JUNE 2019 Q $9

Navy Shipbuilding
Future In Flux

Inside the Army’s

Mad Scientist Program
THE BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE OF

F-35
OVERSEAS
MARKET
LOCKHEED, PENTAGON TARGETING
NEW FOREIGN MILITARY SALES
JUNE 2019 VOLUME CIII, NUMBER 787
NDIA’S BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE
W W W . N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E M AG A Z I N E . O R G

Mad Scientist 39
Q To better understand new technolo-
Cover gies and scientific initiatives that could
aid its warfighters, the Army is putting a
Story 26 renewed focus on its Mad Scientist pro-
Q Twelve countries gram. The effort comes as the service has
have committed to shifted focus from counterinsurgency to
orders of the F-35 joint large-scale operations.
strike fighter either as
formal partner nations
or through foreign mili-
tary sales. Manufacturer
Lockheed Martin and
the joint program office
are looking to expand
the fighter’s global foot- BUDGET
UP FRONT 6 MATTERS 10
print as production of
the aircraft ramps up.
Cover photo: Air Force

Shipbuilding 31
NEWS BEST OF
Q The Navy’s new 30-year BRIEFS 12 THE WEB 15
shipbuilding plan is intend-
ed to send a strong demand
signal and provide predict-
ability for the industrial
base. However, the service is
conducting a sweeping force
structure assessment that DIRECTED
could shake things up. VIEWPOINT 17 ENERGY 21

READ BREAKING NEWS AND WEB EXCLUSIVE STORIES AT:

W W W . N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E M A G A Z I N E . O R G

J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 1
VIEWPOINTS MISSILE DEFENSE JUNE 2019
37 Army Charts New Path for VO L U M E C I I I
17 Manufacturing Air and Missile Defense N U M B E R 787
And Cybersecurity: The service has created a new roadmap
Know the Essentials aimed at beefing up its ability to defeat
airborne threats. EDITOR IN CHIEF
In 2019, smartphones or tablets won’t be
the only cybersecurity worry — it will BY CONNIE LEE Stew Magnuson
be the countless devices that collectively (703) 247-2545
make up the internet of things. EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES SMagnuson@NDIA.org
BY CHRIS SOUZA
39 Army Uses ‘Mad Scientist’ CREATIVE DIRECTOR
19 Combating AI Bias Through Gathering to Explore Brian Taylor
Emerging Technologies (703) 247-2546
Responsible Leadership The service is engaging with experts to see
The speed with which the U.S. govern- BTaylor@NDIA.org
what opportunities lie ahead.
ment is embracing innovations in artificial
BY CONNIE LEE MANAGING EDITOR
intelligence is outpacing its efforts to fully
understand and mitigate its challenges. Jon Harper
BY TAMIE SANTIAGO DEPARTMENTS (703) 247-2542
JHarper@NDIA.org
4 NDIA Perspective
FEATURES You Don’t Know Who You Don’t Know SENIOR EDITOR
BY RACHEL MCCAFFREY Yasmin Tadjdeh
DIRECTED ENERGY
21 Services Report Progress on (703) 247-2585
6 Up Front
Directed Energy Programs Random facts and figures from industry YTadjdeh@NDIA.org
The technology is making waves across the and government
STAFF WRITER
military as it works to harness its power. BY STEW MAGNUSON
BY MANDY MAYFIELD
Connie Lee
7 Editor’s Notes (703) 247-2543
HOMELAND SECURITY BY STEW MAGNUSON CLee@NDIA.org
23 Keeping the Lights On: 8 Algorithmic Warfare EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Executive Order Highlights What’s coming in artificial intelligence, Mandy Mayfield
Electromagnetic Pulse Threat big data and cybersecurity (703) 247-9469
President Donald Trump recently signed a BY YASMIN TADJDEH MMayfield@NDIA.org
directive to help protect the nation’s
electric grid from EMPs. 9 NDIA Policy Points
BY JON HARPER Operational Security Erodes in Social
Media Age
BY ZACH KRONISCH ADVERTISING
COVER STORY
26 Sales Taking Off: International 10 Budget Matters Christine M. Klein
Market for F-35 Heats Up Who’s funding what in Washington? SVP, Meetings & Business Partnerships
The effort to ramp up sales of the BY JON HARPER (703) 247-2593
joint strike fighter is underway as new CKlein@NDIA.org
customers are sought. 12 News Briefs
BY YASMIN TADJDEH BY NATIONAL DEFENSE STAFF Kathleen Kenney, Sales Director
(703) 247-2576
SHIPBUILDING 15 Best of the Web KKenney@NDIA.org
31 Navy Shipbuilding Plan Could
41 Government Contracting Insights Alex Mitchell, Sales Coordinator
Soon Be Tossed Overboard Changes in IP Rights May Be on the (703) 247-2568
Cost concerns and the emergence of new Horizon AMitchell@NDIA.org
unmanned systems could lead to force CONTRIBUTED BY COVINGTON &
structure changes. BURLING LLP
BY JON HARPER
National Defense
42 Ethics Corner
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34 Reapers to Give Marine Corps
New Set of Warfighting Tools 44 NDIA Calendar NDIA MEMBERSHIP: The
The MQ-9 — a drone that has been
Complete guide to NDIA events National Defense Industrial
used extensively over the past decade for Association (NDIA) is the premier association
military strikes across the Middle East and representing all facets of the defense and technol-
Africa — may soon be a permanent fixture 48 Next Month ogy industrial base and serving all military services.
in the Marine Corps’ inventory. Preview of our next issue For more information please call our membership
department at 703-522-1820 or visit us on the
BY YASMIN TADJDEH web at NDIA.org/Membership
48 Index of Advertisers

National Defense (ISSN 0092–1491) is published monthly by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22201–3060.
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 Perspective BY RACHEL MCCAFFREY
You Don’t Know Who You Don’t Know
Q It’s likely everyone reading this is familiar with the phrase, “it’s
not what you know but who you know.” This sentiment is par-
ticularly relevant when pursuing new professional opportunities
since, according to LinkedIn, 70 percent of people hired in 2016
found a position in a company in which they had a connection.
What the statistics don’t tell us is how people connected.
Clearly LinkedIn and other social media provide powerful
tools for maintaining a robust professional network. However,
while technology makes connecting easier, it struggles to repli-
cate or replace the value of in-person, real-life connections.
Some may disagree about the need for in-person network-
ing, arguing social media tools provide a rich environment of
potential professional contacts. While online networking can
create value, especially when sharing tactics and techniques for
building a business plan or defining a potential customer base,
it alone cannot create meaningful relationships. Email and
online forums provide great tools for exchanging information,
but they generally don’t lead to personal testimonials, which
can provide an edge to job seekers or sales professionals.
Consider your willingness to make an introduction or offer
a recommendation for one of your contacts. Are you able and
willing to provide enthusiastic, unequivocal support for some-
one you’ve only met electronically? Probably not. Digital con-
tacts hesitate to risk their credibility or reputation by providing
a glowing recommendation for someone they’ve never met.
Meeting in-person provides background, context and under-
standing online tools cannot deliver.
Consider how companies make hiring and partnering deci-
sions. While most businesses leverage online tools, they gener-
ally won’t hire a candidate they haven’t interviewed in-person.
And for executive level positions, most companies require
a series of in-person interviews to determine suitability, not
only for professional skills but for cultural alignment. When
you apply for a job, companies review your resume and many
of them will review your LinkedIn account and other social
media. But they’re unlikely to make an offer without meeting
you, shaking your hand and assessing your organizational fit.
For most executives, their network is a tangible asset, one
they’re unlikely to risk for someone they haven’t met. Profes-
sionals build reputation not just on their business successes, but
also on a network that can mobilize support for new ventures
for themselves and others. So, if you want a connection to rec-
ommend or advocate for you for a business partnership or job,
you likely need a relationship built on in-person interaction.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson highlight-
ed the need for this type of advocacy during last year’s Women
In Defense (WID) National Conference. He emphasized mov-
ing beyond mentoring, endorsing advocates as mentors who
actively scan the environment and upon identifying an oppor-
tunity, pick up the phone and make a strong recommendation
to the hiring authority. But advocacy probably won’t happen
without in-person engagement. Most professionals will not risk
their credibility by advocating for an online-only connection.
They might agree to submit a resume, but likely without testi-
4 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
mony about qualifications, temperament and overall job fitness.
Since its inception, WID has relentlessly focused on in-per-
son events that can build a network of mutual advocates. This
year’s national conference theme, “Fueling the Fifty-One Per-
cent,” reflects WID’s goal of providing women in the defense
industry with connections and resources to help them achieve
their professional objectives. Networking plays a crucial role in
helping women identify and successfully pursue opportunities
that allow them to leverage their leadership, knowledge, skills
and abilities in ways that strengthen the defense workforce.
During last year’s conference, I implemented a “manda-
tory networking” policy for the general sessions. I deliberately
assigned seating to catalyze networking conversations among
attendees. And, of course, the ultimate objective was to create
conditions for a strong, active network of advocates to help
women maximize contributions to our nation’s defense.
Older generations of professionals appear to recognize and
work to reap the benefits of in-person networking. The young-
er generation, digital natives, seems less attuned to the benefits
of in-person connections. In a cohort generally focused on “life
hacks,” in-person networking may appear inefficient and anti-
quated, a relic from a bygone era.
“Meeting in-person provides background,
context and understanding online tools
cannot deliver.”
So, when I talk to college students getting ready to pursue
their first jobs, I emphasize the enormous benefits of meeting
people in real life. My first pitch, of course, encourages them
to get involved with WID and the National Defense Industrial
Association, to build a network that will help them obtain
important, fulfilling work in America’s finest, most rewarding
industry. But I also offer suggestions for other organizations
with rich opportunities for making valuable connections. In-
person networking frequently leads to access to a broader
network. Once you’ve met someone, they are far more likely
to introduce you to someone else in their network they think
could help you achieve your professional goals.
There’s a balance between online and in-person network-
ing, with both requiring investments in time and attention to
deliver results. Just like you need to gain and maintain job skills
throughout your career, you need to develop and sustain rela-
tionships to help achieve your professional goals. People tend to
do business with people they like; in-person interaction delivers
the depth required for an actual relationship. So, find an NDIA
or WID event that interests you and start building connections
that will lead to professional satisfaction and success. ND
Rachel McCaffrey (rmccaffrey@ndia.org) is executive director of
Women In Defense and NDIA’s vice president of membership and
chapters.
 FURTHER READING
UP FRONT COMPILED BY STEW MAGNUSON
Japan Rearmed:
The Politics of
Grumblings About OTAs on Capitol Hill?
Q The Navy’s Assistant Secretary for Research, De- Military Power
velopment and Acquisition James “Hondo” Geurts By Sheila A. Smith
was asked at the Sea-Air-Space conference about
some members of Congress complaining about the Q Council on Foreign Relations
overuse of other transaction authority agreements, senior fellow and Georgetown Uni-
the popular new means for the military to field versity professor Sheila A. Smith
new technology and bypass cumbersome red tape. takes an unflinching look at today’s
He personally has not heard any complaints military relationship between the
from lawmakers, Geurts told reporters. “With any United States and Japan.
new authority, we’ve just got to make sure, one: we The onetime enemies have en-
Geurts employ it in the right way, and two: we have the joyed a mutually beneficial security
workforce trained on how to employ it in the right relationship since the end of World
way — and in a way that adds value. I think the Navy has done that fairly well over War II, but that may be changing.
the last year or so.” The question now for Japan is
whether the United States will be a
Army: Robotics Crucial for Multidomain Operations reliable ally as
Q Robots will play a crucial role in the Army’s multidomain operations concept, Northeast Asia
said Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley, deputy commanding general for the futures and con- grows more
cepts center at Army Futures Command. tense with
“The need to conduct multidomain command and control across the services is North Korea,
going to be answered by the idea of artificial intelligence and machine learning,” he Russia and
said at NDIA’s Robotics Capabilities Conference. China posing
“The very first place we want to invest in artificial intelligence is not a robot that the most obvi-
fights another robot,” he added. Rather, “it’s helping us make decisions faster in a ous threats.
more efficient and effective way.” Meanwhile, robots can help the Army maintain As a candi-
control of terrain while keeping its soldiers out of range of enemy forces, he noted. date, Presi-
dent Donald
Coast Guard Wants Help with Cybersecurity Trump suggested that Japan should
Q Much ink has been spilled about the Defense Department’s cybersecurity needs defend itself against North Korea.
and potential vulnerabilities. But the Coast Guard is also concerned about protect- “As Japan faces increasing pres-
ing systems as it recapitalizes its fleet, noted Rear Adm. sure on its defenses, the reliability
(sel.) Douglas Schofield, the service’s director of acqui- of the United States seems less
sition programs and program executive officer. certain,” Smith writes.
“Cybersecurity … is important to all of us not just Article Nine of the Japanese
from a design perspective but also from a producibility Constitution prevents the nation
perspective,” he said at the Sea-Air-Space conference. from waging war, but doesn’t place
Engineering systems so that Coast Guardsmen can limits on the size or lethality of its
efficiently restore them when they are disrupted is just as Self-Defense Force, Smith points
important as making them cyber secure in the first place, out.
he noted. “Threat perception, long dor-
“We’ve got to have that capability to be able to do mant as a factor in military plan-
that restoration in place so that those sailors can get out ning, now assumes a larger role in
and keep that cutter or boat cybersecure,” he said. shaping decisions about Japan’s
— Reporting by Jon Harper, Stew Magnuson and Mandy Mayfield defense needs,” she adds.
Japan does not see China as a
military threat, but leaders are
COMING IN JUNE of the Army Mark concerned that the economic
Q National Defense will Esper and Boeing downturn of the last two decades
be covering NDIA’s Ar- executive Leanne allowed its neighbor to catch up
mament Systems Forum, Caret are keynote and far surpass it in defense spend-
June 3-6, in Fredericks- speakers. ing and offensive capabilities, she
DEFENSE DEPT., ISTOCK

