Small business qualifier Halbert Construction Co., Inc. in El Cajon, Calif. won $5.6 million for firm-fixed price task order #0004 under a previously awarded $100 million indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity multiple award construction contract (N62473-07-D-2014) that was set aside for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. The delivery order covers design and construction of a Headquarters Battalion Armory at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms.

Work will be performed in Twentynine Palms, Calif., and is expected to be complete by March 2009. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest in San Diego, Calif. received 3 proposals for this task order.

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The Spring 2007 issue of Crosslink Magazine focuses on the state of the US Aerospace industry’s technical workforce – but many of its articles’ topics and conclusions could easily apply to the defense industry as a whole:

“As aerospace systems grow in complexity and interdependence, there is an increasing need for engineering professionals who can successfully plan, develop, manage, and evolve these systems. Yet, the national security space community is facing a growing shortage of senior systems engineers, as the number of systems positions increase and older workers leave the workforce. Organizations commonly lure skilled systems engineers away from each other or try to fill these roles with junior personnel who lack the requisite skills and/or experience, but these efforts fail to address the underlying problem. The question is, how can the national security space community expedite the development of the next generation of senior systems engineers? The type of thinking required by systems professionals is sometimes referred to as “systems thinking…”

A recent study sheds light on what it takes to grow senior systems engineers – and suggests some ways to accelerate that process in today’s engineering population. Key takeaways include…

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DID’s FOCUS Article covering the US Army’s RESET maintenance programs shone a light on an under-appreciated aspect of defense spending. Now a Congressional Budget Office report says the US Army has received $38 billion to date to replace, repair, and recondition equipment that has been lost, damaged, or used extensively in conducting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Using any vehicle heavily will lead to maintenance needs, and combat usage is always far higher than non-combat usage; unsurprisingly, RESET and replacement requests have increased steadily from 2005 to 2007. The US Army has also said that it will continue to need approximately $13 billion annually for that purpose for as long as operations continue at their current pace – and for at least 2 years after hostilities cease.

In short, RESET needs are a big deal, and they are getting high level attention. The recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper [PDF Format, 1.2 MB] was prepared at the request of the House Armed Services Committee. It examines the Army’s requirements and the Administration’s RESET/replacement funding requests, developing estimates of annual costs and comparing them with the Army’s estimated requirements and the Administration’s funding requests. Nevertheless: “In keeping with CBO’s mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, the paper makes no recommendations.”

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As a military becomes more professional, and the level of skill required to be a soldier rises, the issue of retention becomes extremely important to a military’s force structure and effectiveness. In the midst of a war, retaining soldiers who have experienced the lessons of combat becomes even more critical. Hence the significant bonuses offered to US soldiers who re-enlist. The US Army has done extremely well on the re-enlistment front, but the financial commitment involved is substantial – and so are the stakes. Could the Army do better?

As an operations manager for Procter and Gamble, Jack Stultz was responsible for recruitment, training, and retention. Now that the veteran of operations in Iraq, Panama, and Afghanistan is on a 4-year leave of absence as US Army Reserve Chief, Lt. Gen. Stultz is bringing some new thinking from his corporate job to the issue of troop retention. Stultz notes the importance of more predictability and reasonable deployment expectations per rotation, but he also adds concepts like taking a life-cycle approach. “At Proctor and Gamble, when you talked to an employee you were trying to retain, you looked at where they were in their life. And the same thing really does apply when you think about retaining a soldier.” His efforts could lead to better-tailored retention packages and changes to the way the Army Reserve operates on several fronts, from health-care benefits (currently a major future expense issue), to a different structure for retention bonuses, to changes in the retirement system. The DefenseLINK article “Army Reserve Chief Applies Business Lessons to Military Force” offers more details.

The Army is also implementing many of Maj. Vandergriff’s reforms [2003 summary | 2004 progress report | AEI 2005 panel – The Future of the US Army | 2004 HASC PPT briefing – PDF | Book – The Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs] which should help as well.

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RAAF F-111, smokin’
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DID recently covered the statements of retired Australian Air Vice Marshal Peter Criss, who believes that Australia’s participation in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is a mistake given Australia’s strategic and operational needs; he favours the F-22A Raptor as part of an alternative force structure. That DID article also links to the wider Australian debate, including statements from the opposition Labor Party, Air Power Australia’s in-depth strategic report, and official statements and responses from Australia’s government and Department of Defense. The article below, which originally appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Defender, the national journal of the Australia Defence Association, is reprinted here by author’s permission. If Australian government or DoD representatives wish to respond, DID will be happy to run those articles as well and host a serious debate.

Guest Author Air Vice-Marshal Peter Criss, ret.
(Posted with permission)

The imminent acquisition of a replacement fighter and strike aircraft comes at a time when many changes in global politics are occurring and when attempted reforms within our Defence organisation have been deliberately circumvented.

