The Bunker: An outsider’s déjà view

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This week in The Bunker: like a rookie defense secretary a long time ago, a new Army civilian chief without previous Pentagon baggage finds defense procurement wanting; military choppers face turbulence; more gold needed for Golden Dome; and more.

A PRIME CON JOB

More wisdom from another outsider

The Bunker will never forget how former Senator John Tower’s nomination for defense secretary crashed and burned in 1989 like a human Hindenburg. He knew a lot about the U.S. military, having served in Navy whites as a sailor from 1943 to 1946, and in Saville Row suits as chairman of the armed services committee from 1981 to 1985. But reports of Tower’s tippling and womanizing, along with allegations of sexual harassment, doomed his chances of getting the post.

The Pentagon press corps (back when there was one) was stunned when President George H.W. Bush tapped Representative Dick Cheney (R-WY) for the job. Cheney, who died November 3 at 84, had never worn a military uniform (he received five draft deferments during the Vietnam war, just like President Trump). Nor had he overseen a congressional panel responsible for the armed forces.

Yet he took no prisoners when he arrived at the Pentagon on March 21, 1989. At his first press conference (back when the Pentagon had them), Cheney startlingly rebuked an Air Force general for lobbying Congress about missiles. He went on to scale back (PDF) the U.S. nuclear arsenal, kill the A-12 attack plane, fight to scrap the F-14 fighter and the V-22 tilt-rotor, and lead the U.S. military to victory over Iraq in 1991. Not a bad track record for a defense secretary with no military bona fides.

The Bunker recalled Cheney’s tenure November 12, nine days after he died. That’s when Army Secretary Dan Driscoll (PDF) declared defense contractors, with their bespoke weaponry, have been taking U.S. taxpayers to the cleaners for years. He believes commercial suppliers and innovative upstarts can outfit the Pentagon for a lot less money.

Shortly after Trump tapped Driscoll as Army secretary in January, Pentagon reporters (back when we had them) vainly searched for his military know-how. Driscoll was “a largely unknown figure both inside and outside the Pentagon,” Military.com reported. “The relatively obscure financier and political adviser, who is also a veteran, is set to lead the Pentagon’s largest branch despite a resume that some Army officials behind the scenes are concerned lacks the depth for such a pivotal role.”

Yet, after kicking the Army’s tank treads in recent months, Driscoll — like Cheney nearly 40 years before — found Pentagon procurement wanting. “It used to be 90 percent of things we bought were purpose-built for the military or the Army, and 10 percent were off the shelf,” Driscoll said. “The defense industrial base broadly, and the primes [i.e., prime contractors like Lockheed, RTX, Northrop, General Dynamics, and Boeing] in particular, conned the American people, and the Pentagon and the Army, into thinking that it needed military specific solutions, when in reality, a lot of these commercial solutions are equal to or better, and we’ve actually harmed ourselves with that mentality.”

Those are fighting words for the Military-Industrial Complex. But they’re nothing like what Driscoll said next: “So what we are trying to do is flip it to 90 percent being commercially available and 10 percent being specific” to the military.

Them is frightening words.

It’s amazing what a fresh set of outside eyes, not blurred by decades of defense-business-as-usual, can see.

Somewhere, Dick Cheney is smirking.

CHOPPERS GROUNDED?

When does a weapon become obsolete?

The Bunker wasn’t around during the days of catapults launching burning pitch (the artillery of its day), mailed armor (the Kevlar of its era), or moats (the Golden Dome of yesteryear). He has a faint recollection of the Army disbanding its horse units, the Navy lowering its sails, and the Air Force scrapping its nuclear-powered bomber.

Those were easy calls. But there are tougher ones on the horizon: Should the Navy scuttle its huge flat-deck carriers, given the proliferation of ever more accurate ship-killing missiles? Should the Army abandon its 70-ton tanks? How about crewed fighter aircraft, with all the extra cost it takes to keep a human alive aloft, and the risk of them being shot down and killed, or being captured and tortured by increasingly unhinged non-state actors? And what about the nuclear triad, that snake-oil trident of terror?