burg, Virginia. Also not to Expect full says. “Japanese strategic planners
be missed is the Women coverage of all the understand that it is not in their
In Defense National Conference in Ar- important defense-related news at the interests to limit their military as
lington, Virginia, on June 13. Secretary Paris Air Show from June 17-23. ND others invest in their own.” ND

6 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
 Editor’s Notes BY STEW MAGNUSON
Time for a Bold New Space Architecture
Q COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — It appears the nation
will soon have a “unified” space command.
But “unity” wasn’t exactly what those in the audience were
hearing at this year’s Space Symposium.
For those who have been living on a desert island for
the past few years, the quick summary is this: the Defense
Department has declared space a warfighting domain on par
with sea, air, land and cyber.
While the rhetoric is new, the notion of space being con-
tested has been around for longer than a decade. Russia and
China, with their anti-satellite tests, maneuverable killer
spacecraft, GPS-jamming and laser-dazzling got the Air Force
to start rethinking how to defend its vulnerable and vital
space assets. And rethinking, and rethinking and rethinking. It
spent a solid 10 years writing up reports, analyses of alterna-
tives and something it called “pathfinders” that heretofore
haven’t led to any new paths. It was the epitome of “paralysis
by analysis.”
Meanwhile, its traditional space acquisition programs suf-
fered their usual delays and cost overruns.
It was early in the Trump administration when the words
“space force” were first being bandied about. Air Force Sec-
retary Heather Wilson and service space officials at the 2018
Space Symposium tried to get out ahead of the criticism of
the Air Force’s space acquisition system by announcing the
Space and Missile Systems Center 2.0 initiative. The center
would be “re-architected” to make it more agile and less
bureaucratic. Part of that would be a new missile defense
space-based infrared radar program to replace the relatively
new system in orbit. This would prove the SMC’s new-
found agility as it would be developed within five years, she
declared. The restructuring included a “chief architect.”
Too late. By the summer, President Donald Trump in a
blow to Air Force pride announced the creation of a separate
but equal branch of the military, the space force — pend-
ing congressional approval. But as a step toward that, there
would first be a unified Space Command, similar in stature to
Special Operations Command. This reorganization would not
require lawmaker approval.
And finally, the 2020 budget proposal seeks $150 mil-
lion to stand up the Space Development Agency, which will
report directly to Undersecretary of Defense for Research and
Engineering Michael Griffin, and operate independently from
the Air Force.
Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan in a memo
establishing the agency gave it wide-ranging powers to create
“a national security space architecture.”
Its appointed director Fred Kennedy, the former Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency Tactical Technology
Office director, at the symposium laid out his vision for the
new organization in his first major public speech since his
appointment.
One of the first goals of the new agency will be to create
a meshed network of small communications satellites, which
will serve as a command-and-control backbone for other pro-
grams to come.
That in itself should have been the big news. He is the first
official to announce a new military communication satellite
program since the Transformational-Satellite program was
canceled a decade ago. Kennedy spent some of his time indi-
rectly critiquing the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems
Center and the old ways of doing things. The current system
is marked by “profound and pathological risk aversion,” he
said.
The new agency will take advantage of the emerging com-
mercial small launch industry to quickly send up masses of
small satellites, he said. “This is something, frankly, we should
have tried to implement 20 years ago.”
Wilson, perhaps because she had only about six weeks
remaining in her tenure, threw a few barbs of her own in
her keynote speech. For starters, she quoted the essayist H.
L. Mencken: “For every complex problem, there is an answer
that is clear, simple and wrong.”
She added: “Launching hundreds of cheap satellites a year
as a substitute to the complex architectures ... we provide to
the warfighter will result in failure on America’s first day if
“It looks to outsiders like a turf war is
brewing with no resolution in sight.”
we rely upon them alone.”
For now, it appears the Defense Department will have two
chief space architects and a couple of organizations working
to make space systems more agile and protected.
Congress in 2018 renamed the Operationally Responsive
Space Office and created the Space Rapid Capabilities Office,
which falls under the Air Force.
Shanahan’s memo said eventually all duplication will be
eliminated and the Space Development Agency would move
under the proposed space force. First, Congress will have to
approve the funding request to create the Space Develop-
ment Agency. Then it has to approve the creation of a space
force. Neither of these are givens.
Air Force Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson, Space and Missile
Systems Center commander, in a press briefing said there
would be no conflict at all between the Space Development
Agency and SMC. Kennedy once worked there, he noted, and
he would be invited to all the space architecture meetings.
Then he said: “As you know, there is a tremendous, passion-
ate debate about what architectures are best for the future in
terms of space warfighting. … We love that debate.”
After all those studies, there is still an ongoing debate? That
is hardly comforting.
Who will ultimately prevail as the “chief architect” of an
agile, survivable national security space system? It looks to
outsiders like a turf war is brewing with no resolution in
sight. ND
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 7
Algorithmic Warfare BY YASMIN TADJDEH
Inside the Joint AI Center’s Pitch Day
Q NEW YORK — On the 48th floor of 10 Hudson Yards —
part of a New York City high-rise complex with boutique shops,
offices and restaurants — companies lined up to pitch new arti-
ficial intelligence technology to the Defense Department.
The event was hosted by the National Security Innovation
Network — which recently changed its name from the MD5
National Security Technology Accelerator — in support of
the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, or JAIC. It
brought together companies focusing on AI and cyber to pitch
their technology to defense and government leaders.
Air Force Lt. Gen. John N.T. “Jack” Shanahan, the director of
the JAIC, said the gathering was a big opportunity for the center.
“What we’re trying to do is really put together the entire
tapestry of what it takes to get a capability into the hands” of
warfighters rapidly and at scale, he said during remarks before a
small crowd of industry. “Those are challenging things to do and
the department hasn’t been very good at in some of the areas
that we’re talking about today.”
The event featured representatives from six companies —
Kyndi, Forge.AI, Virtualitics, Slingshot Aerospace, Omelas and
EpiSys Science Inc. — pitching their technology directly to a
panel of interested stakeholders that included Shanahan; Joel
Mozer, Air Force Space Command’s chief scientist; Brad Harri-
son, managing partner at Scout Ventures; and Rob Painter, man-
aging director at Razor’s Edge Ventures.
Company representatives were given about 10 minutes to
present, followed by a five-minute Q&A session.
“Everything I heard today has some applicability to what
we’re trying to do in the department and the Joint AI Center,”
Shanahan told National Defense after the event had concluded.
“This was the beginning of I would say many, many engage-
ments where it really shows a level of collaboration and integra-
tion with a much broader community.”
Shanahan described the pitch day as a way to spur dialogue
between the government and industry and less so to get a piece
of technology on contract immediately. “I don’t think anybody
today was expecting to sign anything on the dotted line,” he said.
“A lot of these startups are just trying to figure out how to
navigate the labyrinth called the Department of Defense,” he
said. “We’re here to help work through [that] and for us to get a
better understanding of who we’re dealing with.”
The Pentagon has been making moves to cut acquisition-
related bureaucratic red tape that has historically deterred non-
traditional companies from engaging with them. The Defense
Innovation Unit now has numerous offices throughout the
country and is meant to serve as a conduit between the Penta-
gon and startups. But more work still needs to be done, Shana-
han said.
“[We don’t want people to] run away from us saying, ‘I will
never work with the department again. It’s too hard to do it. I
don’t understand contracting regulations,’” he said. “There’s a lot
of work that I have to do personally, we have to do in the JAIC,
to figure out … [how] to make it a lot easier for people” to get
involved.
8 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
And when it comes to developing AI platforms, the depart-
ment has to engage with burgeoning, nontraditional companies
to get ahead, he said.
“How we actually do it? It’s going to be events like this,” he
said. “It’s working with DIU, MD5, venture capitalists. The more
I understand the VC world, the better I feel about” them being
ready to help the department.
It is also important for the Pentagon to show that it is inter-
ested in AI ecosystems outside of Washington, D.C. and Silicon
Valley, which is part of the reason why the event was held in
New York City, he noted.
Greg Ingram, director of business development for Forge.AI, a
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup, said he is seeing more
activity within the department to reach out to nontraditional
companies.
“The military moves slowly, even when they say they want to
move quickly,” he said. But “things like MD5 and DIU … are all
great efforts to try and move things along a little bit faster.”
During the event, Forge.AI pitched its technology which takes
unstructured data from open sources — which includes news
wires, social media and corporate websites — and transforms
it using the company’s AI and machine learning techniques,
attaching different values to it such as confidence scores and
“The military moves slowly, even when
they say they want to move quickly.”
veracity. That information is then syndicated to its clients as a
service.
Melanie Stricklan, chief strategy officer for Slingshot Aero-
space, a startup that has offices in Austin, Texas, and Los Ange-
les, said she has seen signs that the Defense Department is
working to speed up its procurement processes.
“I was in the acquisition community for some time and this is
the most forward movement I’ve seen beyond talk and moving
it into action,” said Stricklan, who served in the Air Force for
more than 20 years.
Slingshot provides data analytics by synthesizing various data-
sets — including imagery from drones or satellites — and apply-
ing artificial intelligence to rapidly glean insights for customers.
The company also participated in the Air Force’s first pitch
day in March, Stricklan noted. During that event, the service
engaged with 51 companies and planned to invest up to $40
million into new technology. It was also able to put companies
on contract within a few minutes.
Shortening contracting timelines is key to doing business with
nontraditional companies, Stricklan said.
Other transaction authority agreements have become popu-
lar contracting methods meant to reduce acquisition red tape
within the department. But even those take “around 90 days,
and that’s still too high,” she said. What is needed are timelines
that are more on par with the commercial sector, which means
getting on a contract within days or weeks, she added. ND
 Policy Points BY ZACH KRONISCH
Operational Security Erodes in Social Media Age
Q In 2017, fitness-tracking application Strava released a map
detailing all location data uploaded by app users, including U.S.
service members stationed overseas. When visualized in the
publicly available Strava “heat map” of user activity, this data
revealed U.S. military base locations in Afghanistan.
By unwittingly disclosing this data, service members also
revealed critical habit pattern information to potential attack-
ers. Strava is not alone in collecting this sort of data. Many
other networked personal devices and technologies, broadly
referred to as the internet of things, or IoT, track and report on
user habits.
Risks posed by social media and IoT are often neglected
as Defense Department leaders focus on high-profile cyber-
attacks such as NotPetya, the Office of Personnel Management
data breach and attacks on major weapons systems.
And high-visibility cyberattacks continue to increase as
determined hostile actors find new tactics and techniques to
break through layers of security to steal sensitive data and
impede U.S. operations. However, leaders must find the time
and resources to focus on pervasive yet subtle cyber threats to
operations security driven by high-risk use of social media plat-
forms and the IoT. Continued lapses and penetrations demon-
strate the insufficiency of existing guidance.
The Defense Department should modify or augment its
social media guidelines and policies to minimize operations
security breaches that could imperil current and future service
