarks at the McAleese and Associates annual defense program conference in May. “We’ve had integrated fires — you can’t survive in the Pacific without some form of integrated fires.”

Additionally, the sea service has already connected data links aboard ships and aircraft, he noted.

To better get its hands around Project Overmatch, the service has tasked NAVWAR Commander Rear Adm. Doug Small to be personally account-

able for delivering on JADC2, Geurts said.

The service has given him the authority to “look at all the different things we’re doing both in current operations with current equipment, and in future activities to get those aligned,” Geurts said. “We may execute those in a distributed manner, but it’s going to be under the authority and guidance of” Small.

Speaking during an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in May, Small said Project Overmatch is delivering on what officials call the naval operational architecture. The architecture is a framework for how various components are “stitched together” to provide enhanced distributed maritime operations. The approach includes using network tools and analytics, he said.

Small noted that Project Overmatch is a large undertaking.

“If you’re trying to think about the totality of what we’re trying to enable, … [it] could be unwieldy and you may sort of wrack your brains thinking about how to get after it,” he said. “But I look at it from the standpoint of, ‘How do you tackle any large effort?’ You take it in chunks. This is eating the elephant a bite at a time.”

The service is trying to take advantage of basic concepts such as agile development as it pursues the effort, he said.

As the Navy considers what the “end state” of Project Overmatch will be, there are certain parts of the architecture that will be put in place very quickly, Small noted. For example, equipping ships and submarines with cloud computing platforms.

However, connecting networks with

iStock photo-illustration

AI and machine learning-enabled tools is “going to continue to evolve for as long as we have a Navy,” he said. “What we have to do is set up that connective tissue … to be able to plug those in as they become available, and then continue to test, refine [and] work on new concepts of operations.”

NAVWAR recently announced a series of prize challenges in support of Project Overmatch. The first will explore new networking technologies to “advance the reach, capacity and resiliency of the maritime tactical network of networks,” according to the Navy. Participants will demonstrate their solutions in a simulation-based environment. The first-place entry will win $75,000 and the runner-up will be awarded $25,000.

A second challenge will focus on artificial intelligence systems and also include $100,000 in prizes, according to the service.

Vice Adm. Jeffrey Trussler, deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare and director of naval intelligence, noted that historically, interoperability hasn’t always been the first thought as the service has built new ships and aircraft.

“As we looked at this emerging world of strategic competition … all the services have recognized we need to be more interoperable, and eventually seamlessly integrated,” he said during a panel discussion at the West 2021 Conference, which was hosted by AFCEA International and the U.S. Naval Institute in June.

Some programs the Navy has already been working on for the last several years — such as its integrated fire control system — are steps toward JADC2,

Trussler said.

From there, “we decided, well, that needs to be expanded,” he said. “That needs to be a whole-of-Navy effort.”

Under Small’s leadership, the service has been working to cut red tape and put together a plan to make the Navy more interoperable and capable, Trussler said.

“Just in a few short months, …

[Small] has put together a tremendous plan that’s going to take us from here and immediately [enable] a prompt jump up … within just a couple of years,” he said. The service will be “a lot more interoperable with the systems and equipment we have with just small tweaks in his authority and ability to reach across all [program executive office] and program lines.”

However, the service still needs to do more work expanding Project Overmatch’s reach to the other sea services — the Marine Corps and Coast Guard, he noted. “We’re going to start doing that. We’ve talked about it at the flag level and the working level.”

For the Marine Corps, Project Overmatch is all about kill chains, said Brig. Gen. Lorna Mahlock, director of information, command, control, communications and computers and deputy chief information officer for the Marine Corps.

“It’s about enabling those tactical kill chains,” she said in June during a webcast hosted by C4ISRNET. “Folks used to think that there is no interdependency between the enterprise and the tactical edge. … [However], there is an inextricable link to getting a cueing from national satellites and intel data, which informs the decision or a fires mission.”

The Marine Corps is well positioned to collaborate with the Army, Air Force and Navy on JADC2 because of its unique joint operational requirements, Mahlock said.

“We have to be able to maneuver as a part of a naval force, but we [also] have to go from ship to shore and we have to be able to integrate with the Army,” she said. Additionally, Marine air-ground task forces have an aviation component and must integrate with the Air Force, she said.

“As we build capability, they have to be inherently joint,” Mahlock said.

“That’s why there’s a lot of good work in our partnering across the department and the Joint Staff … on the JADC2 front.”

Mahlock noted that she is seeing a great deal of collaboration between the services when it comes to joint alldomain command and control.

“We understand the imperative, we understand that threat and across the department we’re joined up,” she said.

“There’s a lot of partnering that I have never frankly seen before.”

Meanwhile, work is accelerating on JADC2 efforts in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. For example, in a major move, Secretary Lloyd Austin III recently signed the Pentagon’s classified joint all-domain command and control strategy.

The next step will be determining what the implementation plan for the strategy is, said Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall, director of command, control, communications and computers/ cyber and chief information officer for the Joint Staff, J6.

“It’s a rather complex challenge to get started,” he said during an online event hosted by Defense One in June. “Who does what, where, when? Budgets are in different places in the services, and we’re going to need the services to take leads in areas where their efforts align quite nicely with that of JADC2, to where they already have some of those financial resources put in place.”

Trussler noted that Project Overmatch “is well aligned with” the JADC2 strategy. As a Navy team, “we’re completely and totally integrated and ready to move out on that.”

As of press time, the Navy had not provided responses to a list of questions submitted by National Defense about the project. ND AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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COVER STORY

READY FOR REUSE LAUNCH PROGRAM LEVERAGING RECYCLED ROCKETS

SpaceX photo

BY MANDY MAYFIELD The Space Force hit a new milestone in June when it launched a national security payload into space on a reused rocket for the first time.

The service’s Space and Missile Systems Center — in partnership with the National Reconnaissance Office — is managing the National Security Space Launch program, which enables the acquisition of launch services aimed at ensuring continued access to space for critical missions.

Through the program, the service has assigned seven national security space launches to United Launch Alliance — a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing — and SpaceX under phase 2 procurement contracts, said Col. Douglas Pentecost, deputy director of enterprise corps-launch at SMC. In March, the service awarded ULA and SpaceX four of the contracts for missions scheduled for 2023.

ULA received approximately $224 million for two missions, USSF-112 and USSF-87, and SpaceX was awarded $159 million for USSF-36 and NROL-69.

In August 2020, both companies were awarded firm-fixed-price, indefinite delivery requirement contracts for the program.

Through the agreements, ULA is slated to receive a requirements contract for approximately 60 percent of launch service orders and SpaceX will receive a requirements contract for approximately 40 percent of launch service orders.

Concurrent with the August 2020 award, the service ordered the first three missions assigned under phase 2. ULA was assigned USSF-51 and USSF-106, which are scheduled for launch in the second quarter of fiscal year 2022 and fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022, respectively. SpaceX SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket

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Some Chinese firms, such as Galactic Energy, SCAN are already developing THIS IMAGE reusable launchers. The company’s Kerolox Pallas-1 launch vehicle will be partially reusable and is slated for a test launch See the in late 2022.

Atlas V in action Advantages of recycled rockets include lowered cost due to reusability and a decrease in space debris, Johnson said. One recent, high-profile instance of worrisome space debris was the uncontrolled reentry of a Chinese rocket back to Earth.

The Long March 5B — a variant of China’s largest rocket — successfully launched the first module of a new Chinese space station from Wenchang in May. However, the mission launcher then began making an uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Debris from the rocket eventually landed in the Indian Ocean.

“Everyone was up in arms” over the event, Johnson said. Not only was the uncontrolled reentry dangerous in terms of its potential to impact people or property, but there was a risk of it releasing large amounts of dangerous chemicals, she noted.

A reusable rocket is “more environmentally friendly, because you’re not having it crash back into Earth and release chemicals, and you’re not leaving it up in space to become a really big piece of space debris,” she added.

“It’s really encouraging to see more

companies and countries looking into it, just for the business case, but also for this space sustainability argument,” she said.

Meanwhile, although the National Security Space Launch program is seeing success with its use of SpaceX reusable rockets, it still has hurdles to overcome with ULA’s rocket.

As part of the effort, ULA bid and intended to fly its new Vulcan Centaur rocket for national security space launch mission USSF-51.

However, the rocket is Atlas V not on track to be certified by the Space Force to fly by the late 2022 deadline, so the service agreed earlier this year to use the company’s legacy Atlas V. “The phase 2 launch service procurement contract was established with flexibility in the first two order years to minimize risk to meeting mission requirements, and the contract has a defined process for substitution of a secondary certified launch vehicle,” Pentecost said. “ULA determined the best solution to meet this mission’s requirements was the Atlas V launch vehicle and the government concurred.”

One issue with the Vulcan rocket is its engine, the Blue Origin-built BE-4.

According to a report released by the Government Accountability Office in June titled, “Weapons System Annual Assessment: Updated Program Oversight Approach Needed,” the Vulcan is “experiencing technical challenges related to the igniter and booster capabilities required.”

If ULA is unable to complete its engine qualification before its 2021 flight certification, it may continue to rely on the Atlas V — which uses engines manufactured in Russia — to support its launches, the report said.

The 2015 National Defense Authorization Act prohibited the award or renewal of a contract for national security space launch activities that include the use of rocket engines designed or manufactured in Russia.

However, “a subsequent amendment to the statute provided an exception for contracts awarded through 2022 for

Defense Dept. photo

was assigned USSF-67, which is scheduled for launch in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022.

In June 2021, the Space Force successfully launched the fifth GPS III Space Vehicle onboard a previously flown SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle, a first for national security space launch missions.

