Partnerships — Info Analysis

The Pentagon’s Latest Recruits: Professors (Washington Post)…Stephen Barr, June 9, 2008 Pg. D1

Military power requires brainpower, and the Defense Department is moving to engage a new generation of scientists and engineers to conduct research that may pay off in technological breakthroughs for the nation’s military.

One of the ideas mentioned in the article is development of models for improving data analysis, that would help predict innovations and avoid being technologically surprised by another nation or adversary.

Army (ARDEC) – Recognized Sustained Excellence

REMARKS: Joseph A. Lannon, Director, ARDEC.

It is a tremendous honor to stand here today and accept this prestigious award, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, on behalf of my co-workers at the United States Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, also known as ARDEC.

Our prescription for organizational success is very basic. Everything we do is bound by a commitment to the customer, our warfighters, whose lives depend on our work.

Four basic components—coupled with hard work, tenacity and vision—have shaped ARDEC into the organization it is today:

Innovation in both product and process;
Persistence in the pursuit of excellence;
External evaluation and continuous learning to accelerate improvement; and
A culture that thinks like a “for-profit” great business with a bottom line.

2007 was the first year for the nonprofit category. The Award recognized SUSTAINED and PROVEN (auditable) excellence over several years.

The Good or Great Page provides a notional comparison of Baldrige to the concepts of capability maturity, cost of poor quality, sigma, and knowledge of variation.

Call for Re-Design: National Security Apparatus

Two Decades Late. A post–Cold War military for a post–Cold War world. By Frederick W. Kagan. National Review June 16, 2008, Pg. 36

The current U.S. national-security organization was designed during the Cold War to face the threats of that struggle. The National Security Act of 1947 created the Air Force and what became the Defense Department, and reshaped the intelligence agencies. The structure was tweaked occasionally, but in very minor ways, until the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which made important changes (although nowhere near as fundamental as those made by the National Security Act). The U.S. military has remained virtually unchanged in its basic structure and function since then.

The world has changed, and the threats we face have changed, and that means it is time for a fundamental reorganization of our national-security apparatus.

Mr. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the co-author with Thomas Donnelly of Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Landpower.

Long View – Oil Policy – Strategic Vulnerability?

The Power of Four Dollars, By Charles Krauthammer Townhall.com, June 6, 2008.

At $3 a gallon, Americans just grin and bear it, suck it up, and, while complaining profusely, keep driving like crazy. At $4, it is a world transformed.

The wholesale flight from gas guzzlers is stunning in its swiftness, but utterly predictable.

Unfortunately, instead of hiking the price ourselves by means of a gasoline tax that could be instantly refunded to the American people in the form of lower payroll taxes, we let the Saudis, Venezuelans, Russians and Iranians do the taxing for us — and pocket the money that the tax would have recycled back to the American worker.

Iraq: Positive Trends, Next Steps

Iraq And The Election. (Wall Street Journal)…Editorial, June 6, 2008, Pg. 14

…We are winning in Iraq. Indeed, we can now say with certainty that we will win, as long as we don’t repeat our earlier mistakes and seek to draw down too soon.

For three consecutive weeks, the number of violent incidents have been at their lowest level since the spring of 2004. The number of U.S. combat fatalities last month, 19, was the lowest of the entire war, and Iraqi military and civilian deaths are also sharply down. In the first five months of this year, 4,500 insurgent weapons caches were found, compared to 6,900 for all of 2007. These numbers have sometimes moved in the wrong direction and may do so again, particularly during major combat operations. But the trend is unmistakably positive.

All of this means that it is now possible to foresee not merely a stable Iraq, but also one that can achieve our original strategic goals in the region. The strategist Frederick Kagan – an architect of the surge – makes the analogy to West Germany during the Cold War. A secure and pro-American Iraq would be crucial to expanding U.S. influence in the Arab heart of the Middle East, and especially to containing Iran. A democratic Iraq can serve as an alternative pole of Shiite power in the region, as well as an alternative political model to theocratic, radical Tehran.

We are winning in Iraq. Indeed, we can now say with certainty that we will win, as long as we don’t repeat our earlier mistakes and seek to draw down too soon. This is the improving Iraq that the next U.S. President will inherit, and it is the heart of the Iraq debate Americans should have in November.

Some irony with the earlier posting on ground breaking for the U.S. Institure of Peace to help prevent “external” conflicts. What would be truly ground breaking would be recognition on the need to resolve “internal” conflicts ….