Those seem, for the time being, on safe ground, sea, and air. Yet sharks now seem to be circling for good ol’ tried-and-true helicopter. While the U.S. military has been flying production whirlybirds since 1942, the drone-darkening skies overhead may portend their demise. The Army wants to buy 1 million drones over the next two to three years and will slash 6,500 of its 30,000 aviation jobs over the next two years. “We’re cooked,” one Army aviator told Defense One recently, following the flight of a robo-piloted UH-60 Black Hawk. “Why are we even doing this, for real?”

The Pentagon is weighing a proposal that “would sharply reduce or halt” piloted choppers over the next couple of years, Air Force veteran Colton Jones reported November 8 in Defence Blog. “The concept is being presented as a way to reduce long-term personnel requirements, lower training and sustainment costs, and limit the exposure of aircrews during high-intensity operations.”

It’s a safe bet the silicon-vs.-soldier-in-the-cockpit fight won’t end soon. Bell is developing the MV-75, a crew-and-passenger-occupied tilt-rotor that does pretty much what helicopters have always done. It’s intended to replace the aging UH-60 Black Hawk fleet. That could yield a $70 billion bonanza over the next several decades.

Yet Bell isn’t stupid. It underwent a helicopter-ectomy in 2018, when the company formally changed its name from “Bell Helicopter” to “Bell.”

“THE SKY’S THE LIMIT”

Defending those missile-defense satellites

One of the frustrating things about trying to follow the arcana of military procurement is the cash that is so often MIA. That’s what happens when the Pentagon lowballs the price of a new fighter by using what insiders call the “flyaway” cost, which includes only the stuff and labor needed to build it, while leaving out the billions in R&D that made it possible.

Well, it’s happening again. This time it involves the often overlooked need to protect the “Space Based Interceptors” (SBIs) that would be key to President Trump’s “Golden Dome for America,” designed to shield the country against all incoming aerial threats. You may recall that Trump, in his role as stand-up commander-in-chief, said the dome would cost $175 billion and be finished by January 20, 2029, the final day of his presidency.

But defending those orbiting weapons and sensors isn’t usually being incorporated into assessments of their “requirements, capabilities, and costs,” Breaking Defense’s Theresa Hitchens reported November 12. Such SBI systems would be critical to detecting — and then destroying — enemy multi-warheaded missiles shortly after launch, when their fiery plumes make them relatively easy targets.

“It’s obviously very important that we find a way to develop this space layer in a protected way, not only from adversary kinetic or local orbital issues, but also from cyber attacks, electronic jamming and laser attacks,” Patrick Binning, a John Hopkins space-engineering professor, said at a Space News confab.

But such a sci-fi fantasy could be thwarted by bad guys launching hordes of decoys hidden among their city-busting nuclear warheads. That would “cause us to expend our interceptors prematurely,” Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “And that would be the easiest way to make us lose interceptors and effectively poke a hole in the [Golden Dome] shield through which they [the enemy] could fire other missiles that now can’t be defended against” because Golden Dome has run out of interceptor missiles.

So far the administration has been mum on how it will grapple with such challenges. “If the Pentagon does not start explaining Golden Dome, it will never be built,” says Tom Karako, a missile-defense booster at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s time to loosen the gag order and start talking.”

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ Bytes away!

Highlighting a fundamental change in Pentagon procurement, the most valuable U.S. defense contractor makes software, not hardware, Jeff Sommer reported in the New York Times November 14.

→ But does it include free shipping?

The Defense Department, concerned over increasing drone threats, has created an Amazon-like shopping website for U.S. forces to buy drone-defeating gear, Howard Altman reported November 14 at The War Zone.

→ Name game

President Trump’s push to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War could cost up to $2 billion, Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube, and Carol E. Lee of NBC News reported November 12.

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