The Space Force has “collaborated extensively with industry since 2016 to develop standards for launch vehicle reuse,” Pentecost told National Defense in an email.

The contract for the launch contains no restrictions on previously flown boosters, he said.

“The USSF worked with SpaceX to accelerate the use of previously-flown boosters.”

Prior to the June mission and the subsequent GPS III-6 mission — which was slated to launch in the third quarter of 2021 — SMC reviewed over 440 changes to the booster and 380 verification steps to gain insight into SpaceX’s rocket refurbishment processes, Pentecost noted.

The firm — which was founded by Elon Musk — has been on the forefront of reusable rockets and has helped prove the business case that they are a sound investment, said Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director for the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Because SpaceX has proven the viability of reusable rockets, companies such as Rocket Lab are now reworking their launch vehicles to be reusable, Johnson said.

Rocket Lab, a California-based aerospace manufacturer and small satellite launch service provider, unveiled in March its plans to build off of its existing capabilities to create a reusable launch vehicle, which is expected to be operational in 2024, according to the company.

Meanwhile, U.S. adversaries such as China and Russia are also investing in reusable rockets, Johnson noted.

In late 2014, China removed legislation that prohibited commercial companies from developing space launch vehicles, allowing a number of Chinese commercial businesses to begin developing launch capabilities.

NASA photo

such procurements that include the use of a total of 18 rocket engines designed or manufactured in the Russian Federation,” the report said.

According to Pentecost, Blue Origin’s BE-4 is currently in pre-qualification development testing with full qualification testing expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2021.

“The government continues to work closely with ULA and Blue Origin to address development challenges and complete qualification of the BE-4 main stage engine,” he said. “The Vulcan development and certification schedule supports its first mission requirement in early [fiscal year] 2023 and all subsequent NSSL missions.”

The Vulcan Centaur has to fly at least twice before it can become certified by the Space Force. Vulcan’s first launch slated for 2021 was to carry Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lunar Lander.

The second was to launch Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station in 2021.

ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno said the need to coordinate with those companies is the reason the rocket’s certification will face delays.

“From a ULA perspective we are looking good for a launch this year,” he told National Defense via email. “However, there is more to selecting the launch date than just ULA. We are working with our two customers for the first two Vulcan flights — Astrobotic and Sierra Space — and at this time, it is looking like they won’t be ready to launch until 2022.”

The law states that the Defense Department must stop ordering launches that utilize Russian RD-180 engines by the end of 2022. “ULA has already received delivery of the last RD-180 engines anticipated, and they are safely stored in our factory in Decatur, Alabama, so this will not be a concern as

we transition to our new Vulcan launch vehicle,” Bruno said.

Meanwhile, the Space Force is also looking to utilize the NSSL program to continue to develop new launch technology through research, development, test and evaluation efforts.

“As a first step in a long-term, continuous RDT&E program, Congress authorized and appropriated $15 million for next-generation engine testing,” Pentecost said. “This prototype effort will advance the state-of-the-art in rocket engines, including new technologies to

SPACE

“The development will build off national space launch capabilities that provide high performance orbit transfer advantages, and will enable extended onorbit capability, increase lift capability, offer greater mission duration, enhance maneuverability and improve survivability for national security payloads,” Pentecost said.

In addition, the service is investing $37 million on an orbital transfer prototype project that will improve space access capability for national security space launch systems.

The anticipated benefits of the investment include reducing costs by allowing procurement of lower energy launch vehicle configurations and improving mass-to-orbit capability, especially for medium-Earth orbit, geostationary orbit, tundra orbit, and cislunar trajectories beyond GEO. “This effort is focused on space access capabilities where ‘space access’ refers to launchrelated capabilities that move payloads from the surface of the Earth to their designated operational orbits,” he said.

The military and NASA’s investment in space launch has allowed the commercial space sector to expand, Johnson noted.

“The U.S. government being a dependable customer has really invigorated and allowed commercial space launch companies to invest private money and raise money” to create new capabilities, she said.

These firms “could have a really great stable customer Russian-built RD-180 rocket engine in the U.S. government, and so that has brought rise to enable space access and mobility.”

SpaceX and all these new space launch Congress also authorized $75 million companies,” she added. for upper stage resiliency enhancements, Some of these businesses — such as which is a prototype project that will Blue Origin — are pursuing both sateladvance upper stage rocket technology. lite launches as well as space tourism.

The upper stage of a rocket provides This “opens the doors for even more the system with in-space propulsion to economic development,” she noted. set the spacecraft on precise trajectories, SpaceX did not respond to requests according to NASA. for an interview. ND AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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Space Force Dreams of Using Rockets to Supply Warfighters

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emergence on the commercial side with much higher capability rockets at a much lower cost point than we’re used to seeing. … Reusability also brings down the cost per launch because we get to amortize the cost of the rocket over several launches.”

Spanjers was once one of the “scoffers,” but now “it looks like technology may have caught up with the good idea,” he said.

While the initial focus will be on transporting cargo, some experts say it may be possible someday to deploy troops around the world via these types of systems.

“We’re just going to watch what happens on the commercial side,” Spanjers said. “If they turn this into a human transport mechanism, which some of the companies are talking about doing, sure the DoD would be interested in exploring options for that.”

Chris Stone, a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Research Center, said the rocket cargo idea isn’t pie in the sky. However, for it to be militarily viable, a platform must be able to be rapidly loaded, launched, landed/recovered, unloaded, refueled and restaged at a sufficient tempo and cost, he noted.

“Reusable rocket takeoff and landing have been demonstrated by SpaceX and Blue Origin,” Stone said. “However, there has not been any demonstrated cargo delivery at the 100 metric ton level yet in a point-to-point fashion.”

Brian Weeden, a space expert at the Secure World Foundation, said payloads must be able to survive the physical forces they will encounter during launch — including a significant number of Gs during acceleration and “massive vibrations” — while not adversely impacting the dynamics of the rocket.

Weeden noted that the platforms that have been launched from the United States thus far have gone to outer space or have come down and landed on U.S. soil or platforms at sea.

“We’ve never done [an operation where] rockets take off from one country … and land in another country,” he said. “How do you get both countries on the same page with their regulations and

Rocket Cargo concept art

aspects of that that you can speed up?

Because we fully understand that if it takes us two days to load the rocket, it doesn’t matter if you get there in one hour” post launch.

Stone noted that getting the infrastructure in place for military-style loading and quick-turn maintenance has yet to be fully demonstrated.

Spanjers said rockets could take off and land at ports that will be built around the world by the commercial sector.

“At the S&T level, we’re certainly going to explore if we could extend their capability to land it in a number of diverse locations, including exploring the capability to potentially airdrop from the rocket,” he said. “What we’re doing under the Vanguard is trying to quantitatively inform senior leadership of where you could potentially put cargo

Air Force concept

BY JON HARPER The Defense Department hopes to one day be able to use commercial rockets to rapidly transport cargo — and potentially troops — from point to point across the globe. While that might sound like a pipedream to some, experts say the concept is theoretically feasible, but many challenges must be overcome for it to be militarily viable.

The Air Force Research Laboratory in June designated its new Rocket Cargo effort a Vanguard program, making it a top science and technology priority.

“Logistics speed is at the heart of military supremacy,” the lab said in a description of the program. “If a commercial company is in advanced development for a new capability to move materiel faster, then DoD needs to promptly engage and seek to be early adopters.”

The goal is to be able to partner with commercial space companies to deliver up to 100 tons of supplies and equipment “anywhere on the planet on tactical timelines,” AFRL Commander Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle told reporters.

The military envisions procuring this capability as a service rather than buying its own rockets.

The Air Force Research Lab expects to award several contracts to companies that can provide launch services and businesses that can advance other aspects of the logistics cycle such as loadmaster load/unload capability, rapid launch clearance, schedulers and environment survivability.

The lab is partnering with U.S. Transportation Command and the Space Force to assess the technology’s potential, to include improvements in delivery cost and speed compared to air cargo operations. If it proves viable and affordable, the Space and Missile Systems Center will be responsible for transitioning the effort to a program of record.

Greg Spanjers, Rocket Cargo program manager, noted that this concept isn’t new.

“It has always been an interesting, intriguing idea but … it has never really made sense in the past,” he said.

“What has frankly changed is a major

licenses and all that kind of stuff, not to mention coordinating the interface with air traffic?”

Stone said short turnaround times between flights, which could be a military requirement, have not been fully demonstrated.

Being able to launch rapidly could be critical for these types of missions, experts say.

“A rocket can get all the way around the planet in 90 minutes,” Spanjers said.

“The question is … what does it look like when you add in all of the other things you need to do to launch and land a rocket realistically, and are there

with this capability. Is it really global or … do you really run into limits either due to terrain or whatever?”

Once the cargo reaches its destination, it will need to be offloaded efficiently.

“We’re trying to figure out how we can put vehicles on a rocket, unload those vehicles and go, which is certainly going to give our [Space and Missile Systems Center] partners a headache,” Spanjers said.

Weeden noted that getting a rocket from point A to point B is only part of the challenge facing the military.

“Let’s say you managed to stack one of the giant boosters full of 100 tons of

New Shepard booster

Blue Origin photo

supplies and you launch it somewhere,” he said. “How are you going to unload it? What kind of infrastructure do you need wherever it lands to be able to unload it? … How vulnerable is that unloading infrastructure going to be to adversary attacks? It’s not a matter of you just drop this thing in the middle of nowhere.”

Weeden cited SpaceX’s Starship — which stands at nearly 400 feet tall — as an example of how large cargo rockets can be.