U.S. Institute of Peace: Preventing War

At Peace Institute Groundbreaking, War Dominates The Proceedings, (Washington Post)…Michael Abramowitz, June 6, 2008, Pg. 7

President Bush, whose administration has been dominated by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global battle against terrorism, helped break ground yesterday on a $185 million facility for the U.S. Institute of Peace — a government-funded think tank with the mission of preventing conflict and helping promote postwar stability operations.

Preventing conflict requires the optimal application of “Smart” power by “Quality Leaders” who lead their respective stakeholders to reduce variation. The variation paradigm was developed in 1924 and may take another 28 years before it is commonly applied.

“In the final analysis, any contemplation of war must return to the nature of humanity, which yet stands as the root cause of war and the wellspring of History’s inestimable tragedy. Throughout time, governments, like wars, have both flowed from and reflected human nature in both positive and negative manifestation. If we are to overcome the massive violence that has typified modern civilization for five centuries, our ultimate challenge is nothing more or less than transforming the image we see in the mirror. That, however, is a task that lends itself to no purely political solution.” — Bruce Porter, War and the Rise of The State.

Air Force: Change in Leadership

ARTICLE: Gates Ousts Top Leaders Of Air Force After Gaffes. (Wall Street Journal)…Yochi J. Dreazen June 6, 2008, Pg. 1

…Beyond the gaffes, the firings are the culmination of a broader dispute between Mr. Gates and the Air Force’s leadership over the service’s strategic direction.

The forced resignations mark an attempt by Mr. Gates to use his remaining time in office to shake up the service, which he believes has failed to adapt to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senior Pentagon officials said the move marked the first time a defense secretary had simultaneously fired the two top leaders of a service like the Air Force. They said Mr. Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, felt the recent mistakes merited severe penalties.

The immediate trigger for the resignations of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Gen. Michael Moseley, its chief of staff, was the March disclosure that the Air Force had accidentally sent four ballistic-missile fuses to Taiwan 18 months earlier, a discovery that infuriated Chinese officials.

Army and National Preparedness

Ready Army, Stand-To, June 5, 2008.

We live in an era of persistent conflict where global terrorism and extremist ideologies threaten our safety and freedom. The increased risk of nuclear, biological and chemical attacks and the threat of natural crises such as pandemic influenza, hurricanes (June is Hurricane Preparedness Month) and flash floods demonstrate the need for our Army community to be prepared for any emergency.

… Collectively, comprehensive emergency preparedness efforts enhance the strength and resilience of our all-volunteer force and support installation and force readiness.

Ready Army will launch Army-wide in September to coincide with the Department of Homeland Security’s national preparedness campaign.

One of the outcomes from the Sept 11, 2001 attacks has been an increased awareness among the general public on this “era of persisitent conflict” — something perhaps unimaginable prior to 911.

Remotely Piloted Craft

U.S. Pushes To Rely More On Remotely Piloted Craft (New York Times)…Thom Shanker, June 5, 2008

…The push to increase missions by the Predator, and its larger and more deadly variant, the Reaper, has been an issue of serious contention between Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the armed services, in particular the Air Force.

Navy Sees Future With Drones For Spying But Not Fighting(Washingtonpost.com)…Sebastian Abbot, Associated Press

The Navy lags well behind the Air Force in the development of armed drones — the unmanned aircraft now used increasingly in Iraq and Afghanistan — insisting that its “Top Gun” fighter pilots are still smarter, better and more flexible in combat. But the contrasting visions for the next generation of America’s air arsenal point to wider debates within the military about the pace of incorporating remote-control technology into future battle strategies.

DoD: Cost overruns – CPI

Senator Warns Of A ‘Crisis’ In Pentagon Cost Overruns(New York Times)…Charlie Savage

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday declared that cost overruns for Defense Department weapons had “reached crisis proportions,” after government auditors reported that the projected final cost of the Pentagon’s major programs had ballooned $295 billion over initial budget estimates.

Czar Pitched To Rein In Pentagon. (Washington Times)…Rowan Scarborough

The Pentagon is so awash in cost-bloated weapon systems that it now needs a pricing czar to double-check estimates that have missed the mark by a staggering $295 billion in just the past several years.

DoD issued guidance on their Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) Transformation Initiative in May 2006. Gordon England, Deputy Secreatary of Defense reinforced the expectation that

…”every DoD organization is focused every day on improving the effectiveness of our support for the Warfighter.”

Cost overruns on systems nothing new.