members. Additionally, given the increasing use of contractors
in operational environments, these guidelines should be pro-
vided to industry as a set of best practices for their employees.
The accelerating growth of social media and the IoT, char-
acterized by increasing volume and speed of publicly shared
information, presents significant consequences for operations
security beyond the more well-known dangers of identity theft
or other individual damages caused by personal data breaches.
For example, in 2017 a Marine Corps task force in Afghani-
stan opened a social media account to share updates on its
reconstruction efforts. The account shut down a year later
over well-founded operations security concerns. Specifically,
the page operator uploaded a photo of one of the unit’s local
interpreters, even though showing the interpreter’s face pub-
licly could jeopardize the lives of both the interpreter and
their family.
To compound the issue, Army Times ran a story featuring the
photograph, increasing viewership on the Marine website. The
upload of the photograph indicates that even those service
members running official social media accounts receive insuf-
ficient training in maintaining operations security on social
media.
Compounding this threat is the rise of applications devel-
oped by competitor nation companies. For instance, the
increasing number of Chinese-origin applications available for
download on mobile devices includes popular titles such as
TikTok, a social media platform for users to record and share
15-second videos, which boasts more than 80 million down-
loads in the U.S. alone. In exchange for providing entertain-
ment value, TikTok collects significant data about its users, and
is particularly popular among younger demographics who may
be less privacy-focused and concerned about giving away their
personal information.
Even more troubling, in 2019 the Federal Communications
Commission fined TikTok $5.7 million for illegally collect-
ing and distributing data on underage users, including names,
addresses, birthdates, locations and more. This raises significant
security issues beyond standard concerns about child safety.
Some members of Generation Z, many of whom already
gave their personal data to the companies behind TikTok and
similar platforms, will pursue careers as warfighters or defense
analysts. The personal information harvested during their child-
hood could make them uniquely vulnerable targets to hostile
actors in the future. This vulnerability also extends into the
present; personal information identifying children of existing
officials and service members could place their parents at risk.
Strava, the Marine website, and TikTok represent two broad
categories of data that can lead to operations security breaches:
user-generated information such as social media posts or loca-
tion data; and harvested personal information such as financial,
contact, or identification data. While the former category
presents a more immediate risk
“The Defense to operations security, because
it can highlight service member
Department habits and routines or partner
identities in conflict zones, long-
should modify or term retention of personal data
by foreign entities potentially
augment its social drives greater risk for future U.S.
media guidelines military operations.
Depending on the specific case,
and policies.” a data packet collected by TikTok
or other potentially hostile actors
can yield useful personal data about the user years after the
user deletes the application from their device.
The Defense Department and the services provide pub-
licly available handbooks detailing safe social media use and
internet hygiene best practices. However, persistent leaks and
breaches indicate that guidance alone fails in properly prepar-
ing warfighters to protect themselves and their loved ones
against malicious actors.
The federal government must recognize social media use
and IoT data collection as unique challenges within the broad-
er cyber domain, challenges that present immediate and long-
term threats. Leaders need to take immediate steps to improve
guidance to both warfighters and the contractors that support
them while providing training and additional resources.
Without that focus, these vulnerabilities will continue to grow
in scope and severity. ND
Zach Kronisch is a NDIA junior fellow. Zach Kronisch is a NDIA junior
fellow.
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 9
BUDGET
MATTERS
BY JON HARPER
Coast Guard Needs Congress for Budget Bailout
Q President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2020 budget request
would slash funding for the Coast Guard, but there are indica-
tions that Congress might provide the sea service additional
money for modernization and readiness.
The 2020 presidential budget calls for $11.3 billion for the
Coast Guard, about $700 million less than enacted for 2019,
and $1 billion less in discretionary funding.
The procurement, construction and improvements (PCI)
account would see an even bigger cut, dropping to $1.2 billion,
more than $1 billion less than it received for 2019, and about
$550 million less than Trump requested for 2019. Coast Guard
leaders have said they need at least $2 billion per year in acquisi-
tion funding to modernize the force.
The president’s 2020 fiscal blueprint would allocate $721
million in PCI accounts for vessels, $199 million for aircraft,
$173 million for shore facilities and federal aids to navigation,
and $69 million for other acquisition programs, according to
budget documents.
The proposal includes: $60 million for the national security
cutter program; $457 million for the offshore patrol cutter;
$140 million for the fast response cutter; $35 million for the
polar security cutter; $103 million for HC-27J conversion/sus-
tainment; $50 million for MH-65 conversion/sustainment; $17
million for HC-144 conversation/sustainment; and $9 million
for small unmanned aerial systems.
“Looking to the future, the key is stable and predictable fund-
ing for our acquisition programs in order to continue to meet
delivery milestones,” Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz said in
his annual state of the Coast Guard address in March shortly
after the president’s budget was released.
The service has a $1.7 billion backlog from deferred mainte-
nance and infrastructure investments, he noted. Readiness has
reached a “tipping point” as platforms and infrastructure age, he
warned.
During a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing
Schultz noted that the Coast Guard — which is part of the
Department of Homeland Security even though it’s an armed
service — has been disadvantaged.
Unlike the other armed services, “Coast Guard funding is
categorized as non-defense discretionary, which means we were
excluded from the focused effort to rebuild our military and
continue to find ourselves on the outside looking in when it
10 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
comes to … plus-ups” in budget requests, he said.
A key lawmaker suggested that the sea service might indeed
get a boost from the Hill.
Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Home-
land Security transportation and maritime security subcommit-
tee, criticized Trump’s budget proposal and said it underfunds
the Coast Guard while asking for money to build a controversial
border wall.
“This budget is dead on arrival, since Congress will not sustain
these cuts” to the Coast Guard, he said during an April hearing.
In recent years lawmakers have funded the sea service at
higher levels than requested by the Trump administration. For
2019, Congress provided just over $12 billion, about $580 mil-
lion more than the president’s proposal.
Seth Cropsey, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for
American Seapower, said the Trump budget falls short, and
he’s optimistic that Congress will appropriate more than was
requested.
“There’s been consistent bipartisan support for the Coast
Guard, and the Coast Guard has a perfectly intelligible and
sensible justification for the increases that they need in their
procurement, construction and improvement accounts,” he said.
“I expect that Congress will do the right thing here.”
While the service didn’t fare well in the 2020 budget submis-
sion, there has been good news for one of its top modernization
programs — the polar security cutter. In late April, the Coast
Guard and Navy — through an integrated program office —
awarded a $746 million contract for non-recurring engineering
and detail design and construction of the first ship. It includes
options for the construction of two additional icebreakers. The
contract could be worth up to $1.9 billion if all options are
exercised.
The Coast Guard aims to acquire at least six new icebreakers
to help it operate in the Arctic where the service faces increas-
ing operational requirements, as well as challenges from great
power competitors Russia and China.
Increasing commercial activity and the presence of mineral
resources all point to the region as an area of growing interest
for the United States, Cropsey said, and the Coast Guard is
COAST GUARD
well suited to protect that interest. The awarding of the polar se-
curity cutter contract is “a victory for the security of the United
States as the Arctic warms,” he said. ND
 Long-Term Space Program
Spending Falls Short
Q The Trump administration’s fiscal year 2020 budget request
calls for a major boost in military space program funding. But
spending plans indicate that investments could dip in subse-
quent years, according to one expert.
Senior officials have been touting efforts to beef up U.S.
space capabilities and establish a new space force for the
Defense Department. But the Pentagon’s five-year budget
blueprint shows a “surprising” trend, said Mike Tierney, a bud-
get analyst and consultant for Velos, a Maryland-based defense,
aerospace and intelligence consulting firm.
In the 2020 request, major force program, or MFP-12, initia-
tives received a 22.8 percent increase over 2019 requested
levels. The $9.9 billion requested is 21 percent more than the
$8.3 billion that Congress appropriated for 2019, according to
Tierney’s data charts.
“These increases are really only getting the space portfolio
back to the level that it had been prior to sequestration” which
was triggered in 2013, he noted. “Space was not spared from
that at all, and we are now kind of on the upswing from the
valley.”
However, despite the growing emphasis on space as a war-
fighting domain, Tierney’s analysis of Pentagon spending plans
shows that funding would decline after 2020.
Relative to the 2020 request, projections for 2021 anticipate
a 6.2 percent reduction — down to $9.3 billion — for the
MFP-12 programs that Velos tracks.
Spending would also be lower in 2022 and 2023, with pro-
jected reductions of 4.1 percent and 1.6 percent below 2020
requested levels, respectively.
Projections for 2024 show
an 11.8 percent increase — up
to $11.1 billion — over 2020
levels, but that is primarily due
to a growth in spending on
the next-generation overhead
persistent infrared satellite
program, he said.
“This dip in FY ‘21-FY ‘23
is surprising,” Tierney said.
“However, I would be sur-
prised if the FY ‘21 request,
when ultimately submitted
next year, does not at least
match this year’s request. A
year-over-year decrease narra-
tive would be misaligned to broader Department of Defense
policy priorities on space investments.”
For its next budget submission, “the department is likely to
pull funding to the left in the [future years defense program]
— that is, move funding projected in this request as FY ‘22/
FY ‘23 money into the FY ‘21 column — in order to sustain
overall portfolio funding levels,” he explained.
The Pentagon is more likely to adjust funding in order to sus-
AIR FORCE, ISTOCK
tain an overall positive trajectory than to submit a 2021 budget
request with a 6 percent decrease in spending for MFP-12
space programs, he said. “But I’ve been surprised before.” ND
‘Big Money’ Predicted
For Navy IT Contracting
Q The Navy’s shipbuilding and aircraft programs come
with the biggest price tags and garner the most media at-
tention, but there are major opportunities for contractors
vying for the service’s information technology projects,
analysts noted.
“It doesn’t look like much compared to the rest of the
contract spend for the Navy, but it’s big money,” Cameron
Leuthy, a senior budget analyst with Bloomberg Govern-
ment, said of the service’s IT investments.
The Navy buys more info-tech systems than any civilian
agency and more than any defense organization other than
the Army, he noted during a recent briefing for members
of industry.
The service’s IT budget is projected to increase from
$10.5 billion and $11.3 billion in fiscal years 2018 and
2019, respectively, to $12 billion in 2020, including clas-
sified programs. That number would then grow to $12.3
billion by 2024. Within that spending category, cyberse-
curity investment would grow to a projected $1.6 billion
in 2020, an increase of $137 million from 2019. Spending
would then level off at $1.7 billion annually in fiscal years
2021 through 2023 before increasing to $1.8 billion in
2024, according to Leuthy’s presentation slides.
The service’s largest IT program budgets for 2019
include: Navy enterprise resource planning, $182 million;
base communications office, $161 million; Navy mari-
time maintenance enterprise solution, $125 million; Navy
standard integrated personnel system, $112 million; and
network on the move, $100 million.
A variety of vendors currently dominate the market,
Leuthy noted.
“You’ve got an interesting mix of hardcore, traditional
big defense contractors and specialized IT companies in
this space,” he said. “Some of these top vendors weren’t