“Let’s say you’ve got a 15-ton [military] vehicle sitting on top of that, it’s up several stories. How the hell do you get that down?” he asked.

Some of these problems could potentially be avoided if rockets could airdrop their payloads. However, developing such a capability will be “quite a tough challenge,” Spanjers said.

How might an airdrop from a rocket work?

“My guess is at a certain altitude while they’re dropping through the atmosphere, they’ll probably parachute something out. And then after it clears enough path, [the rocket] will turn back vertical and fire its rocket engines again, and go back” to an established port, Stone said.

Weeden said the airdrop concept poses a host of challenges for dealing with the payload, including how it can be detached mid-flight.

In addition to landing rights and licensing, other issues surrounding the potential for suborbital rockets traversing the space and airspace above sovereign countries must also be addressed, Stone said.

A number of factors could limit the trajectories available, such as prohibitions against flying over populated areas.

Officials must also avoid situations where their platforms could be mistaken by other countries for nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, experts say.

“You can sit down and you can calculate all sorts of suborbital and orbital trajectories to do [rocket cargo], but there are challenges in taking those theoretical, mathematical calculations and translating them into the real world,” Weeden said.

If rocket cargo proves viable, when might the military be able to leverage the capability?

“It is still years in the future, but it could be feasible within the decade,” said Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Stone said: “To truly have a worldwide point-to-point capability with sufficient scale probably would be closer to five-to-seven years — if there is the political will behind it.”

Meanwhile, Transportation Command would like to see a “proof of principle” in the near future.

“USTRANSCOM is researching space as a mode to distribute global logistics where and when it is needed through a cooperative research-and-development agreement with SpaceX and XArc, as well as a close partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory and the U.S. Space Force and Air Force,” command spokesperson Scott Ross said in an email. “USTRANSCOM remains

SPACE hopeful that a proof of principle is possible before the end of the year. Planning is ongoing [and officials are] exploring options and the feasibility of various courses of action with partners in the DoD and industry.”

Is it wise for the military to pursue a rocket cargo capability? Analysts are divided.

“Looking into how we can leverage this technology to rapidly deliver cargo to land bases or even re-arming ships at sea, are all areas that should be explored,” Stone said.

“This is kind of like air transport a century ago,” he added. Aircraft were once considered unreliable but later became a common mode of transportation for cargo and people in the military and civilian sectors, he noted.

Harrison said much will depend on commercial investments.

“If things like SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s New Shepard end up being safe and economically viable, then DoD should absolutely be able to tap into that technology for military missions,” he said.

However, “it is a niche capability that would be much more expensive than other forms of cargo transportation,” he added. Because of this, it would likely only be leveraged in “extraordinary circumstances” such as extremely time-sensitive missions where lives are at stake.

Weeden said he isn’t sold on the idea even though “a lot of the space community is getting caught up in the hype.”

While rocket cargo is theoretically possible, “there’s a huge gulf between theoretically possible and practical, let alone militarily useful,” he said.

Weeden said the capability might have been applicable when the Defense Department was supplying a large ground war effort in Afghanistan, but less so in the new strategic environment.

“If we are going through this great power competition that everyone’s talking about, what is the utility of this? Are we actually going to be setting up giant bases in China or in Russia or on their borders that we have to sustain and supply? I don’t think so,” Weeden said. “If it doesn’t serve a need, or if it’s not better than other ways to accomplish the same goal, why is the military investing in this — other than it’s cool?” ND AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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Space Force Has High Hopes for New Missile Warning Satellites

BY JON HARPER The Space Force is pursuing a new generation of satellites and associated ground systems to better detect enemy missiles and provide greater resiliency against counter-space weapons. The Biden administration is boosting funding for the project as the military tries to stay ahead of the evolving threat.

The Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared platform will replace the legacy Space-Based Infrared System, or SBIRS. Infrared sensors are an important tool for intelligence-gathering because they can detect heat emanating from enemy missiles and alert other assets.

Officials are using middle-tier acquisition authorities and rapid prototyping to shave time off of the program. The Space Force aims to launch the first Next-Gen OPIR satellite in 2025, and have all five Block 0 satellites in orbit by 2030.

The new space architecture “will provide improved missile warning, missile defense, battlespace awareness and technical intelligence collection,” according to Pentagon budget documents.

President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget request called for $2.45 billion for the program, about $132 million more than the Trump administration had planned to spend that year.

Officials have been tight-lipped about the detection capabilities that the new system will possess because much of the information is classified.

“What I will say is that … there are shorter burn missiles, there’s advanced fuel, there’s a larger range of heat signatures — and we know that that requires more capable sensors,” Col. Dan Walter, senior materiel leader for Next-Gen OPIR at the Space and Missile Systems Center, said in an interview. “We are improving the capability above and beyond what SBIRS has right now to be able to detect a broader range of the missile arsenals that are out there.”

The new system will also be more survivable against emerging threats, officials say.

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spacecraft include direct-ascent antisatellite missiles, co-orbital ASAT weapons, directed energy systems, electronic jamming or cyber attacks, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ “Space Threat Assessment 2021” report.

Walter said: “We have taken a look across multiple threat vectors when it comes to counter-space capabilities that can hold our assets at harm and prevent us from performing our mission, either temporarily or permanently, and are deliberately designing the capability to be able to counter those threats.”

Contractors working on Block 0 are expected to deliver three new geostationary satellites and two polar satellites. Lockheed Martin will provide the geostationary spacecraft and Northrop Grumman the polar platforms. Raytheon and a Northrop Grumman-Ball Aerospace team are designing sensor packages for the systems.

Having satellites in an elliptical polar orbit to complement the platforms in geosynchronous orbit will provide significantly greater coverage, Walter noted.

That is important because missiles launched from Russia or other adversarial nations could fly over the North Pole region in an attack on the United States.

With “the look angles from GEO, we tend to miss a little bit of the northern latitudes,” he said. “The polar satellites allow us to cover down on the area we just can’t see [with GEO systems] and provide persistent coverage of the North Pole. So, we’re able to get essentially all of the areas of interest that we need to with a combination of the GEOs and the polars.”

A related missile warning effort known as the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution, or FORGE, initiative is intended to provide a modular, extensible and cyberhardened ground system to operate and process mission data downlinked from satellites; an on-ramp to demonstrate novel infrared technologies; and an integration effort at the enterprise level, according to budget documents.

Biden’s 2022 budget request included $515 million for FORGE,

slightly more than the $498 million enacted for 2021.

“FORGE is very critical for Next-Gen OPIR,” said Lt. Col. Trevor Johnson, program execution leader for the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution.

“Part of the modernization effort … is creating a modular and scalable mission data processing architecture, which will allow for new OPIR mission area capabilities to be added more frequently and efficiently,” he said in an interview.

“We’ll be able to rapidly integrate new sensors, new algorithms and new software solutions in order to continually meet emerging threats.”

FORGE will provide a cyber-secure capability that can more effectively and efficiently process the increased amounts of data that will be collected

by Next-Gen OPIR satellite payloads, he noted.

Raytheon is responsible for designing the ground system, but the government will own the technical baseline for FORGE, which will facilitate upgrades, Johnson noted.

“If there’s a better algorithm out there or a better piece of software that can do a part of our missile warning mission more effectively, we want to be able to bring that in rapidly without having to change the whole system,” he said.

FORGE will leverage a number of apps for mission data processing, Johnson said. Raytheon has been tapped to create the framework.

“The application framework is where the applications ride on,” Johnson explained. “It’s the platform that enables the data to flow across the platform and

Next-Gen OPIR concept art

Raytheon concept art

get it to the right application and interface.”

There will be sensor-specific processing that “takes the data that’s coming off of the payload, calibrates it and normalizes it, and puts it in the right format to be moved,” he said. Apps will also need to take the calibrated data and turn it into “something meaningful that the operators can use to release messages for our missile warning enterprise,” he added.

The intent is for FORGE to be able to incorporate more applications as needed.

That’s why having a government-owned architecture is important, Johnson noted.

“Not only can we bring in additional apps to do other things in the future, but if we want to take the applications we have and give them to someone else — another vendor or contractor — they can improve on those apps and then redeploy them onto our framework,” he said.

Meanwhile, a critical design review for the Next-Gen OPIR Block 0 GEO spacecraft is slated for the fall. “That means we are establishing the technical baseline and locking the design for the satellite system itself,” Walter said.

For the polar spacecraft, a system-level preliminary design review is expected in the 2023 timeframe.

Looking ahead, the Defense Department is conducting an analysis of alternatives that will inform plans for Block 1, he noted. “What that will look like is for future discussions.”

Officials say Next-Gen OPIR is on track. However, the Government Accountability Office has raised con-

cerns.

“The program faces significant challenges in developing and integrating new technologies within an aggressive schedule,” the watchdog said in its annual weapons system assessment to Congress, which was released in June.

Driven by the 2025 launch requirement, the program is concurrently developing mission payload engineering and flight units, which raises the risk of schedule delays because issues identified during engineering unit testing will necessitate corrective flight unit rework, the report said.

“DoD officials acknowledged the added schedule and cost risks presented by the first-time integration of a new sensor with a modified spacecraft,” it said. “In addition, the ground segment — developed under a separate program — may not be ready when the first satellite is delivered,” it added, referring to FORGE. The Space Force is taking steps to mitigate risks.

The highest risk portion of any optical satellite program is the sensor, Walter said. To address that, the Space Force is utilizing two separate payload design teams from the contractors that are competing for a future downselect: Raytheon and Northrop Grumman-Ball Aerospace. Their systems will be integrated onto Lockheed’s modified LM 2100 bus.