Several developments triggered this article: one in the recent past and two currently. The first influence comes from the deliberate circumvention of a damning Senate report into military justice and the latter two triggers are the nuclear test by North Korea, and the RAAF declaring they “won’t need [an] interim jet”, and announcing that the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) will be purchased. A broad canvas of issues, some may say; however, they are interlinked, which is perturbing. They involve:

• Australia’s small national defence force struggling to sustain itself through conventional recruiting and retention techniques;
• The degrading North-Asian strategic environment with its potential to destabilise the wider region and promote an arms race;
• Already prolific numbers of late-generation Russian fighter aircraft in the near and wider regions; and
• A declared decision to purchase the JSF regardless of risk.
  
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The EU’s European Defence Agency recently released a “Long-Term Vision report” intended to serve as a compass for defence planners over the next twenty years. The report was the product of 11 months of study involving officials and experts from governments, defense bodies, academia and industry across Europe, and was debated by the EDA Steering Board which consists of the Defence Ministers of the Agency’s 24 participating Member States and the European Commission.EDA head Javier Solana:

“Given the lead times typically involved in developing defence capability, decisions we take, or fail to take, today will affect whether we have the right military capabilities, and the right capacities in Europe’s defence technological and industrial base, in the third decade of this century…”

Against Solana’s speech, we offer the Jane’s Group’s description of their October 10, 2006 conference “Europe – Policies. Budgets. Markets”:

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J&E Associates, Inc. in Silver Spring, MD received a $5.5 million time & materials contract for the New Parent Support Program, to assist Marines and their families as they prepare to integrate a child into the home. The contract includes 3 option years, which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $22.1 million.

Work will be performed at Quantico, VA (20%); Camp Lejune, NC (20%); MCAS Cherry Point, NC (20%); Camp Pendleton, CA (20%); Twenty Nine Palms, CA (10%); and Kaneohe Bay, HI (10%), and is expected to be complete by September 2010 if all options are exercised. This contract was competitively procured through Navy Electronic Commerce On-line site, with 3 offers received. The Regional Contracting Office Northeast at Marine Corps Base Quantico, VA issued the contract (M000264-06-C-0014).

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“T’zahull” (IDF) Logo

DID recently ran an article offering various lessons learned and analyses from Israel’s recent Round 1 conflict with Hezbollah. These included dismay at the state of Israel’s reserve forces and corruption within its procurement and maintenance efforts. Now Stella Korin-Lieber reports that elected Israeli representatives and government officials are demanding that any cash injection or increase in the Israeli defense budget (the FY 2007 request is reportedly for an additional 19.2 billion shekels, or $4.38 billion above the regular NIS 45 billion/ $10.26 billion) should be made conditional on the adoption of improved accountability measures.

According to her report, these measures reportedly include items such as:

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In a follow-up to the events described in DID’s May 25, 2006 article, the US government has disclosed that personal data on up to 50,000 active Navy and National Guard personnel were among those stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee’s home last month. An Associated Press article says that information including names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth of up to 20,000 National Guard and Reserve personnel who were on at least their second active-duty call-up were “potentially included”; the same status applies for up to 30,000 active-duty Navy personnel who completed their first enlistment term prior to 1991. While there have been no reports that the stolen data have been used for identity theft yet, caution and vigilance by potential victims is definitely warranted.

Meanwhile, consequences are beginning to fall. A recent AP report notes that The VA has fired the data analyst who lost the data, VA deputy assistant secretary Michael McLendon has stepped down, and Dennis Duffy (the acting head of the division in which the data analyst worked) has been placed on administrative leave. Meanwhile, VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said Wednesday that he had named Attorney and Vietnam War veteran Rick Romley as his new adviser for information security. Romley prosecuted one of the largest public corruption cases in Arizona in the early 1990s.

Yet Military.com reminds us that the VA theft is only the latest in a string of incidents:

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In a shocking illustration of the truism that more integrated databases make for larger and more lucrative honeypots/ disaster magnets, the data of approximately 26.5 million US veterans was stolen recently. A Veterans’ Affairs employee disregarded security protocols and took a laptop with sensitive data home, then the laptop was taken during a burglary at the employee’s residence. Information stolen included the veterans’ Social Security numbers, birthdates and in some cases a disability rating.

Using this information, sophisticated criminals could obtain credit reports, bank and credit card accounts and place of residence information to complete many or all of the requirements for identity theft. That in turn enables all kinds of fraud schemes that can do irreparable damage to individuals’ credit ratings and finances. Identity theft has become a serious problem in the USA, where there are far fewer limits concerning the collection, trade and custody of individuals’ personal data, and little apparent liability for its misuse.

This particular incident has been compounded by questionable official actions…

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