big in Navy contracting overall, but they’re big in the IT
space.”
Robert Levinson, a senior defense analyst with Bloom-
berg Government, sees cloud computing as a major
growth area in the coming years.
“Cloud is hot,” he said, noting the Pentagon has plans
for a massive $10 billion cloud program known as joint
enterprise defense infrastructure, or JEDI, for which
commercial tech giants have been competing. As of press
time, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft were the two
remaining competitors.
Part of the JEDI effort is “really to force all the [mili-
tary] services to come to the cloud,” he said. “That’s been
controversial and there’s a lot of back and forth and pro-
tests and all that kind of thing. But once that … is finally
done and awarded, you’re going to see even more push,”
he added. “Cloud is going to be a continued push for all of
the services, not unique to the Navy.” ND
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 11
NEWS
BRIEFS
BY NATIONAL
DEFENSE STAFF
Experiment to Demo ‘Cloud’ Technology in Space
Q COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — With some 1,800 satel-
lites in orbit and their numbers expected to increase ten-fold in
the coming years, researchers are planning to demonstrate how
Earth-based cloud computing and artificial intelligence can be
moved into space for onboard processing.
This has to happen, said Joshua Train, chief engineer for
ground and IT in the space systems group at The Aerospace
Corp.
“We can’t be wasting all that data transmission time bringing
information down to the ground that is not important,” he said
during a technology demonstration at the Space Symposium in
Colorado Springs, Colorado.
During most of the space age, data gathered in space was
transmitted to Earth where a legion of analysts poured over it
in order to find what they were searching for. More recently,
artificial intelligence has been applied to this problem so ma-
chines can sort through the data.
But all that raw information still must be transmitted back to
the ground, Train said.
“The problem is that bringing all that data down is not going
to scale,” he said.
The increased use of artificial intelligence over the past de-
cade has been enabled by cloud technology, he noted. For AI to
work in space, there needs to be cloud computing there.
Aerospace Corp. worked with Intel on an AI computer chip
for space that could fit on a cubesat.
Cubesats are small spacecraft used for experiments and nor-
mally weigh about 3 pounds.
It plans to carry out what it calls its “goats and boats” demon-
stration after launching its AI-enabled cubesat in the fall.
“Goats and boats” will refer to the targets. Space-based sen-
sors in low-Earth orbit must always be on the move, so they
12 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
spend part of their time over water and the other part of their
time over land.
The “Space Cloud” will teach the AI while over water to
take images only of boats. If it finds this “meaningful data,” it
will discard the useless data and transmit only the image or
video of the boat to the ground. While over land, it changes its
schedule to search for goats. And that’s all it will seek out. It
can also be tasked to look at only one region: goats in Australia,
for example.
Of course, goats are only a stand-in. Intelligence analysts
would substitute them for more interesting objects: tanks or
missile silos, perhaps.
If satellites don’t need to expend so much power transmit-
ting unneeded data, they can reduce their data downlinks, mis-
sion power systems and solar panels, and therefore the size of
the satellite itself, said Mikhail Tadjikov, director of embedded
and specialized computing at The Aerospace Corp. As for the
server farms used for terrestrial clouds, those would be nodes in
a network aboard other spacecraft, he said.
The scheduling software is borrowed from the same Google
open source cloud software that moves data around between
server farms depending on traffic and other factors.
“We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the cloud. So in-
stead of reinventing that, we took that cloud technology … and
imported it so it can actually work on cubesats,” Train said.
The Aerospace Corp., as a federally funded research-and-
development center, isn’t interested in building or marketing
a space cloud. But it wants to show industry and government
that this is the future, Train said.
“We are taking all these technologies from Silicon Valley and
stretching them to space to show what’s possible,” he added.
ISTOCK
- STEW MAGNUSON
 Army Seeks Optic for
Next-Gen Squad Weapon
Q HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Army is looking to pair the
next-generation squad weapon with a new optic to boost
soldiers’ accuracy.
The new optics are expected to help troops improve
their accuracy when firing the new weapon, said Doug
Tamilio, director of the Combat Capabilities Development
Command Soldier Center.
“This is fire control,” he said. “If you think about the
ability of a soldier to get a first round on target, it’s critical.
And this device, coupled with that weapon system, will
allow them to do that.”
The next-gen squad weapon is intended to replace the
service’s M4 carbine and M249 squad automatic weapon.
The Army chose Textron System’s AAI Corporation; FN
America LLC, which is producing two rifles; General
Dynamics-OTS Inc.; PCP Tactical LLC; and Sig Sauer Inc.
to develop prototype rifles. Plans also include developing a
new 6.8 mm round to improve warfighters’ performance
in close- and long-range fights.
The service wants a technology readiness level 6 optic
with a digital camera, advanced target recognition and
tracking algorithms, Tamilio said at the Association of the
United States Army’s Global Force Symposium in Hunts-
ville, Alabama. TRL 6 systems have a representative model
or prototype ready for testing in a relevant environment.
“We’re looking at a significant increase in the probability
of the first-round hit, and that’s done by some different
ways,” he noted.
Similar to features on the XM25, the optics will be able
to help soldiers adjust their aim points with an electro-
magnetic trigger, Tamilio said. The semi-automatic XM25
counter-defilade target engagement system — also known
as the “Punisher” — was canceled by the Army last year.
XM25
Requirements for the new device include a direct view
optic with a digital overlay display, laser range finder, bal-
listic calculator and atmospheric sensor suite, according
to a special notice released on FedBizOpps in December.
Additionally, soldiers must be able to use the system in an
environment without power, meaning that digital imagers
ARMY, HUNTINGTON INGALLS
must be a supplementary feature, it said.
The total weight of the fire control system on the next-
generation squad weapon must not exceed 2 pounds with
the direct view optic, digital imager, batteries and any an-
cillary processors or sensors, the notice stated. - CONNIE LEE
LPD-30
rendering
Superconductors to be
Installed on Navy Vessels
Q Two of the Navy’s amphibious transport docks are sched-
uled to receive degaussing systems with superconductors.
A degaussing system is a device used to reduce a ship’s
magnetic signature. The technology played a large role dur-
ing World War II, when it was adopted to reduce the threat of
German minefields.
Daniel McGahn, chairman, president and CEO of American
Superconductor, said his company was awarded sole-source
contracts to provide the systems for the Navy’s LPD-28 and
LPD-30.
McGahn said the company’s ship protection system differs
from traditional degaussers because it uses a superconductor
rather than copper wires. This can reduce the total weight of
the ship by 10 to 100 tons, depending on the watercraft, he
said. With the Navy’s incumbent system, it is difficult to add
capability without simultaneously adding weight, he noted.
“We’re increasing performance at similar cost, but we’re lib-
erating an envelope of weight and volume to be used for other
systems,” he said. “To a naval architect designing a new ship,
those are degrees of freedom that aren’t present today.”
The company was able to save weight because a supercon-
ductor is about 10 to 20 times more energy dense than copper,
he noted. The system is based upon a series of ceramic materi-
als that resemble any “thin film, electronic display, integrated
circuit,” he noted.
“It’s a multilayer deposition,” he said. “They’re like reels, like
scotch tape. You basically have a big reel.”
Originally, the company thought a custom product would
have to be designed for all future ships. However, further
work led to the current design, which can be rapidly deployed
throughout the Navy’s fleet, he noted.
“It’s like Legos,” he said. “You could put it together in the
way that you need to mitigate the threat or the signature that
you need for that ship.”
McGahn said the system could potentially be used for the
Navy’s next-generation frigates. The service wants a fleet of 20
guided-missile frigates and plans to procure the first in fis-
cal year 2020, according to a recent Congressional Research
Service report. - CONNIE LEE
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 13
News Briefs
DARPA to Use Shrimp,
Plankton to Detect
Undersea Threats
Q The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s
biological technology office will begin prototyping
sensing capabilities using undersea organisms such as
plankton and shrimp to detect threats.
DARPA launched its biological technology office in
2014 to begin research in hopes of aiding the Defense
Department in the fight against unique forms of bio-
terrorism, and deploy biological countermeasures to
thwart peer adversaries, according to the agency.
Northrop Grumman was awarded a contract in
April to develop biological sensing hardware to
observe patterns in the marine environment and help
classify targets.
“The purpose of this program is to explore the use
of organisms in the undersea environment that are
inherent, that have their own organic sensing capa-
bilities,” said Vern Boyle, vice president of advanced
mission systems at Northrop Grumman.
The persistent aquatic living sensors program, or
PALS, will use snapping shrimp and bioluminescent
plankton to detect manmade objects underwater.
The company will employ these organisms to “un-
derstand if we can use the inherent sensing capabili-
ties of life and the undersea world to better detect
disturbances and objects,” Boyle said.
A major portion of the program will be studying
the organisms’ reactions to environmental objects that
are benign. For instance, they might respond in differ-
ent ways to passing whales and underwater vehicles,
he said.
“The belief is that these biological organisms are
more effective in detecting things than manmade sen-
sors,” Boyle said.
Although the company has been involved in
undersea systems technology for around 50 years, the
concept for this project is relatively new, he noted.
Northrop Grumman may expand its studies to
other organisms, but shrimp and plankton will be its
initial focus.
“For the purpose of validating the concept and
understanding the feasibility of a system like this, …
[using plankton and shrimp] is a sufficient starting
point,” Boyle said.
The company will also use artificial intelligence and
machine learning to perform feature extraction and
analysis of data collected. - MANDY MAYFIELD
14 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
RAND Creates New Recruiting
Forecasting Tool for Army
Q The RAND Corp. has developed a new forecasting tool that
can help Army leaders find new recruits.
The Army reached out to the corporation to better understand
and predict the potential recruiting pool, said Jeffrey Wenger,
senior policy researcher at RAND.
The service wanted to determine “how they could think about
reprogramming resources so that they could achieve their recruit-
ing goals,” Wenger said.
“We built them a suite of tools, one of which is a forecasting
model to determine whether or not the recruiting environment
was going to be particularly difficult,” he added.
The effort was tricky for RAND because there are a number of
elements associated with recruitment that are out of the Army’s
control, he noted.
Some issues that factor into the ability to attract people to join
the military include the state of the national economy, the unem-
ployment rate and the Army’s operating environment.
The reduction in casualties associated with the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan has aided recruitment, he said.
However, the robust job market has created hurdles for enticing
people to serve.
Overall, Wenger believes the Army is approaching a time when
it will be difficult for the service to recruit its desired number of
soldiers. With 70,000 recruits in 2018, the Army fell short of its
76,500 goal, Training and Doctrine Command Commander Gen.
Stephen Townsend said earlier this year in Arlington, Virginia, at
the Association of the United States Army’s headquarters.
However, there are strategies the Army can implement to reach
its goals, he said.
Providing varying forms of compensation, putting more recruit-
ers on the ground or even lowering recruitment standards can
help attract new soldiers, Wenger said.
“As the Army sees that they’re not going to make their recruit-
ing goals, they [can] flip some switches,” he said.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN, ARMY
Forecasting recruitment is of the utmost importance for the
Army as it attempts to maintain desired troop levels, Wenger said.
“In order to maintain the correct force structure and be able
to have a sufficient … end strength … you need to be constantly
recruiting in the Army so that you can replace and maintain your
capabilities,” he added. - MANDY MAYFIELD