“Each of those teams are developing a separate sensor that will fly either on the first vehicle or the second vehicle,” he said. “They’re both compatible with this first space vehicle,” he noted. So if one of the sensor payloads has problems, the other should be ready to fly with the first GEO satellite.

Program officials are also trying to leverage mature technologies where they can to save time on development and reduce risk.

“We chose … primary building blocks that were space qualified. In other words, they’d flown in space before,” Walter said. “We took a SCAN THIS very large percentage IMAGE of the program and made sure that it was based on heritage.”

However, there is integration risk See OPIR involved in putting concept together all of those animation

SPACE building blocks and ensuring that everything functions correctly, he added.

Working with a number of different vendors also presents challenges for FORGE, Johnson said.

“We have partitioned the development of the system off to multiple contractor teams to deliver capabilities,” he said. “This is good because it allows us to provide capabilities … that align with their core strengths, but it does introduce some programmatic complexities that the government has to manage.”

He continued: “But by doing this, the government can individually compete core capabilities of the system like … the mission data processing framework, the applications, the sensor specific processing, and then the remote ground stations as well. And so we can compete those as opposed to having one contractor deliver the complete system. And so that’s helping us increase competition, broaden our industry base, and helps ensure we are driving to an open and modular system.”

FORGE program officials conduct progress reviews every three months, where contractors present their status, discuss what they’ve developed over the past 90 days and try to work through any challenges that arise. But there is a backup plan in case FORGE isn’t ready when the first Next-Gen OPIR satellite is set to launch, Johnson noted. The Space Force is working with Lockheed on developing an “interim ground system” that will be compatible with both SBIRS and Next-Gen OPIR. “This interim system is a synergistic risk reduction effort, and if needed will also provide a stepping stone to get to FORGE,” he said. “We recognize the criticality of the launch, and so we put this in place to make sure we’re ready.”

Despite GAO’s warnings, Walter expressed confidence that the first satellite for Next-Gen OPIR will be ready to launch on time.

“When we started the program, we laid out a program schedule … and we hit every major milestone,” he said.

“We understand that the schedule is aggressive, especially compared to other programs. But we remain on track for delivering in the 2025 timeframe and have no reason to think that we would not be able to make that date.” ND AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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U.S. Strengthening Space Domain Awareness

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Illustration of the Meanwhile, RusSpace Fence radar sia is also a concern as seen from space. with its Nudol ground-based missile anti-satellite system, she said. There are also worries about a new platform that many are likening to a Russian nesting doll. It’s “a satellite within a satellite within a satellite,” Armagno explained.

The Space Force — which will soon celebrate its second birthday — has and is developing a number of domain awareness tools to increase its visibility into space.

The service is currently pursuing a deep-space advanced radar concept program, also known as DARC. According to the service, the platform is a groundbased radar system designed to detect, track and maintain custody of deep space objects 24/7. It will primarily track objects at geosynchronous-Earth orbit, though it could also track objects in low-Earth orbit, according to officials.

President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget request included $123 million for research, development, testing and evaluation for the program. That’s an increase of about $90 million in funding, said Maj. Gen. James Peccia, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for budget, during a briefing with reporters in May. DARC will augment the military’s space surveillance network as an additional sensor with increased capacity and capability to monitor deep space objects and provide full global coverage, according to budget documents.

The Space Force is pursuing the development of the radar through a middle-tier acquisition process to develop, test and deliver one DARC site.

It is projected to be completed in 2025.

Space Force illustration

BY YASMIN TADJDEH As outer space becomes more congested due to the proliferation of satellites and orbital debris, the Space Force is investing in powerful radars and sensors for better situational awareness.

“Space is a very dynamic domain right now, there’s a lot happening,” said Chief of Space Operations Gen. John Raymond. Just a couple of years ago, the military was tracking 22,000 objects.

That number has now risen to 30,000.

“Of those objects, only about 1,500 were actually satellites and everything else was debris,” he said in June during a Council on Foreign Relations event.

“If you look now, there are significantly more satellites that are on orbit. In fact, one commercial company has well over 1,600 satellites.”

Additionally, barriers to launch have been reduced and increasingly more and more countries, companies and even students are sending items into space, he noted.

Meanwhile, threats are increasing as well, said Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno, staff director at Space Force headquarters.

She cited China’s Shijian 17 — an experimental satellite with a robotic arm that Beijing says will be used to repair spacecraft — as a major concern.

“If you’re going to repair something it needs to be repairable. If it’s going to be refueled it needs to have a fuel port,” she said during a July event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “This is not the case with their satellites.”

The Space Force views the Shijian 17 as a weapon, she said. Such a system could collide or tamper with a U.S. satellite.

Additionally, the acquisition approach will provide the foundation for up to two more sites located strategically around the world, according to budget documents.

The Space Force is working with the National Security Technology Accelerator’s Space Enterprise Consortium for DARC. A request for prototype proposals was slated to be released to industry in June but was pushed back to July, according to officials. As of press time, the solicitation had not been released.

The Space Force has hosted four industry days in support of the program over the past several months, said Lt. Col. Kelly Greiner, materiel leader at the Space and Missile Systems Center’s space domain awareness radars division.

Since then, the service has been sharing documents and regularly updating companies while also collecting input from industry.

“It’s really a concerted effort on industry’s part, as well as the government, to make sure we get this right and put out a request for prototype proposals that makes sense,” he said during an interview.

There will likely be a “handful” of firms with a mix of primes and nontraditional companies bidding, Greiner said.

“That’s kind of the beauty of going through the Space Enterprise Consortium” where a large number of members are nontraditional firms, he said. That “allows us to get a greater reach into some of those nontraditional companies that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach.”

Proposals will be due 45 days after the solicitation is released, likely sometime in the mid-August timeframe, Greiner noted. The Space Force is targeting a contract award by the end of the calendar year. Prototypes will be due in March 2025.

“It’s an ambitious schedule, but it’s doable,” he said. “We’ve had several years to look at this problem set, and we have built out what we call the DARC technology demonstration out at White Sands Missile Range” in New Mexico.

The demonstration facility was constructed over the past two years by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, Greiner said. Final demonstrations were slated to be completed by the end of July or early August.

Lockheed Martin photo

“With that coming to a conclusion, we have high confidence in the technology as a whole,” he said. “Now it’s really on the shoulders of industry to go out and build out this first [DARC] site.”

As the effort moves forward, the Space Force is still mulling over where it wants all three of the sites to be located.

“We’re looking at three geographically dispersed sites around the globe, approximately 120 degrees separated for global coverage,” Greiner said. “We are in talks with some partner nations.”

There will be locations within the continental United States, European Command and Indo-Pacific Command regions, he added. Additionally, it would be preferred if they were near the equator, but that is not a requirement.

Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin last year delivered its Space Fence radar to the military. The system — which is based on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands — detects, tracks and measures space objects, primarily in LEO, though it also has visibility into medium-Earth orbit and GEO. Space Force Maj. Bryan Sanchez, director of operations, cyber and exercises at Space Delta 2 for space domain awareness, said the system has been performing well.

“Due to Space Fence’s sensitivity, we’ve identified over 5,000 new objects for potential inclusion into the space catalog,” he said in an email to National Defense.

Space Fence makes about 130,000 observations per day and can track items as small as 1 to 2 centimeters depending on its orbital regime, Sanchez said.

Later this year, the system’s program office will deliver a “coherent integration upgrade” to the platform, which will enable greater positional accuracy at geostationary orbit, he said.

Sanchez noted that the radar isn’t just tracking space junk.

“While the vast amount of small objects that Space Fence can see is orbital debris, the real value Space Fence is bringing to the Space Force is an enhanced awareness and characterization of the space domain,” he said.

“The more objects we can characterize and identify, the greater our freedom of movement through space can be.”

He added: “From ensuring launch providers have a clear picture of the

regime they are launching into, to ensuring manned spaceflight safety, … Space Fence helps achieve a more effective and comprehensive space domain awareness.”

According to a Lockheed Martin spokesperson, the ground-based system uses an advanced solid-state S-band phased array radar technology.

“The radar system’s capabilities are a major improvement in the quantity and quality of orbital information to support our national security interests in space,” the spokesperson said. “Beyond cataloging objects, Space Fence will detect closely spaced objects, breakups, maneuvers and launches.”

Meanwhile, as the space domain becomes more contested, the service is moving beyond just seeing what is in space and is actively working to better understand what objects are doing and why, Armagno noted.

However, that requires “a heck of a lot more data,” she said. Previously, information from radars and optical telescopes

Lockheed Martin’s Space Fence building at Kwajalein Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands.

around the world was coalesced at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex near Colorado Springs, Colorado, where officials cataloged and tracked satellites.

“A lot of the data … was left on the cutting room floor,” she said. “Now we’re putting it into basically a data lake in Colorado Springs, and ... we’re adding information from academia [and] industry. We’re adding data from other countries — because our allies also have space situational awareness capabilities — and trying to create a repository of information.”

Chris Stone, senior fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Research Center, said while the deployment of both new and legacy systems has greatly improved the

SPACE United States’ ability to mitigate gaps in coverage in both LEO and GEO, more work must be done.

“There are still areas that need more coverage such as in the Southern Hemisphere as well as eventually out to cislunar as those requirements emerge,” he said. Cislunar is the region between geosynchronous orbit and the Moon.

Additionally, much of the nation’s legacy radars were designed in the Cold War to counter the Soviet Union, he noted.

“As we progress more into an ever more crowded and contested environment in space, having 24/7 coverage of all orbital regimes is vital to protect and defend our critical space infrastructure and negate surprise on the part of the adversary,” Stone said. “Even with those future systems there are gaps.”

Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, noted that visibility into cislunar space will become an area of greater interest soon.

The cislunar domain “is going to become a more intense area of competition,” he said. There are areas there where the Earth and the sun’s gravitational fields cancel each other out, allowing satellites to stay there with minimal amounts of fuel, he added.

“We are putting the James Webb telescope out there, but the Chinese are putting things like datarelaying communication … satellites out there,” he said. “Very different — we’re thinking science. They are thinking practical applications.”

It’s clear that Beijing is pondering what it can do in the vast amount of space that lies beyond GEO. China could have nefarious motives, Cheng said.

For instance, aging satellites that are being retired are sometimes moved into orbits beyond GEO and could one day be used as weapons, he suggested.

“You could imagine, for example, that somebody might put something into a graveyard orbit that isn’t dead, that maybe they could bring it back — either wartime reserve, or even as an ASAT,” he said. “We’re mostly focused on things heading out. What if you had something coming in?” ND AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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Air Force Looking to Boost Connectivity for Simulators

BY MEREDITH ROATEN ORLANDO, Fla. — The Air Force has thousands of simulators and training environments to prepare pilots for combat, but no way to access them all. The service is looking to remedy this by exploring new ways to enhance interoperability between its training platforms.

Training systems are often developed for specific program offices with specific capabilities. Because of this, “simulators are often proprietary products, and there’s no way for those simulators to communicate,” said Kevin McFarland, acquisition lead for modeling simulation and analysis at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Architecture and Integration Directorate.

The Common Simulation Training Environment, or the CSTE, is the answer to this problem, he said. By creating an environment where training systems can better link together, the Air Force will be able to more easily train large numbers of airmen at the level of fidelity that is required.

“When we’re thinking about how we do this, we definitely don’t want to do it like it’s been done before,” he said during the Training and Simulation Industry Symposium, which was hosted by the National Training and Simulation Association in June. NTSA is an affiliate of the National Defense Industrial Association.

The CSTE will be able to rapidly update similar to the way smartphone technology refreshes software on a continual basis through features such as operating system upgrades and new applications, McFarland said.

“The day I trade in my iPhone, it’s more capable than the day I bought it … because we’ve had software updates,” he said. “How do we develop the ecosystem that we need to do this for training systems?” he asked.

But before the Air Force can tackle connectivity, it needs industry’s help to figure out how to avoid potential challenges with fidelity and latency in the simulators. McFarland said he is looking for partners to help build the CSTE through a synthetic environment 36

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data architecture consortium that the Air Force wants to create. Requests for proposals for the consortium are expected to be released by the end of this fiscal year. A request for information was published in June. The Life Cycle Management Center’s Architecture and Integration Directorate is looking for “potential business sources in transforming the data architecture and reducing infrastructure acquisition risks for a complex battlespace synthetic environment,” according to the RFI. It will be key to have the consortium in place as soon as possible, McFarland emphasized.

“I can speculate on what we can build and how fast we can build it, but it’s going to be through our collaboration with industry that we truly start to define exactly what the technology looks like today, and how it can apply, and what the delta is between that and what we envision,” he said.

The Air Force has been putting a heavy emphasis on connectivity. For example, joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2, has been billed as a way to better link the armed forces’ sensors and shooters on the battlefield.

The Air Force has taken the lead on the effort through the development of its Advanced Battle Management System.

Additionally, the service is looking for greater connectivity through digital engineering. Air Force Col. John Kurian, senior materiel leader of the simulators division at the Life Cycle Management Center, said digital engineering and model-based systems engineering is the next frontier for faster, more innovative training technology.

“Those are the big imperatives, I think, in terms of how do you take what you see in industry, the best practices, and try to bring it into DoD?” he said.

However, that can be challenging for smaller companies, he noted. They haven’t been able to provide the same level of digital manufacturing capabilities as contractors with more resources.

After receiving feedback from struggling companies, Kurian said he hopes to make the process easier.

Meanwhile, the service is working to

An airman virtually looks at an aircraft.

standardize requirements for its training platforms, officials said.

The Air Force created the simulator common architecture requirements and standards, or SCARS, program in 2016.

The initiative will implement a modular open systems approach, as well as a set of common standards for Air Force simulators, according to a Defense Department announcement. The contract has a 10-year ordering period through June 2030.

This year, the Air Force released standards for SCARS efforts related to cybersecurity, and officials are readying core and edge infrastructure, connecting simulator sites across the country with a “core” security operations center in Orlando, Kurian said.

Cyber is a priority for the service because legacy systems have varying and uneven vulnerabilities due to the nature of the systems’ outdated technology.

“Our first part of SCARS is really to help establish a hybrid edge architecture to really get after the cyber pieces,” he said.

This initial step gave the service the opportunity to work with the Army, which also has training offices in the Orlando region, he noted.

“We’re looking for opportunities to

TRAINING & SIMULATION

Air Force photo by Joseph Mather

say, how do we, as sister services, figure out how best to work together ... [and coalesce] the standards that we’re developing?” Kurian said. “Can [we] both utilize it and be able to do this at a much faster pace?”

The Air Force is working to implement rapid software development cycles to bolster training systems, Kurian said.

Platforms such as the C-17 Globemaster III’s training system are being updated on an annual basis, and officials are looking for ways to refresh it even faster.

This approach aligns with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr.’s strategic guidance to “accelerate change.”

Meanwhile, the service is examining the role of artificial intelligence and virtual reality in its training systems, Kurian said. He pointed to the F-16 fighter jet program as an example of a training system moving toward cloud-based environments and virtual learning machines.

The F-35 joint strike fighter program is also considering reducing live training hours for pilots and shifting more to simulators in order to reduce sustainment costs, a program official said at the TSIS conference.

In March, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said during a

House Armed Services subcommittee on readiness hearing that the service is incorporating virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies into its undergraduate pilot and maintenance training.

“This technology differs from traditional approaches in that it enables students a much more immersive training experience, which significantly increases the quality of their training,” he said in his written testimony. “Moreover, because students require less direct instructor support, they are able to more readily tailor their training to address their unique gaps and work asynchronously, accelerating the training process.”

The service is considering scaling up the technology’s use for its broader training strategy, he added.

Some lawmakers during a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing questioned the service’s push for more simulation training and fewer flight hours. Brown defended virtual training, saying that leaders were carefully weighing the capabilities of the simulation technology that currently exists and modernization costs for training aircraft such as the T1.

“I’m 100 percent with you that we want to make sure our pilots across our

force are well trained. We don’t put them at risk,” he said.

Another crucial aspect of connecting training and simulations is data. Margaret Merkle, innovation technology chief of the simulators division at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, said promoting data sharing across training systems is a focus area of her office.

“We want them to be interconnected in this model in a cooperative fashion, so that we can lay that groundwork to look at this connectivity being the standard for the future as we move on legacy systems through the SCARS process and establish those standards,” she said at the TSIS conference.

Instructors should be able to focus on training and not on performing unnecessary data entry, she said.

“The future is data-centric, AI-based learning management systems, machine learning, all of these things that we want to try and put into training systems,” she said. “We can’t really put them there until we have data interconnectivity.”

The Air Force wants to move away from passive training systems and to compress the amount of time needed to train pilots while also increasing competency, she said.

One way to aid preparedness for the future high-end fight is through the service’s new “innovation match game,” which will highlight vendors who have previously won contracts at Air Force pitch days. The service will host a new game this year for industry at NTSA’s annual Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in November to highlight innovative training solutions in a competition similar to the show “House Hunters.”

Major command partners will present three problem scenarios with aircrews describing a particular challenge. Then, industry participants will present three different prototypes for audiences to vote on for the best solution to the problem. The goal is for the vendors to move from the prototype to deployment phase, Merkle said.

Even if the competitors don’t win, they will have their ideas and ingenuity demonstrated on an international stage, she noted. The call for participants is expected to go out in September. ND AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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COMMENTARY

BY IRIK JOHNSON

DoD Must Go Beyond PT to Support Cognitive Strength

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injuries more quickly. Military coaches using human performance training have seen improved sleep behavior, a decrease in musculoskeletal injuries and an improvement in how training groups quantify readiness metrics.

Personalized data not only helps create buy-in from trainees, which leads to lasting healthy habits and behavior change, but also provides a clearer picture for military leaders on the return on investment in human performance training.

When used for training, immersive technology like AR/VR convinces part of the brain that what a trainee is experiencing is really happening. This helps soldiers develop and practice physical, tactical and cognitive techniques that improve decision-making.

Imagine a combat pilot has just experienced a dual engine failure or a soldier on patrol faces enemy contact and must assess and respond to the situation. AR/VR can incite the senses that would occur in these intense situations to help trainees understand their mental and physiological response — such as increased heart rate, heart rate variability and rapid breathing — and train to acclimate to that response so they can focus on carrying out their mission.

This training can also adapt to users’ needs and abilities, so the difficulty gradually increases as they sharpen their skills.

Immersive technology can also make military training more cost efficient, and the data-backed nature of the technology helps leaders track the effectiveness of training programs. The U.S. military, for example, is already using a virtual paratrooper jump training that can be done anywhere, eliminating the need to use a plane and expensive jet engine fuel. Immersive trainings are also useful for hazardous situations that are difficult to simulate otherwise, such as how to react to radiation exposure, biohazards, or oil and gas emergencies.

Virtual course content can also be updated quickly and used to train geographically dispersed warfighters, which simplifies programmatic challenges and reduces labor, equipment and travel costs.

