Ares: A Defense Technology Blog

Telephone Eases U.S., China Tensions

Tensions between the United States and China over the latter's military buildup are a little more relaxed today after the two countries agreed to talk more about what they're doing. A top Chinese general said Beijing is prepared to open a "hotline" with Washington for direct talks on military activities. The hotline would involve installing a direct telephone line between the Defense Department and China's Ministry of Defense to avoid miscalculations, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Lt. Gen. Zhang Qinsheng, chief of military intelligence for the People's Liberation Army, said arrangements for the hotline would be finalized in September during bilateral defense talks. Gates and Zhang were both attending the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, a conference on Asian security organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

--Catherine MacRae Hockmuth

Proud to Earmark II

Government watchdog Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has published a database of so-called congressional earmarks from the House-passed defense authorization bill for fiscal 2008. The bill is one of the first to fall under a new Democratic-instituted House rule that requires public disclosure of an earmark's sponsor, recipient, amount and justification.

Among CAGW's favorites, $5.3 million for a parachute drying tower at the Naval Air Station Oceana in Dam Neck Annex, Va., requested by House Armed Services Committee backbencher Thelma Drake (R-Va.) who represents the Virginia Beach and Norfolk area.

Congress with a Two-Drink Minimum

Cut for many reasons from DTI's story on airlifters was this wonderful 2004 quote from Lord Gilbert, Tony Blair's first Minister for Defence Procurement:

Then I turned a few pages back to that marvelous Euro-wanking make-work project called the A400M. It lists the key requirements, but does not say what they are ... I suggest that we tell it that we would like to know precisely what the key requirements of the A400M are so that everyone can see how inferior a plane it will be, if it ever arrives, to the C-17.  

Don't hold back, your Lordship - tell us what you really think.

National Intel Council Launches Wiki for Global Disease

What happens when the National Intelligence Council teams with college students to uncover the threat to the United States posed by disease? More than 1,000 virtual, wiki-style pages on the impacts of infectious and chronic disease over the next 10 to 15 years. Call it a wiki National Intelligence Estimate.

The council assigned 26 graduate students at Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies in Erie, Pa.,  to examine the economic, political, diplomatic and security impacts of disease. Like its Wikipedia inspiration, the project drew from government and press reports, think tank and NGO studies and World Health Organization reports.

It shouldn't come as a big surprise that the team concluded that disease will persistently undermine U.S. interests over the next 10 years, with the most significant impact coming from Russia, China, and Central and South Asia.

"The final product is interesting on a number of levels," Prof. Kristan J. Wheaton told Secrecy News, "not the least of which is the way in which wiki technology facilitated the analysis."

--Catherine MacRae Hockmuth

Bureaucracy 1, Troops' Tech Demands 0

Despite more than 130 urgent-need requests from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force while it was deployed in Iraq, less than 10 percent were fulfilled and many were "canceled, delayed" or led to solutions which were not asked for, according to government watchdog Project On Government Oversight.

POGO, citing an allegedly canceled March presentation by 1 MEF technology staff to the Defense Department's Office of the Director for Defense Research and Engineering, declared May 31 that the requests "frequently languished" at coalition headquarters until U.S. Central Command officials "intervened," restoring urgency to the process.

Unrequited needs included counter-improved explosive device technology, including Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, and for surveillance, especially Scan Eagle unmanned aircraft, POGO announced while publishing copies of the supposed 1 MEF presentation. The Associated Press and Wired News recently also reported on the leaked presentation (PDF).

Proud to Earmark

Earmarks have gotten a bad reputation in the heightened U.S. political environment, but not everyone is ashamed to promote them - even if they are for otherwise obscure, embattled defense technology efforts.

Of course, no one is as independent as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.).

Lieberman is touting that he earmarked an additional $97 million in the Senate's fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill, for a total of $341 million, for the Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) wide-area surveillance radar, which is designed to track and identify moving targets on the ground and in the air.

Industry officials are pushing to outfit the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System fleet with the Northrop Grumman-Raytheon radar, and that is where Lieberman says the extra money would go. The senator is quick to note that MP-RTIP is designed by Norden Systems in Norwalk, Conn.

What Will Gordon Do?

Hot discussion topic in the UK defense establishment is the forthcoming installation of Gordon Brown as prime minister, and likely changes in defense policy and expenditures. The only thing that everyone seems to agree on is that Brown - now chancellor of the exchequer, in charge of UK government finance - will discontinue one or more out of three major projects:  a replacement for the Trident nuclear missile, two new aircraft carriers and their Joint Strike Fighter air wing, and the purchase of the final batch of Typhoon fighters, known as Tranche 3.

Brown is considered unlikely to back away from Britain's nuclear deterrent. The carriers are a Labour government project, stemming from a strategic review in 1998 - and will be assembled in Rosyth in Scotland, in Brown's own constituency. Withdrawing from JSF would also embarrass the Pentagon, which would be left with a small and consequently costly force of Marine short-take-off, vertical landing F-35Bs. On the other hand, the UK is contractually committed to buy 232 Typhoons and will have to pay a penalty if it does not go through with the purchase.

House: Military Gaydar Dangerously Askew

While the United States is at war in an Arabic speaking country and spending millions of dollars developing handheld translation devices, why is the Defense Department firing people who speak the language of its enemies?

That's what 40 members of the House of Representatives asked in a letter to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) asking for hearings on the firings of gay Arabic linguists.

The letter focuses specifically on the firing of Navy Chief Petty Officer 2nd Class Stephen Benjamin who says he was widely known to be gay among his colleagues and that his boss urged him to sign a statement saying he is not gay just so he could stay on the job.

POGO Blasts Contractors

Deepwater. Littoral Combat Ship. FCS. The list of big, troubled, industry-managed weapons programs has been steadily growing. Now the Project on Government Oversight blog has some insight into the underlying issues:

The moral of the Deepwater story is that the model of contractors executing programs on behalf of the federal government is a recipe for disaster. And why wouldn’t it be? Priority number one for major companies is to make a profit. That drive needs to be tempered by the demands of a vigilant and cost-conscious consumer. In the case of Deepwater, there are few incentives to control costs and deliver on promises.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

--David Axe

The Truth is Always Exciting

British Defence Committee parliamentary hearings are not always associated with plain English. Equivocation rather than openness is more often to be expected.

Perhaps it was his lack of familiarity with British bureaucratic procedure, but presented with a simple question, Francisco Fernandez Sainz, Airbus Military’s managing director, gave a straightforward answer. Asked about the relative merits of outright purchase of an aircraft, or using the British government’s private finance initiative, Sainz left the committee in little doubt as to his lack of enthusiasm for the PFI approach. The committee met to consider UK strategic lift programs such as the Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft (FSTA) and the Airbus A400M military airlifter, May 22.

PFI is akin to hire purchase, but on a multi-billion dollar scale. The FSTA deal will provide 14 Airbus A330-200 aircraft for the program at an estimated lifetime cost of 13 billion pounds ($25.6 billion).