DBEST OF THE WEB
Q&A with Gen. Joseph
Dunford, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff
Q Gen. Joseph Dunford, the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, recently participated in a joint interview with NDIA
President and CEO retired Gen. Hawk Carlisle and National
Defense magazine Managing Editor Jon Harper to offer his per-
spective on some of the most critical national security challenges
facing the United States.
The following Q&A has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Q: You’ve said that the U.S. still has the greatest military in
the history of the world. But how do you see it going in the
future based on the challenges of a rising
China and Russia?
A: Both Russia and China in the context
of great power competition have studied
us very carefully and … they’ve invested
in weapons that undermine our ability to
project power and operate really across all
domains.
Our competitive advantage has eroded
[but] the investments we started to make
in ‘17, ‘18, ‘19, and what we’re proposing
in ‘20 put us on a trajectory to sustain that
competitive advantage, making investments
across all those domains [to include land,
sea, air, space and cyberspace]. And so [the
budgets for] ‘20, ‘21, ‘22, they’re really important.
Q: Are there certain types of technology that you think the
department should be investing in in the coming years to pre-
pare for a potential conflict with advanced adversaries?
A: There’s probably three technologies that are most impor-
tant to us: [The first is] artificial intelligence. Quantum com-
puting is another one that comes to mind when you think
about the implications from secure communications to pen-
etrating adversaries’ communications — that’ll be very critical.
And then directed energy weapons systems.
Clearly space and cyberspace, in terms of domains, are
where we need to make investments. But then also in a func-
tional area — electronic warfare.
Q: The Budget Control Act caps are slated to go back into
effect in fiscal year 2020. How confident are you that Congress
will reach a deal and pass a budget on time this year?
DEFENSE DEPT.
A: To be honest with you, I don’t know. I’ve been on the Hill
a lot over the last couple of months. ... There’s optimists and
there’s pessimists and it’s hard to see [how that will play out].
Q: The Defense Department is trying to tap into technology
development that’s occuring in the commercial sector. How
do you think it’s going with respect to how the department is
building bridges with the commercial sector?
A: It’s impossible for me to imagine … us maintaining a com-
petitive advantage in the future unless we have a very unique
and close relationship with industry and unless we’re able to
tap into … cutting-edge technologies and innovation.
But we have a different challenge today in the sense that
most corporations are multinational corporations, global corpo-
rations.
When companies involved in high tech are doing business
with China and so forth, they’re helping the Chinese military
… because of what [President] Xi Jinping calls civil-military
fusion. And so while I’m kind of sanguine about the bridges
that are being built right now, I’m less sanguine about our
unique ability to tap into cutting-edge technologies. … We
need to have a very open debate about the implications of that
long term. … It will have a huge impact on the global order if
China is able to get the jump on us in those three areas [of AI,
quantum computing and directed energy].
Some companies have now viewed some
elements of the Pentagon as areas they’re not
interested in working in because they view
it as not consistent with their ethos. … [But]
we’re the good guys and I think they need
to understand that ... working with China is
inherently supporting the Chinese military
given the degree of control the Chinese Com-
munist Party has over people doing business
in China.
Q: Do you think new export controls are
needed for some of the technologies, such as
AI, that commercial companies sell abroad?
A: I do. But there also needs to be intellectual
honesty about what’s going on here. We have companies, for
example, that won’t work with us with artificial intelligence
if it involves weapons systems. But those same companies are
doing artificial intelligence work in China. And I think we’re
rationalizing that by saying, ‘Well, this is in the commercial
sector in China.’ And my point is that the commercial sector
and the security sector in China is a distinction without a dif-
ference because of the Chinese form of government.
It’s about … us having a framework for dealing with China
that addresses the commercial industries’ interests, but at the
same time doesn’t provide China with a competitive advan-
tage in the security space.
Q: Is there any message you’d like to pass to the folks that
have dedicated themselves to the defense of the U.S.?
A: Because of the nature of the budget discussions and so
forth, we often talk about competitive advantage in terms of
technology, in terms of military capability. But … the one thing
I’d want to pass on to our men and women is that the real
competitive advantage we have is the quality of our people. ND
Posted @ NationalDefenseMagazine.Org, May 9.
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 15
Maritime Administration Fleshing Out
Plans to Modernize Sealift Assets
Q NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Maritime Administra-
tion is working out the details of its plan to modernize its aging
fleet of civilian ships that could be called into action to support
the U.S. military during a large-scale war, the head of the orga-
nization said May 6.
The Maritime Administration is charged with maintaining a
fleet of 46 ships in the Ready Reserve Force that are on average
more than 44 years old, Administrator Mark Buzby noted dur-
ing a panel discussion at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space con-
ference in National Harbor, Maryland. Those vessels are crewed
by civilian mariners that have volunteered to serve.
“Those ships have to be ready to go and answer a five-day
readiness [requirement] to move a majority of our [continental
U.S.]-based garrison forces overseas in a major contingency,” he
said. “Forty-four-year-old ships don’t rest easy. They need a lot
of love, tender care and a lot of money. And that’s a continuous
challenge.”
The situation hasn’t improved much over the past year,
Buzby said.
“I’m afraid we have not, in terms of actual numbers, gotten
any healthier,” he said. Readiness has slipped and there is a
shortfall of about 1,800 mariners that would be needed for a
prolonged sealift effort, he noted.
“Things aren’t going to get markedly better until we … start
getting more ships online and newer ships online,” he said. “The
good news I would say is that we are getting much more vis-
ibility on the issue.”
Buzby’s staff has been working with the chief of naval opera-
tions’ office and the military’s Transportation Command to
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develop an affordable
program to acquire the
sealift capability that the nation needs, he noted.
“We actually have a path ahead that Congress has bought
into,” he said.
The modernization plan is three-pronged. The first is for
several ships to receive service life extensions and upgraded sys-
tems to enable them to remain in the fleet until they are about
60 years old, he said.
The second prong is to purchase newer ships on the open
market and modify them to be more militarily useful. Those
vessels would replace some of the older platforms in the Ready
Reserve Force including steam-powered ships. The Maritime
Administration still maintains 24 steam-powered vessels, Buzby
noted.
The third prong will be to procure new-builds. The details
for that part of the plan are still being worked out, he said.
“The Navy has a pretty large order book and a lot of plans for
building a lot of ships, and we have to kind of prioritize prop-
erly where sealift should fit into that,” Buzby said.
The Maritime Administration is working with the CNO’s
staff to determine the right type of ships to buy, the right quan-
tity to buy and when to phase them in, he said.
“The good news is, while we still are a bit on the edge being
able to provide a solid sealift over a long period of time, we’re
moving in the right direction and we have plans in place to get
us there,” Buzby said. ND
DEFENSE DEPT.
Posted @ NationalDefenseMagazine.Org, May 6.
 Viewpoint BY CHRIS SOUZA