Combining technology like wearables, AR/VR and data science can optimize training for warfighters, improve their performance and decrease risk of injury by creating precise, mission-specific training programs that focus on physical and cognitive strength.

Several branches of the military already use these technologies as part of holistic training programs. Now is the time for leaders across every military branch to invest in human performance training to help the nation’s warfighters improve their physical prowess and mental acuity on and off the battlefield.

ND

Irik Johnson is human performance director at Booz Allen Hamilton.

iStock illustration

n The Defense Department increasingly relies on emerging technologies like augmented and virtual reality, wearables and data science to optimize the training of warfighters.

For example, the Air Force recently enhanced its special warfare training program to incorporate wearables and mental training to improve special operators’ mental strength and maximize their performance. This holistic training approach — called human performance — can benefit every military branch by ensuring personnel are better equipped physically and mentally, while also reducing training costs.

Human performance training requires a data-driven methodology that is rooted in three core areas: a focus on cognitive performance; data analytics to track performance and help instructors customize trainings; and immersive technology that provides trainees a more comprehensive training experience.

The military has long emphasized preparing warfighters’ mental toughness and resilience. To achieve this, service members not only need a coach for strength training but cognitive training as well.

Cognitive training improves warfighters’ psychological well-being, helping them think and learn faster and develop the mental acuity they need to stay focused on their missions and make better decisions under pressure. It also helps trainees identify stress indicators and teaches stress response techniques such as breathing exercises and meditation to help build personal awareness, which can create long-term healthy habits throughout a service member’s activeduty tenure and beyond.

A key component of cognitive training is using wearables to track service members’ sleep habits. Improving trainees’ sleep quality greatly improves cognitive performance and reaction response times, which is an essential metric for mission readiness. While personnel can still perform their missions without cognitive training, it comes at a cost when one considers that warfighters face high-risk, high-stress situations every day.

The military already uses some of the same wearable technologies from companies such as WHOOP and OURA that professional athletes leverage to measure metrics such as sleep quality, respiration rate, heart rate and heart rate variability, and give insight into trainees’ overall physical and mental state.

Before wearables, coaches relied on subjective feedback from trainees about their sleep quality and level of focus. Now, wearables give data-driven evidence that shows an individual’s unique performance and the progress he or she is making toward specific goals so coaches can tailor physical and cognitive training accordingly.

The close monitoring of biometric feedback allows coaches to adapt programs to an individual’s needs, better predict the chance of and avoid injuries, and help trainees recover from

Navy Reorganizing to Accelerate Sailor Training

Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Diana Quinlan

BY MANDY MAYFIELD ORLANDO, Fla. — The Navy is looking to industry as it reorganizes its training offices and invests in upgraded technologies to prepare sailors for future battles.

The Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division recently realigned itself, moving to a structure where individual offices have more autonomy, enabling the streamlining of new training capabilities, said Capt. Timothy Hill, commanding officer of the organization. “[We are] changing our processes to differentiate our work so that we can move faster,” Hill said in June during the National Training and Simulation Association’s annual Training and Simulation Industry Symposium in Orlando. NTSA is an affiliate of the National Defense Industrial Association.

“We continue to find things internally that we can do better … and I would ask — and I’ve asked this in other forums before — if you see a place where we’re doing something that doesn’t make sense, please tell us, we would like to know so we can improve on those things,” Hill told members of industry.

In an effort to bolster the modernization of its training initiatives and technology, the center has created a number

of new job positions. For example, it recently stood up what it calls the “Ready Relevant Learning Training Systems” program manager position, Hill said.

The office will focus on improving individual sailor performance and enhancing fleet readiness, according to the Navy.

The division has also established a principal deputy program manager position for the F-35 Training Systems Program Management Office.

This was “an important part of solidifying our work and our participation in the F-35 program, which is certainly the future of naval aviation and a lot of other aviation efforts out there in general,” Hill said.

The Navy is purchasing the C variant of the joint strike fighter, which can take off and land on aircraft carriers.

Meanwhile, as the landscape of warfare continues to shift, the training offices are utilizing live, virtual and constructive training capabilities to teach naval aviators new skills. LVC training leverages virtual reality and other computer-generated entities to supplement live training.

“Simulators are being used like crazy by the [tactical] air fleet right now, and it’s because they’re bringing value,” Hill

noted.

As an example, Hill explained that Carrier Air Wing Seven — an aircraft carrier air wing based at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia — typically consists of a more distributed squadron structure than other wings, which makes getting personnel together for large-scale training exercises difficult.

Last year, after the unit returned from deployment, it began “using our distributed mission training capability, and they’ve gotten to a place where they’re able to get valuable events accomplished … even in this prototype kind of configuration that we have given them today.”

The distributed mission training system is a Lockheed Martin-built capability that connects multiple aircraft together for instructional purposes.

Through exercises with Carrier Air Wing Seven, the Navy is utilizing LVC today and will leverage it even further in the future, Hill said.

The command is also employing LVC training for its littoral combat ship, he noted.

“We’ve taken some of the state-of-theart training that we do for the littoral combat ship and we’ve gotten that out there and now it gets rave reviews from the fleet,” he said. “This whole idea of train-to-qualify, that people come out of their training already qualified to go do their job … is a reality there” with the LCS, he said.

The Navy has also recently fielded a number of upgraded navigation, seamanship and ship-handling trainers, Hill said.

The 2017 collisions of the destroyers USS Fitzgerald and USS John. S. McCain led to a renewed focus on simulator-based technology to train sailors.

The navigation, seamanship and shiphandling trainers have undergone three phases of upgrades in recent years.

“We’re correcting the problems in the fleet that led to those two collisions,” Hill said.

Moving forward, the Navy’s focus will remain on fleet readiness, with an emphasis on improving the cybersecurity of training capabilities, he noted.

“Even these standalone training systems that don’t connect to anything have to be updated to be cybersafe,’” he said.

Although the service is working to make its systems more secure, there is still room for improvement, Hill noted.

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TRAINING & SIMULATION to do better, and we need help with is how we can do cybersecurity in a much more efficient way, so that it is not as manpower intensive moving forward,” he said.

Meanwhile, the division’s training offices are working to boost the compatibility of their technologies.

Capt. Lisa Sullivan, program manager for aviation training systems at the naval aviation training systems and ranges program office, touted the sea services’ efforts in LVC. The Navy and Marine Corps have been taking a tiered approach, Sullivan said. First, by “increasing the fidelity and capacities of the training systems and simulators. Second, in the virtualconstructive area moving from that individual unit level training to integrated training.”

Multiple types of aircraft at different locations can now be connected for training events, Sullivan noted.

Currently, the Naval Aviation Distributed Training Center is focused on increasing the number of platforms it can support and integrate to hold larger

just how many different generations of systems, different [original equipment manufacturers] and different levels of security we are trying to network together.”

To get at the issue, the service is investing in a number of next-generation air combat training systems such as the tactical combat training system increment II, or TCTS II. The Navy received a Milestone C approval for TCTS II in late April, Naval Air Systems Command said in a May press release. The milestone clears the way for the program to transition into limited production.

The capability — which is being manufactured by Collins Aerospace — has an open architecture system that enables sailors to participate in air combat training across fourth- and fifth-generation aviation and maritime platforms. The system has a training pod that can communicate with both airborne and ground equipment.

The Navy’s training offices are also working to upgrade a number of systems related to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Block III configuration, which is the latest iteration of the Boeing-made aircraft.

“This is a pretty major effort for the

The tactical combat training system increment II pod successfully completed its initial hardware qualification testing at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland.

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fleet,” said Brian Hicks, director of aviation programs at Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division.

Among its modernization efforts is an upgrade to the aircraft’s maintenance training device, Hicks said. A contract is slated to be awarded in December of 2023 with a request for proposals projected to be released in June 2022.

Meanwhile, to train its surface fleet, the sea service is utilizing its surface training advanced virtual environment,

NAVAIR photo

LVC activities between the Navy and Marine Corps, she said.

The Navy wants to connect with more entities and “the appetite is insatiable,” she said. However, the effort comes with its challenges.

“This may be an exaggeration, but imagine trying to connect a pinball machine, an Atari, a Nintendo, a bicycle and [the] F-35 to the same gaming system to play an interactive game of Halo,” she said. “That’s an example of

or STAVE program, which is a family of training systems.

STAVE consists of instructional technology and simulated physical environments that train sailors through repeatable and repetitive exercises and drills, according to the Navy.

The program is “the coin of the realm of the surface Navy right now,” said Robert Kerno, program manager for surface training at Naval Sea System Command’s surface training systems program office.

Through the STAVE program “we’re embracing the virtual technology, we’re embracing the simulation, we’re embracing instructor-led training, but we’re also investing in the ability to do reconfigurable classrooms,” Kerno said.

The virtual environment provides the service with the ability to train sailors on engineering on the same day and in the same space as it trains sailors on combat systems without having to work from, or build, additional facilities, he noted.

“We are much more flexible,” he said.

“It gives us the ability to get more reps and sets, and it gives us the ability to train more sailors with more throughput.”

Mike Merritt, deputy technical director at the training systems division, also touted the importance of enhancing interoperability among the portfolio of training and simulation technologies.

The service sees a need for systems that emphasize both individual and team training exercises, he said. As capabilities continue to progress, Navy leaders want to increase connectivity between existing simulators and hardware to provide teams with training on specific tasks with missions that are relevant to how they actually fight, Merritt said.

Although training capabilities are improving, the service still has hurdles to overcome such as a slow-moving acquisition process, he noted.

“Schedules in the acquisition world are our biggest problem,” Merritt said. “We need to be faster at what we do, we need to take more risk in how we do that.”

