U.S. War Funding Request Down (Only) 20%

• The Department of Defense is set to request 20 percent less in “war funding” for the coming fiscal year, a reduction of about $13 billion. The fact that this request has not declined somewhat proportionally to the size of the reduced mission may indicate that the war funding has been used as a slush fund to get around sequestration. If so, and if U.S. involvement tends to be reduced over time, this will become increasingly obvious.

U.S.

• The Pentagon announced facility closures throughout Europe, the largest of which is the airbase at RAF Mildenhall (see “leaving Mildenhall video below), a field northeast of London that served tankers, reconnaissance and SOF aircraft. That closure alone key strategic nuclear involves 3,200 service members and family members. Several German facilities will close. An additional 1,200 people will be newly stationed not far from Mildenhall, at RAF Lakenheath, with the addition of two F-35 squadrons. The decision to reduce staffing in Europe has been under formal planning for two years, with much less political blowback and congressional interference than experienced in domestic basing decisions. Net savings for the repositioning would appear after three or four years, having cost the U.S. $1.5 billion.

• And, speaking of congressional interference and political blowback, there are reports that another round of BRAC base closures may be in the offing. At least as proposed by the initial Pentagon budget for 2016. Back in the 2005 BRAC process, the government spent billions to close facilities that were thought to comprise about 20 percent of basing capacity, where it has previously had an overcapacity of about 24 percent. That is now calculated to be saving taxpayers $4 billion per year. Since then, of course, the standing military has shrunk significantly in personnel.

• The State Department released – as is required by the START Treaty every six months – the updated statistics of its key strategic nuclear assets.

• Navy Commander Jose Luis Sanches pleaded guilty to bribery charges stemming from the investigation into the “Fat” Leonard Francis, a navy contractor who allegedly curried favor with ship captains (with, among other things, Lady Gaga tickets) who had discretion to steer contracts and service works to Francis’s facilities. He is the fifth navy officer to plead guilty.

Asia

• China is has deployed large-scale 3-D printers on three warships to reduce the need for parts inventories.

Europe

• Britain’s MI5 head indicates that they see new Al Qaeda plans to push mass casualty attacks across Western nations.

• France is facing a $2.2 EUR defense budget shortfall (in French).

• Today’s video is an admittedly not very exciting – but appropriately symbolic – view from out the back of a plane leaving RAF Mildenhall.

US Navy CANES Integrate Shipboard Networks Program Mollifies Protesters

Networking the Navy

The US Navy’s Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program is designed to streamline and update shipboard networks to improve interoperability across the fleet. It will replace 5 shipboard legacy network programs to provide the common computing environment on board for command, control, intelligence and logistics. The primary goal of the CANES program is to build a secure shipboard network required for naval and joint operations, which is much easier when you consolidate and reduce the number of shipboard networks. That consolidation can also lower costs and maintenance requirements and reduce training needs, if good choices are made. The intent is to build it as an Infrastructure and Platform as a Service (IaaS / PaaS) and field it on a rolling 4-year hardware baseline and a 2-year software baseline.

In 2010, the US Navy awarded 2 contracts, with a potential value of $1.7 billion, for the design and development of the CANES common computing environment. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are competing, and a single prime contractor was expected to be picked in 2011. It took until early 2012, but Northrop Grumman won. By 2014, however, a multi-year, multi-vendor contract was in place…

US Weapons Surfacing in Iran-Associated Militias

• Vehicles and weapons sent to Iraq’s military are showing up in pictures and videos in the possession of Iran-backed groups. It is not clear if this leakage is a remnant of loose policies of the previous Nouri al-Maliki-led government. , seeing as it has been expensive, and applied only in a narrow patch of border. For its part, Homeland Security would like to spend $443 million for some more airframes to add to the 8-year program.

Europe

• Denmark will create its own cyber warfare unit, which has become de rigueur of late. $75 million is dedicated to it, and its ambition is to have an “offensive” capacity.

• Turkey is ordering four more F-35s to go along with the pair already ordered. The six are still slated to grow to 100.

United States

• SpaceX’s launch of its Dragon spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station (and perform a victory lap of sorts by landing on a boat, thus allowing vehicle re-use) has been reschedule for Saturday.

Asia

• China’s version of the U.S.’s Reaper got new engines, and they appear to be employing a type of stealth technology new to Chinese aviation.

• Today’s video is actually a grainy slideshow of various images of the new Chinese aircraft carrier, some of which appear to be composites showing intended future use.

• The Chinese aircraft carrier project has come a long way quickly, but – for comparison – here is a video of both day and night operations on the USS Carl Vinson, the night component happening a week ago in support of anti-ISIS operations.

CBO: Drones for Homeland Security Wasteful

• The Congressional Budget Office deemed Homeland Security’s drone program a big waste of time and money, seeing as it has been expensive, and applied only in a narrow patch of border. For its part, Homeland Security would like to spend $443 million for some more airframes to add to the 8-year program.

Europe

• According to reports month after the Minsk agreement between Ukraine and Russian-sponsored rebels, attacks continue against Ukraine held-territory, but at a slower pace. A detailed, but rather partisan, account can be found here. Of interest is a photo allegedly of a BPM-97 in Luhansk. The Russian-made armored personnel carrier is not widely used outside of the Russian border patrol, and the Ukranian military had no inventory of the vehicles.

Middle East

• The Institute for the Study of War updated its Syria sit rep.

United States

• Heat is on for the F-35 program to attract foreign sales to lower its per-unit costs to the (increasingly unlikely) $85 million per unit.

Missile Defense

• Missile Defense advocates in the U.S. are beating congressional bushes during this SecDef transition time. A Hudson Institute commentator summed up the main argument in a piece warning of the “unimaginable costs of recovering from a nuclear ballistic missile strike.”

• Today we have two videos, showing very different aspects of missile defense. The first comes from Israel, showing high frame rate interceptor launches of the new Barak 8.

The second shows a time lapse sequence of the inflation of a JLENS cruise missile early warning defense system…