Manufacturing and Cybersecurity: Know the Essentials

Q It’s no secret that the security climate on the internet is of the information available to steal during a successful attack.
becoming more dangerous by the day. This is especially true If a hacker focuses their attention on stealing credit card num-
for business professionals in the manufacturing space, where bers from private citizens, they may be able to get through a
cyber attacks are only becoming more frequent and more few hundred dollars in fraudulent charges before the card is
costly with each passing year. shut down by the associated financial institution. This is a large
According to a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute, part of the reason why, in the United States, the estimated per
70 percent of all organizations said that their security risk card price for this type of stolen information comes in at just
increased significantly in 2017 alone. About 230,000 new mal- $30. But if a major manufacturer is infiltrated and hackers
ware samples are discovered on a daily basis and that number come away with sensitive client information or valuable intel-
is expected to increase significantly
over time. In addition to this, the
average consolidated cost of a single
data breach incident rose to $3.86
million last year, a massive increase
of about 6 percent from the year
before.
In 2019, smartphones or tablets
won’t be the only worry — it will
be the countless devices that col-
lectively make up the internet
of things. Connected devices all
creating and sharing an enormous
amount of data at all times, will
become one of the biggest targets
for malware attacks according to
security researchers, which means
that the situation is about to wors-
en for the industries that depend
on them.
Industries like the manufacturing
sector.
Over the past few years alone,
attacks against manufacturing
organizations in particular have
been steadily increasing in a way
that is becoming more and more
difficult to ignore. According to a
recent survey by the Alert Logic
cybersecurity firm, about half of
all manufacturers say that they’ve
suffered from some type of cyber
incident, whereas 24 percent of
them indicated they were luckily in a position that their exist- lectual property, there’s potentially no limit to the amount of
ing cybersecurity processes prevented any type of appreciable damage they can cause and money that they can make.
impact. Unfortunately, an equal number had indicated that To that point, the primary reason manufacturers are particu-
they sustained significant “financial or business losses” due to larly susceptible to large-scale cyber attacks is because what
a breach. All told, roughly 400 manufacturers were attacked they’re usually manufacturing is controlled unclassified infor-
every day during 2016, amounting to about $3 billion in com- mation, or CUI.
bined losses. The items that fall into this category often include some of
So why is the situation so grim and what needs to be done the less than glamorous aspects of defense contracting, but that
about it? The answer to these questions and ones just like doesn’t make them any less important. These are things like
them require manufacturers to keep a few key things in mind. the components that go into military technologies and devices
Part of the reason why manufacturers in particular make like cameras and radios, or things like the labels that illustrate
ISTOCK

such an attractive target for hackers has to do with the value the panels on a console. Many manufacturers operating in this

J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 17
space also work on things like the engines that would later be
part of a fighter jet a few years down the line, thus making
them a particularly attractive target for attackers — notably
nation-state actors.
These are all valuable technologies that hackers — regardless
of whether or not they’re government sponsored — are look-
ing at to fulfill their own agendas. What so many fail to realize
is that the country’s enemies are focusing tremendous amounts
of resources in cyber warfare, which has arguably become the
“front lines” to the majority of today’s conflicts.
Another major reason why manufacturers are such big tar-
gets is because they’re easy to exploit. It’s not a secret that the
manufacturing space is slower than most to adopt and effec-
tively implement the newest technologies. Unfortunately, IT
security in itself is oftentimes overlooked by manufacturers and
perceived as an additional cost that brings little value to their
daily operations and overall profits. Those industry perceptions,
notably in regard to DFARS/NIST 800-171 IT compliance,
seem to be contentiously up for debate. This is true from both
the manufacturer and even more surprisingly the primary gov-
ernment contractor requiring those controls in the first place.
Time and again, even though the regulations are seem-
ingly clear, there are many within this space who think that
the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement only
applies to organizations working with classified information,
despite the regulation being singularly focused on controlled,
unclassified information. This is the type of discrepancy that
breeds a deeply rooted sense of malaise on an organizational
level that most manufacturing businesses literally cannot afford.
Sadly, this is likely due, in part, to generational perspec-
tives as smaller manufacturers have always had somewhat of
an “adversarial relationship” with technology. These types of
threats have existed for so long that people get “tired of hear-
ing about them,” at which point they result to a hermit-like IT
existence until there are no other options left. At that point,
businesses have to partner with someone to bring them up-to-
date and they pay more money upfront than they would have
if they would just kept up with the times in the first place.
At that point, this perspective becomes the “snake eating its
own tail.” Cybersecurity malaise creates an entire industry that
falls behind on the latest protections and best practices, which
leads to an increase in costly incidents and enormous digital
transformation investments that should have been happening
slowly-but-surely all along.
Unfortunately, for manufacturers to adequately address these
issues, nothing less than a multi-pronged approach will suffice.
The first and most necessary prong will require a change
to organizational culture and addressing these vast regulatory
compliance requirements more seriously. To that point, the
contracting manufacturers need to make sure they actually
require their vendors to be reviewed and verified by their
subcontractors. It may seem rather obvious, but compliance
requirements must be enforced by regulators for them to bear
any meaning, rather than being seen as an over-glorified way to
pass accountability from one organization to the next.
It appeared that 2018’s compliance requirements were little
more than a way for bigger companies to shift accountability
away from themselves and onto their subcontractors, absolving
themselves from any degree of real accountability to an indus-
try managing enough compromisable CUI that could arguably
present a national security concern.
18 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
There’s also the problem that these types of requirements
need a set of IT security tools that are far too cost prohibitive
for the small manufacturer to outsource and would require a
part time security oriented IT professional to implement inter-
nally. That idea alone, coupled with the fact that there have
been few, if any, instances of DFARS non-compliance penal-
ties, makes it difficult to believe that government or major
contractors take any of this seriously — at least today. It’s
equally unclear to many observers if there’s a way for them to
legitimately gain from it.
The final major way to begin addressing this problem
involves creating a more collaborative work environment at
many of these manufacturing organizations. One where every
part of the business is connected to IT in an organic way, rather
than siloed off from it.
As cybersecurity in general becomes more complicated and
demanding, the older manufacturer models of “our IT depart-
ment is a single employee who sits in a room by himself and
never talks to anybody” is not going to work for much longer —
if it ever did in the first place. This speaks to another important
consideration: the ultimate return on investment of DFARS. It’s
understandable to ask if a business has enough revenue to gain
from it to justify the costs of becoming compliant in the first
place. But when considering the amount of contracts a compa-
ny will potentially miss out on by not becoming compliant, not
to mention the potential liabilities
“Attacks against the organization will be exposed
to, it becomes clear almost imme-
manufacturing diately that answer is “yes.”
Manufacturing organizations
organizations in of all shapes and sizes need a real
thought leader in their ranks in
particular have the form of a more polished pro-
been steadily fessional or IT service provider.
Oftentimes this is delegated to
increasing ...” chief financial officers or informa-
tion officers, but this ends up in
mixed results stemming from a gap between the breadth of the
compliance requirements and the expectations that their role
fulfills as the manufacturer’s IT thought leader. For example,
CFOs can help generate meaningfully forecast resources and
address the risks and opportunities that come part and parcel
with these requirements, but often understand too little of IT
and/or overly emphasize the importance of commoditizing the
relationship over service quality — which can result in unan-
ticipated, costly issues stemming from those oversights.
Unless manufacturing organizations begin to see any level of
true enforcement of these types of requirements, and regula-
tory bodies are held to a higher degree of accountability, the
cybersecurity climate in the sector is only going to become
worse and national security more exposed. The consequences
of those incidents — the loss of intellectual property, revenue
and customer confidence and national security — are going to
compound and the impact will be more severe than people
think. At a certain point, this will also begin to affect U.S.
national security. This is all preventable by taking the right,
proactive approach now. ND
Chris Souza is the CEO of Technical Support International (TSI),
a New England-based IT support and cybersecurity firm. He can
be reached at: http://www.tsisupport.com.
 Viewpoint BY TAMIE SANTIAGO
Combating AI Bias Through Responsible Leadership
Q Artificial intelligence — once just the fascination of sci-
ence fiction writers — is now poised to transform the global
economy and permeate lives in ways never thought possible.
Chatbots help schedule appointments. Smart thermostats
automatically adjust and warm or cool to one’s liking. Refrig-
erators remind us when we’re running low on milk.
Analysts suggest that AI will grow the global economy by
$15.7 trillion by 2030, and the international big-data analytics
industry alone is expected to grow from $130.1 billion in 2016
to more than $203 billion by 2020.
Living and working in this age of technological possibilities is
intriguing and exciting — and made even more so because the
U.S. government actively supports and promotes AI’s advance-
ment. However, the speed with which we’re advancing and
embracing innovations in artificial intelligence are outpacing
efforts to fully understand and mitigate its challenges, notably
the inherent biases hidden in the AI algorithms used to inform
decisions.
As long as that remains the case, and in spite of its projected
positive global economic impact, AI’s proliferation will con-
tinue to give rise to concerns about its ethical and responsible
use, its role in decision-making and its impact on leaders’
executive function, the cognitive processes that make it pos-
ISTOCK
sible to plan, focus attention, remember, juggle multiple tasks
and think flexibly.
U.S. government agencies already are making significant
investments in the field. The National Science Founda-
tion invests over $100 million each year in its research. The
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is investing $2
billion in its AI Next campaign, a project that aims to build
more trusting, collaborative partnerships between humans and
machines.
The Defense Department created the Joint Artificial Intel-
ligence Center to coalesce the military services and defense
agencies’ AI initiatives. Additionally, last year the Department
of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory unveiled Summit,
the world’s most powerful and smartest scientific supercom-
puter, surpassing China’s 93-petaflop TaihuLight, which had
been the world’s fastest supercomputer since 2016.
AI’s strength in predictive analytics provides the intelligence
community a significant strategic advantage by enhancing early
warning cyber attack indicators, boosting intrusion detection
and monitoring, heightening analysis and integration, enhanc-
ing software analysis, and reinforcing strategic and tactical
planning of cyber operations. AI algorithms across all phases of
a cyber attack, such as social engineering, vulnerability discov-
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 19
ery and exploit development targeting, can be used to target
and exploit vulnerable enemy AI-enabled assets.
AI’s power is its unmatched ability of pattern recogni-
tion, anomaly detection and predictive analytics. However, its
weakness is its inability to discover and destroy the biases pro-
grammed in its algorithms. This flaw has a direct and poten-
tially detrimental influence on the decision-making of leaders
in the private and public sectors.
The reuse of code from various programs by developers
has seeded the progression of barely distinctive webs of algo-
rithms that rewrite their own code, generate rules and create
their own truth. This observable fact is rapidly disengaging AI
algorithms from human control and oversight. In the wake of
unfettered and unchallenged AI algorithms, decision-makers
are unavoidably inundated by big data, and precipitously sur-
render to AI bias without question.
Biased algorithms have been known to levy cruel and uneven
consequences. They drive decisions on job selections, prison
sentencing guidelines, the stock market, housing loans, credit
scores, college admittance, and a multitude of other decisions
every day that profoundly affect people’s lives. Consider, for
instance, the dire consequences of AI bias regarding decisions
on prison sentencing, which are based, in part, on recidivism
scores generated by criminal risk assessment algorithms.
Populations that are historically and disproportionately tar-
geted by law enforcement face the daunting reality of being
given higher recidivism scores. Consequently, because of the
entrenched biases in the data and algorithms, a vicious sentenc-
ing cycle is perpetuated. Because most criminal risk assessment
tools are proprietary, it’s not possible to interrogate decisions
that are made or to hold decision-makers accountable.
Mathematically powered algorithms are based on the
choices of imperfect humans, even if those choices are made
with the best of intentions. Countless software system mod-
els, which increasingly manage cybersecurity environments,
are encoded with human prejudice, dislikes, elucidations and
bias. Without proper interrogation, as in the prison-sentencing
example, these obscure biased algorithms, which lack transpar-
ency, could be the decision between life and death.
Artificial intelligence also has the potential to turn the work-
force upside down. As it transforms the global business and
decision-making landscape, leaders must prepare for a new
paradigm. Managers will need to adapt by leaving repetitive
tasks such as accounting, human resources and administrative
management to AI so that they can concentrate on harnessing
the power of AI and emerging technologies to calibrate and
construct swifter and more economical methods to deliver
products and services to customers, while harnessing the cre-
ativity of employees in a diverse and integrated fashion.
This shift in leadership roles will have a direct effect as well
on executive function, the part of the brain that regulates ana-
lytics, verbal reasoning, inhibition, discretion, mental flexibility
and complex decision-making among other traits. What impact
will AI have on the executive function of decision-makers?
Arguably, humans are erecting systems beyond their intellec-
tual means to control them. Leaders are likely to reject or sup-
press their own cognitive instincts by surrendering authority
and executive function to AI, regardless of its biases.
The ethical ramifications for the immeasurable separation
between algorithms and real people are great. Ultimately, lead-
ers will have to decide who will make the decisions and who
20 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
will assume liability and responsibility for the decisions made.
If AI is to take an essential position in business, leaders must
strengthen their executive functions and detect and remove
bias to ensure fairness, transparency and, ultimately, trust.
“Responsible AI,” a term of art used to address the growing
concern of AI bias, integrates risk mitigation and ethical con-
cerns into algorithms and data sets from the start. Responsible
AI is a holistic approach to governance that includes rules
as well as evidence-based management practices, which take
execution and oversight into account throughout the entire AI
lifecycle.
The technical and societal challenges and risks associated
with AI, which impact nearly every facet of one’s life, must be
addressed through robust technical standards and governance.
On the governance side, the National Institute of Standards
and Technology is a sensible starting point. Current NIST
research already focuses on how to measure and enhance the
security and trustworthiness of AI systems.
Human interrogation and oversight of AI’s underlying algo-
rithms must also be employed to eradicate bias and reduce
the risks of using it in business decisions. Proper governance
and security measures, such as rapid-detection mechanisms
to correct and terminate rogue AI elements and the continu-
ous monitoring and updating of algorithms, will ensure that
“If AI is to take an essential position in
business, leaders must strengthen their
executive functions and detect and remove
bias to ensure fairness ...”
authentic experiences and user feedback are integrated at all
times. AI is considered by many to be better at decision-mak-
ing than human intelligence. However, this doesn’t necessarily
mean that AI makes better decisions. The technology exploits
the critical thinking skills that humans possess and coalesces
them with enormous computational power. Thus, the need to
acknowledge the complementary power of human intelligence
in relation to AI is essential.
As example of this partnership’s positive effect, a team of
pathologists from Harvard created an AI tool that detects can-
cer cells with 92 percent accuracy. When using conventional
tools, the pathologists detected cancer cells with 96 percent
accuracy. But, most notably, when the two combined forces
the results were significantly more accurate at 99.5 percent.
AI’s impending disruptions are not likely to arrive all at
once. However, the thrust of development is rapid and the
ramifications more extensive than most executives and deci-
sion-makers recognize. Leaders who are prudent can investi-
gate the future posture of the workforce and prepare for the
advent and dominance of artificial intelligence.
To plot a course in this uncertain future, leaders must rede-
fine their roles and enact responsible AI by setting forth laws
and regulations to identify the boundaries for its use in deci-
sion-making and its consequences and impact on leadership
and their authority, all without stifling innovation. ND
Tamie Santiago is a collegiate associate professor of cybersecurity
management and policy at the University of Maryland University
College, Global Campus.