Where the division needs to focus on “is that upfront part of where we’re actually creating the package, getting the requirements out. … We are still going to be looking very hard at that and we are having a lot of robust discussions on how we can actually streamline these upfront and shorten our span times,” he said. ND

Policy Points

BY NICK JONES

Energy Policies to Impact Defense Contractors

iStock illustration

n “Is it going to work?” my wife asked me when I went to plug in my electric vehicle for the first time. “Yes, of course it will work,” I remember saying, only slightly masking my nervousness that by plugging my car into the wall some unforeseen damage might occur.

I plugged the car in and, of course, it worked fine. It was more than fine. A few years on, I’ve significantly reduced my transportation operating costs by nearly 80 percent, no one has questioned the economic logic of my car purchase, and my garage did not blow up.

President Joe Biden’s “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” put climate at the “center of United States foreign policy and national security” and aspires toward a “carbon pollution-free electricity sector no later than 2035.” Facilitating the use of “clean and zero-emission vehicles” for government fleets is part of the executive order, and building the charging infrastructure will be a massive undertaking.

The impact on federal contractors will most likely be on how they get their energy supply.

In the executive order, the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality is instructed to “consider additional administrative steps and guidance to assist the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council in developing regulatory amendments to promote increased contractor attention on reduced carbon emission.”

Energy efficiency and sustainable supply chains are likely to be part of this effort. But the promotion of renewable energy usage will likely be one of the easier ways to achieve lower emissions.

A definition of renewable energy that is often referenced is “electric energy produced from solar, wind, biomass, landfill gas, geothermal, municipal solid waste, or new hydroelectric generation capacity,” as outlined in 42 U.S.C. § 15852(b).

So, what will defense companies, especially small ones, do if the government begins to promote contractor use of renewable energy?

There are many options. Smaller companies could participate in renewable energy programs offered by their electric utility or potentially purchase renewable energy certificates, also known as renewable energy credits. Bigger companies that have more resources and higher energy needs may install solar panels or engage in a power purchase agreement (PPA) — a contract where a company agrees to take energy supply directly from a particular power generation source.

Both options could make economic sense, especially if those are allowable costs that can be passed along to the government customer. Amazon and Google currently have the largest book of corporate power purchase agreements, and several major defense primes, like Boeing and Lockheed, have signed PPAs in the past.

“When it comes to clean energy purchasing opportunities for businesses — whether you are a small, medium, or large — there are a wide variety of options spanning from onsite (phys-

ical solar/battery installations) to simply purchasing renewable energy credits,” said Dexter Gauntlett, head of utility advisory group at Panasonic North America.

“Businesses that have capital and ability to take a mid- or long-term view will realize the most lifetime cost savings. Tax credits and low interest rates for solar loans offered around the country help reduce the capital expenses, while still providing operational expense reductions,” he said.

“Business that value resiliency of their operations in the event of a storm or utility outage will benefit from the onsite options. Basically, all options are out there to match your level of capital availability and time horizon needs,” Gauntlett added.

Unfortunately, the supply chains for many of the technologies needed to reduce emissions — including the lithium ion needed to store excess generation and the manufacturing capacity for photovoltaic cells — begin in China. These supply chains are vulnerable to interference by the Chinese government.

Winning the energy transition is tremendously important to continued superiority in all warfare domains and is foundational to U.S. economic growth.

In some ways, promoting the use of renewable energy by federal contractors, in the hopes of accelerating the development of clean energy, fits into the bucket of recent contractor-related initiatives, like the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and Section 889 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act — the “Huawei Ban” — that seek to counter the ambitions of the People’s Republic of China.

Like cybersecurity, procuring clean energy isn’t always as straightforward as it seems. As many NDIA members have experienced during the recent rulemaking processes related to CMMC and Section 889, it is important that potential new rules related to the promotion of contractor use of renewables are both implementable and executable.

It is also critical that potential new rules or requirements allow the ecosystem of energy new entrants to offer solutions to contractors and not rely solely on existing utilities.

Last year’s edition of “Vital Signs: The Health and Readiness of the Defense Industrial Base,” found that at least seven of the top 100 publicly traded defense contractors are energy companies. This isn’t too surprising because the Defense Department is a huge consumer of energy.

We haven’t attempted to measure how much energy is used by the defense industrial base, but it is significant, and changes in how it sources energy will have impacts beyond the industry. Over the next year, the way ahead will become clearer and, hopefully, the transition to new ways of generating electricity will cause less nervousness than the first time I plugged in my EV. ND Nick Jones is director of regulatory policy at NDIA. AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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Government Contracting Insights

BY ANNA MENZEL, EVAN SHERWOOD AND MICHAEL WAGNER

New Guidance on Domestic Sourcing Waivers

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not require agencies to address them.

To sufficiently assess why the agency requires the waiver, the guidance details the required information that must be included by the agency. Among other information, the waiver request must describe the end item or construction material being acquired, including discussion of the impact to the mission if not acquired, country of origin and U.S. content, the estimated value of the procurement, and, if pre-award, whether the supplier of the item is a small or disadvantaged business.

It must also describe: the market research activities used to identify domestically manufactured items satisfying the agency’s requirements; whether competition is anticipated or the procurement used competitive procedures; and the approving authority for non-availability determinations over $25,000.

CFO Act agencies requesting Jones Act waivers must provide a description of the transportation required; explain why the agency cannot acquire transportation on a Jones Act qualified vessel; and justify why it is in the interest of national defense to waive the requirement.

The MIAO plans to review the majority of waivers within 3 to 7 business days.

Under the executive order, each agency was directed to report on its use of Made in America Laws by July 24. The new guidance provides a list of sections that must be included in the report, including: identifying all types of waivers of Made in America Laws that are relevant to the agency and the agency’s plan to manage waivers; describing the agency’s ongoing use of and justification for any longstanding or nationwide waivers; discussing the agency’s recommendations for maximizing the use of domestic goods, products and services; and detailing the status and outcome of the agency’s review of actions inconsistent with the executive order.

The order requires the administrator of the General Services Administration to develop a public website to report information on all proposed waivers and whether those waivers have been granted.

The new MIAO waiver procedures are intended to reduce agencies’ use of waivers of Made in America Laws by increasing scrutiny of such waiver requests. Proposed waivers and the results of the MIAO review will be published on a public website, which may provide useful precedents for contractors considering whether to seek a waiver from an agency. However, given the added scrutiny of waiver decisions and public reporting, contractors should carefully consider the information provided to the agency in connection with the review process that could become public. ND Michael Wagner is a partner and Anna Menzel and Evan Sherwood are associates at Covington & Burling LLP.

iStock photo

n On June 11, the White House released new guidance on its plans to limit waivers of domestic sourcing laws, bolstering its previously issued “Executive Order on Ensuring the Future is Made in All of America by All of America’s Workers.” The new guidance provides insight on how the Biden administration intends to enforce domestic sourcing laws such as the Buy American Act over the coming years.

The executive order established a Made in America Office, also known as MIAO, to review agency requests to waive laws such as the Buy American Act from procurements, grants and other government contracting activities. It also directed the Office of Management and Budget to establish reporting and oversight procedures to help enforce the Made in America Laws.

Importantly, the new guidance creates an “initial phase” of implementation for the executive order, indicating that future phases will follow. In this initial phase, the Biden administration will focus on Jones Act waivers and non-availability procurement waivers pursuant to the Buy American Act proposed by 24 agencies subject to the Chief Financial Officers Act. During the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, the MIAO will phase in reviews of waivers proposed by non-CFO Act agencies and other types of waiver requests.

The executive order aimed to “maximize” the U.S. government’s purchasing of goods and services produced in the United States by establishing the MIAO to oversee and administer domestic preference requirements in federal procurements. The office must review agency requests to waive Made in America Laws. The term “Made in America Laws” is broadly defined as covering all statutes, regulations, rules and executive orders that refer to “Buy America,” “Buy American,” or include other domestic preference requirements.

The new guidance tasked agencies to designate a “senior accountable official” for domestic sourcing by June 30. The official must be “sufficiently senior” so as to direct the agency’s activities regarding relevant Made in America Laws, such as identifying opportunities to increase the agency’s reliance on domestic products and services. The official also ensures that the agency complies with procedures for submitting waiver requests to the MIAO. The guidance broadly defines the term “waiver” to include all “exceptions and waivers under applicable Made in America Laws,” including automatically-effective legal waivers. The guidance lists various Federal Acquisition Regulation provisions among the waivers and exceptions, including those implementing the Trade Agreements Act and the commercial information technology exception. It remains to be seen how the Biden administration will enforce its waiver review procedures for these kinds of exceptions, but the current “initial phase” does

News

Association Polls Industry As Pandemic Retreats n As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to retreat in the United States, companies within the defense industrial base are taking stock of where they are now and what lies ahead, according to the results of a survey from the National Defense Industrial Association.

The survey — which was conducted as part of the association’s annual Vital Signs project — polled more than 200 NDIA members. It was conducted over several weeks in April and May and revealed a number of key industry concerns.

Of those surveyed, 18.5 percent said their businesses have returned to normal operations, while 31.5 percent said they do not expect to return to normal within the next six months.

Additionally, small businesses in the defense industrial base — particularly those with 25 or fewer employees — reported

Vickers, Nagata Receive SO/LIC Division Awards

substantial negative effects to their businesses due to the pandemic, far more than reported by larger businesses. When compared to U.S. small businesses that do not specialize in defense, these contractors were nearly 32 percent less likely to experience large negative effects, but about 19 percent more likely to experience moderate negative effects.

Meanwhile, 34.7 percent of companies polled by NDIA reported that COVID-19 had a major impact on revenue expectations in July 2020, but that fell to 19.3 percent as of May 2021.

The four areas of operations most affected by the pandemic are revenue expectations (41.7 percent), confidence in supply chain partners (31.7 percent), availability of workforce (30.5 percent) and ability to perform on contracts (29.6 percent).

Availability of employees to work was the most common factor affecting operating capacity (41 percent). Physical distancing of customers or clients and limits on the number of concurrent customers or clients was the second most reported factor (10 percent).

The complete survey results can be found at https://bit. ly/3h7KtNt ND

NDIA cover

tems and General Atomics. Vickers served as the undersecretary of defense for intelligence from 2011 to n Michael Vickers and Retired 2015, and as the assistant secretary Vickers Army Lt. Gen. Michael Nagata of defense for special operations, are the 2021 recipients of NDIA’s low intensity conflict and interdeSpecial Operations/Low Intenpendent capabilities from 2007 to sity Conflict Division’s highest 2011. honors.

Nagata retired from the Army in Nagata Vickers will receive the R. 2019 after 38 years of active-duty Lynn Rylander Award, named service, with 34 years in special for a Defense Department civilian and operations. Today, he is a strategic advisor a founder of the SO/LIC Division, who and senior vice president for CACI Interwas an advocate and activist for Special national, a distinguished senior fellow at Operations Forces. Nagata will receive the Middle East Institute, and a member the DeProspero Lifetime Achievement of several organizations that support SOF Award, named for retired Army Col. Almembers and their families. bert DeProspero, who served in Special His final government assignment was Forces and is another founding member director of strategic operational planof the division and an advocate of the ning for the National Counterterrorism special operations community.

Center. Previously, he commanded at These awards, presented annually, recmultiple levels in special operations inognize each recipient’s distinct contribucluding as the commander of U.S. Special tion of lasting impact in special operaOperations Command-Central. ND tions, low-intensity conflict and irregular warfare. The awardees will be recognized Two Magazine Staff during a banquet Nov. 4, following the Members Recognized 32nd annual SO/LIC Symposium and n Two staff members of National Exhibition in Washington, D.C. The Defense — which is published by NDIA event runs from Nov. 3-4.

— were recently honored by the WashVickers is currently executive vice ington, D.C., chapter of the Society of president at In-Q-Tel and a senior advisor Professional Journalists during its annual to the Boston Consulting Group. He also awards presentation in June. serves on several corporate, nonprofit and Editor-in-Chief Stew Magnuson was government boards, including BAE Sys-

a finalist in the trade publication category for Taylor Magnuson his commentary in his column, “A Hard Look at the Land Mine Issue,” from the magazine’s October 2020 issue.

Creative Director Brian Taylor was a finalist in the trade publication category for magazine covers he designed for the August, September and October 2020 issues. ND

Nominations Open for Expeditionary Division Award n Nominations are now open for the Smith-Turner Expeditionary Operations Award. The award recognizes an individual who has provided momentous leadership and significant guidance, decisions and actions that have improved the nation’s expeditionary warfare capability.

NDIA will celebrate the winner during an award ceremony at the 26th Annual Expeditionary Warfare Conference in February 2022.

All military personnel, government civilians and industry employees are eligible to be nominated.

For more information, please visit https://bit.ly/3AmCrIi. Nominations for the award are due Aug. 31. Contact Jacqueline Dupre at jdupre@NDIA.org with any questions. ND AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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CALENDAR We look forward to bringing together leaders in government, industry, and academia again to solve the most challenging issues in national security in person soon with the health and safety of all of our registrants in mind. NDIA is meeting face to face and will follow local, state and CDC guidelines to keep everyone safe.

Visit NDIA.org/events for more information.

Christine M. Klein Senior Vice President, Meetings, Divisions & Partnerships

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

9-10 Hypersonics Summit 2.0

9, 16 & 23 2021 Women In

Purdue, IN NDIA.org

11 Simulation & Training

Community Forum (STCF) 2021 Fairborn, OH TrainingSystems.org/STCF21

16-18 2021 CBRN Defense Conference & Exhibition Baltimore, MD NDIA.org/CBRN21

18-20 Space Warfighting Industry Forum Colorado Springs, CO NDIA.org/SWIF

Defense Fall Webinar Series Virtual WomenInDefense.net

27-29 2021 Undersea Warfare Fall Conference Groton, CT NDIA.org/FallUSW

29 NTSA September Webinar Virtual TrainingSystems.org

OCTOBER 4-7 24th Annual Systems and

25 NTSA August Webinar Virtual TrainingSystems.org

31-Sept. 2 iFEST 2021 Virtual TrainingSystems.org/iFEST

Mission Engineering Conference Orlando, FL NDIA.org/SME21

18-21 2021 Future Force

Capabilities Conference and Exhibition Columbus, GA NDIA.org/FutureForce21

27 NTSA October Webinar Virtual TrainingSystems.org

SPACE WARFIGHTING INDUSTRY FORUM Register Today This second annual event offers a premier opportunity to explore matters of importance to the entire U.S. space industrial base, including elements of the government military space community. Joined by the NDIA Space Division and Rocky Mountain Chapter, attendees will hear from top USSPACECOM and USSF leadership in both unclassified and classified forums, as well as from entrepreneurs and thought leaders on a variety of engaging topics. Mark your calendars for this highly anticipated event, where industry, government, and academia will collaborate to push the tactical edge of the space domain beyond its limits.

August 18 – 20, 2021 | Colorado Springs, CO NDIA.org/SWIF

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2021 CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL, RADIOLOGICAL, & NUCLEAR (CBRN) DEFENSE CO N F E R E N C E & EX H I B I T I O N Responding Now – Preparing for Future CBRN Threats Register Today The premier event enabling industry, government, and academia to exchange information related to defenses against weapons of mass destruction returns this year to address the theme of “Responding Now – Preparing for Future CBRN Threats.” Attendees can expect in-depth discussions and collaborations on evolving threats, requisite capabilities, acquisition reform, and the future of warfighter training and readiness. This conference programming will be accompanied by cutting-edge exhibits and poster sessions that promise additional information and opportunities geared towards ensuring the Joint Force can fight and win in a CBRN environment whether at home or abroad. Plan ahead to participate in this highly anticipated event.

August 16 – 18 | Baltimore, MD | NDIA.org/CBRN21

24TH ANNUAL SYSTEMS & MISSION ENGINEERING CONFERENCE Register Today This year’s premier gathering of the Systems and Mission Engineering community will convene both domestic and international government and industry leaders to extend the reach of our knowledge and impact. Attendees will have access to keynote remarks, plenary and technical sessions, industry showcases, and learning opportunities that promise key insight into transformation and modernization as they relate to defense program acquisition and system performance. Secure your registration today to ensure your attendance at this not-to-be-missed event.

October 4 – 7, 2021 | Orlando, FL | NDIA.org/SME21

FUTURE FORCE CAPABILITIES

CO N F E R E N C E & EX H I B I T I O N Armaments, Robotics, Munitions, and EOD This highly anticipated, first-time event reimagines the 2020 Joint Armaments, Robotics, and Munitions Digital Experience by integrating the Global EOD community and delivering enhanced opportunities for attendees to engage in creative interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration. Over the course of four days, we will hear from a team of top leaders in government, industry, and academia amid capabilities briefings, keynote remarks, panels, technical paper presentations, exhibits, and a live-fire demonstration. With a variety of learning and networking opportunities, you won’t want to miss this event. Register today.

October 18 – 21 | Columbus, GA NDIA.org/FutureForce21

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AN ONLINE COMMUNITY FOR DEFENSE PROFESSIONALS NDIA Connect is a member-only benefit that’s bustling with information, conversation, and activity stimulated by defense professionals from industry, government, and academia. Log in today to explore the platform’s various functionalities and contribute to our collective mission in support of the warfighter. From anywhere and at any time, use NDIA Connect to network with colleagues, collaborate on projects, and stay connected.

Connect.NDIA.org

AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 / N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E

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Next Month

Special Report: Rare Earths ■ While America slept, China nearly cornered the refinement of rare earths, vital strategic minerals that are needed as building blocks for several defense and commercial technologies.

Now, one company in the California desert is seeking to claw back U.S. share of the market — and others are following.

KC-46 Tanker ■ The KC-46A Pegasus program — which will replace the Air Force’s fleet of aging aerial refueling tankers — has been dogged by issues for years. As problems persist, what’s next for Boeing’s beleaguered aircraft?

F-15EX ■ The Air Force took delivery of its first F-15EX Eagle II fighter jet earlier this year. What does the future hold for the controversial platform, which was a pet project of the Trump administration?

Marine Infantry ■ The Marine Corps is conducting a series of training programs designed to enhance the capabilities of Marine infantry elements to meet future demands. National Defense recently

observed the first of the new pilot programs at Camp Pendleton, California.

Cognitive Raiders ■ A strategic vision for Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command identifies the “Cognitive Raider” as one of four key pathways of innovation. How are special operators seeking to achieve this goal?

Marine Corps Training and Simulation ■ The Marine Corps is investing in new technologies to train future servicemembers. Industry is responding with a number of new capabilities as Marines prepare for future high-end fights.

Combat Cloud ■ The Army, Air Force and Navy are all working on their versions of joint all-domain command and control to link sensors and weapon systems. All of them will depend on a combat cloud to make them work, but the Pentagon recently canceled its high-profile JEDI cloud program. How will this decision affect JADC2 programs?

AUGUST 2021 Index of Advertisers Interact with the companies whose products and services are advertised in National Defense.

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