Services Report Progress on
Directed Energy Programs
BY MANDY MAYFIELD
With promises to reduce cost
per shot and provide unlimited
magazines, each of the services are bet-
ting their directed energy technology
can give them an edge on the battlefield.
The Navy, Air Force, Army and other
organizations all have ongoing programs
and are reporting progress.
The Navy is focused on system inte-
gration, said Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall,
director of surface warfare.
The service is working to integrate
lasers developed through its high-energy
laser and integrated optical-dazzler
with surveillance, or HELIOS, program,
with its existing Aegis advanced combat
system, he said during remarks at the
Directed Energy Summit in Washington,
D.C., in March.
“If I have a system that can kill and
I have a system that can actually sense,
then I have to make sure it integrates
with the other things I have on my ship
that can sense and kill,” Boxall said. “The
most important aspect of the laser is
its integration into the existing combat
system.”
Aegis, which was developed by Lock-
heed Martin, is used extensively by the
Navy as well as international partners.
It can attack enemy assets while also
protecting against aircraft, cruise missiles
and ballistic missiles.
The Navy awarded Lockheed Mar-
tin a $150 million contract for two
HELIOS systems last year with options
LOCKHEED MARTIN, ARMY
NAVY: HELIOS SYSTEM CONCEPT ART
worth up to $942.8 million.
Boxall noted the service is aiming
to install a system onboard an Arleigh
Burke-Class Flight IIA destroyer in
2021.
The other laser is expected to be used
for land-based testing at White Sands
Missile Range in New Mexico, Paul Lem-
mo, vice president of integrated warfare
systems and sensors at Lockheed, said at
the Surface Navy Association’s annual
symposium in Arlington, Virginia.
The Navy wants to speed up the
process of acquiring new laser technol-
ogy by using its accelerated acquisition
board of directors, Boxall said.
The board — which is chaired by
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John
Richardson — was created to quicken
the pace of bringing new capabilities to
the fleet, Boxall said.
The Navy previously installed a
30-kilowatt laser weapon system, known
as LaWS, on the USS Ponce in 2014.
Boxall noted that the system itself was
“not really” impressive, but it was useful
to put it into an operational environ-
ment.
“If you move something from an engi-
neering product to something the war-
fighter needs, you start learning a lot of
things — and we did a lot with LaWS,”
he said.
Another effort the Navy is working
on is the solid-state laser technology
maturation initiative, also known as the
SSL-TM.
ARMY: HIGH ENERGY LASER MOBILE DEMONSTRATOR
The SSL-TM will be integrated onto
the USS Portland amphibious transport
dock, later this year, Boxall said.
He emphasized that it is more impor-
tant to focus on the integration of the
weapon than the number of kilowatts.
However, “I do want power,” he add-
ed. “The more power, the more things I
can do with that” technology.
The Army is also investing in directed
energy weapons. It is particularly wor-
ried about beam control as it develops
new technologies.
“Beam control is an area where we
need a little bit more help,” Craig Robin,
senior research scientist for directed
energy applications at the Army Space
and Missile Defense Command’s techni-
cal center, said during the summit.
Beam control revolves around getting
a laser to pinpoint a target and remain
focused on it, he explained.
In order to garner more precise beam
control for its directed energy weapons,
the Army needs additional surrogate
laser systems out in the field so it can
conduct more tests, he said.
Meanwhile, the command is develop-
ing a new high-energy laser system.
Previously the service developed a
high-energy laser that could be outfitted
on a truck, Robert Snead, an engineer
at the Army Space and Missile Defense
Command told National Defense dur-
ing a DoD Lab Day exhibition at the
Pentagon.
The High Energy Laser Mobile — a
solid-state fiber laser — was designed to
target unmanned aerial vehicles, rockets,
artillery and mortars, Snead said.
As technology continued to develop,
the Army switched directions and cre-
ated a system known as the high energy
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 21
 laser tactical vehicle demonstrator, or
HEL TVD, which is a 100-kilowatt sys-
tem.
Development of the technology,
which is meant to go onboard a tactical
vehicle, will begin in the summer.
“In a few years you will see this sys-
tem on test ranges,” he added.
The Air Force is also keen on directed
energy and has high-power microwave
programs that will be tested in the com-
ing years, according to Kelly Hammett,
head of the Air Force Research Labora-
tory’s directed energy directorate.
“We are pretty much the acknowl-
edged center of gravity for high-power
microwave weapons S&T in the servic-
es,” Hammett said. “We were able to get
some funding from [the office of the
secretary of defense] on behalf of all the
services to build some ground-based,
high-power microwave prototypes.
Those are being delivered this year and
they will go into our experimentation
campaign.”
The first system, the tactical
high-power microwave operational
responder, or THOR, is a weapon
system intended to go after multiple
short-range drones, Hammett said. The
effort was in developmental testing as
of April.
Another system, the counter-elec-
tronic high-power microwave extended-
range air base air defense project, also
known as CHIMERA, is a long-range
system meant to address a myriad of
threats, Hammett said. The Air Force is
aiming to deliver the weapon in fiscal
year 2020.
Last fall, the Air Force tested Raythe-
on-built laser and microwave systems at
White Sands Missile Range. The weap-
DARPA/AFRL: HELLADS CONCEPT ART
22 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
ons were designed to take down small
targets, Hammett said.
However, they are no longer being
developed, he said.
“We have systems that operated
exactly as designed, exactly as specified
in the [joint capability technology dem-
onstration] and nevertheless were not
transitioned,” he added.
The Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency is also working on
developing new directed energy tech-
nology.
DARPA began integrating the high
energy liquid laser area defense systems,
or HELLADS, into a ground-based
demonstrator in 2015. The effort was
jointly funded by DARPA and the Air
Force Research Laboratory. The goal
was to develop a 150-kilowatt class
laser weapon that is smaller and lighter
than similar laser systems.
HELLADS “was really the first foray
into solid-state laser technology and
proved that you could do a solid-state
laser,” DARPA Director Steven Walker
said at a recent breakfast with reporters
in Washington, D.C.
The agency has since been focused
on fiber-laser technology, Walker noted.
It has been working with MIT Lincoln
Laboratory to develop a small-scale
fiber laser, which should be fully dem-
onstrated by the end of fiscal year 2019,
he said.
“The advantage there is you can inte-
grate these lasers in much smaller pack-
ages,” Walker said.
Meanwhile, Special Operations Com-
mand is working to integrate a 60-kilo-
watt directed energy weapon system
onto the AC-130 gunship.
“Special operations is in the midst of
SOCOM: AC-130 GUNSHIP WITH LASER CONCEPT ART
demonstrating a precise airborne laser
on a C-130,” said Lisa Sanders, director
of science and technology for the com-
mand. “It is a really challenging math
problem in terms of [size, weight and
power].”
SOCOM would prefer a more pow-
erful laser, but is not willing to redesign
the back-end of the AC-130 to obtain
one, Sanders said.
“Would I love a really, really high
powered laser?” Sanders asked. “Yeah,
but it is not going to fit on a C-130
operationally, so we think 60-kilowatts
is a sweet spot that is achievable techni-
cally within the space that we’ve got.”
As the command continues to
develop directed energy weapons it is
asking itself where are other places it
can apply high energy lasers, what are
the best types of early integration plat-
forms to use and can those systems be
sustained, she added.
The Pentagon considers Special Oper-
ations Command to be an early adopter
of laser tech, she noted.
A key takeaway from SOCOM’s
mission with directed energy is that the
command is in search of scalable effects
with lasers, she said.
Sanders noted that the C-130 is
an ideal platform for the laser as the
Defense Department already has the
aircraft across the globe. “Frankly, that’s
one of the reasons C-130s are a great
platform,” she said. “There are C-130s
[in] a lot of places.”
SOCOM is also working with the
Defense Department on a roadmap for
directed energy programs, Sanders con-
firmed. ND
— Additional reporting by Connie Lee
and Jon Harper
DARPA, AIR FORCE

KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON:
Executive Order Highlights
Electromagnetic Pulse Threat
BY JON HARPER
In March, President Donald
Trump signed an “Executive
Order on Coordinating National Resil-
ience to Electromagnetic Pulses,” which
many observers see as an important step
in confronting an unconventional threat
that could wreak havoc on the United
States.
An electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is
an intense burst of energy that can be
released by a nuclear weapon detonated
high in the atmosphere, or by a geo-
magnetic disturbance caused by natural
phenomena such as solar flares.
Consider this scenario that some
analysts have envisioned: An electromag-
netic pulse hits the nation’s electric grid.
The power goes out across a large swath
of the country, communication systems
and other critical infrastructure are dis-
rupted, military readiness is degraded,
chaos ensues and many people die.
That is a nightmare situation that the
U.S. government is making a new con-
certed push to avoid.
“It is the policy of the United States
to prepare for the effects of EMPs
through targeted approaches that coor-
ISTOCK
dinate whole-of-government activities
and encourage private sector engage-
ment,” Trump’s directive stated.
The federal government must provide
warning; protect against, respond to
and recover from the effects of elec-
tromagnetic pulses through planning,
investment and stakeholder engagement;
and prevent EMP attacks through deter-
rence, defensive capabilities and nuclear
nonproliferation efforts, the order said.
It called for prioritizing research and
development to address the needs of
critical infrastructure stakeholders, and
implementing pilot programs.
The executive order provided a list
of implementation instructions to the
Departments of Homeland Security,
Defense, Energy, Commerce and State,
and the Director of National Intel-
ligence. It also put the assistant to the
president for national security affairs and
the National Security Council in charge
of coordinating the executive branch’s
efforts.
For years, experts and advocacy
groups have been sounding the alarm
about the possibility of a far-reaching,
disastrous incident.
“An electromagnetic pulse … poses a
direct threat to the U.S. electric grid and
the products, services and activities that
depend on access to electricity,” Heritage
Foundation analysts warned in a policy
paper published last year titled, “The
Danger of EMP Requires Innovative and
Strategic Action.”
“An EMP could cause widespread
failure of the electric grids of entire
regions, grinding the U.S. economy to a
halt,” the authors added. “Without elec-
tricity, almost nothing will work, which
means that millions of people will die as
a result of not being able to refill medi-
cal prescriptions, millions more will be
without food, and predictable rioting
and looting can quickly create a state of
anarchy.”
A loss of electric cooling for nuclear
power plant reactors and spent fuel
pools could expose Americans to dan-
gerous levels of radiation, warned a
report by the military-civilian Electro-
magnetic Defense Task Force, citing the
2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disas-
ter in Japan as a cautionary tale.
The Heritage Foundation policy paper
noted that a high-altitude EMP attack
could also temporarily or permanently
damage satellites — most of which are
not hardened to withstand its effects.
Critical civilian infrastructure aren’t
the only assets at risk. The U.S. military
could also be vulnerable.
“From an adversary’s standpoint, mili-
tary installations represent the vulnera-
ble underbelly of the defense enterprise,”
the Electromagnetic Defense Task Force
said in a self-titled report published last
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 23
year by the Air Force’s Air Uni-
versity.
An installation’s ability to
maintain connectivity would
depend on the nature and sever-
ity of an EMP incident. But in all
likelihood, the facility would be
unable to continue uninterrupted
operations within a short period
of time in the absence of a cohe-
sive response and sustainment
plan, the study said.
Installation response plans often
omit EMP contingencies from
planning and programs, it noted.
“In many cases, an interrup-
tion of [command-and-control systems]
could lead to a degraded ability to bring
organic mission capabilities to bear for
national defense or civil recovery opera-
tions,” the report said.
Nevertheless, U.S. efforts to under-
stand and address the EMP threat have
been limited by insufficient information
sharing, coordination and investment
among different parts of the government
and the private sector, analysts say.
Trump’s new directive aimed at
addressing the problem was well
received by non-governmental observers.
“It gives the issue more prominence
and more visibility within the depart-
mental agencies,” said Michaela Dodge, a
defense analyst at the Heritage Founda-
tion who co-authored the think tank’s
policy paper. “It’s fairly specific as to
which agencies do what. It puts time
pressure on accomplishing what the
executive order demands. And so I do
believe it’s a step in the right direction.”
So far, the United States hasn’t been
very successful in terms of organizing
its government to deal with the EMP
threat, she said. The executive order “is
very positive and a large contribution to
the way we sort of deal with that prob-
lem,” she added.
Duke Energy, one of the nation’s larg-
est electric power companies, said it also
views Trump’s directive as a positive
step. “We are pleased with the efforts to
coalesce activities of the various federal
entities and the focus on non-classified
research to understand the [potential
EMP] impacts better,” a spokesperson
said in an email to National Defense.
However, there is disagreement
among observers about the magnitude
of the threat and what should be done
to address it.
Trump administration officials have
24 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
“THERE IS
DISAGREEMENT AMONG
OBSERVERS ABOUT THE
MAGNITUDE OF THE
THREAT AND WHAT
SHOULD BE DONE
TO ADDRESS IT.”
said there is no intelligence indicating
that an EMP attack is imminent.
However, William Graham, the chair-
man of the congressionally-chartered
Commission to Assess the Threat to the
United States from Electromagnetic
Pulse Attack, has said that EMPs repre-
sent an “immediate, existential” danger
that could wipe out a large fraction of
the U.S. population through the effects
of starvation, disease and societal col-
lapse.
The Heritage Foundation policy paper
described electromagnetic pulse events
as “low probability” but “high risk” sce-
narios.
But others are warning against over-
reaction.
“EMPs are by no means one of the
top-tier national security challenges, nor
the most pressing concern for the safety
of our electrical grid,” Gregory T. Kiley, a
former senior staff member of the Sen-
ate Armed Services Committee and U.S.
Air Force officer, said in a recent op-ed
published by The Hill.
Trump’s executive order is reasonable
but “we must also be vigilant to ensure
the EMP threat is not overblown and
thereby dedicate limited resources to a
highly unlikely threat,” he added.
In April, the nonprofit Electric Power
Research Institute released the results of
a three-year study titled, “High-Altitude
Electromagnetic Pulse and the Bulk
Power Systems: Potential Impacts and
Mitigation Strategies.”
EMP fields can impact large areas.
One stemming from a detonation of a
nuclear weapon at an altitude of 200
kilometers could affect a circular area
equivalent to 3 million square miles,
the report said. However, the strength
of the EMP field would dissipate the
farther away it was from ground zero, it
noted.
The study concluded that a
high-altitude electromagnetic
pulse, or HEMP, attack similar to
the ones that were modeled could
cause regional disruptions or volt-
age collapse. However, “research
findings do not support the notion
of blackouts encompassing the
contiguous United States and last-
ing for many months to years,” the
report said.
Recovery times for a HEMP-
induced blackout would be
commensurate with historical
large-scale blackouts if robust pro-
tections for grid components are
deployed. However, additional research
is needed to address remaining uncer-
tainties about electromagnetic pulse
effects, the report said.
The Secure the Grid Coalition —
which includes former House Speaker
Newt Gingrich and former CIA Direc-
tor James Woolsey — and the EMP Task
Force on National and Homeland Secu-
rity issued a joint statement dismissing
the EPRI findings as “junk science,” and
accused the organization of underesti-
mating the threat to serve the interests
of the electric power industry.
Paul Scharre, director of the technol-
ogy and national security program at the
Center for a New American Security,
said U.S. military assets could be vulner-
able to electromagnetic pulses because
most of them aren’t hardened against
that type of threat. But the Pentagon
should be more focused on other, more
likely methods of enemy attack, he
added.
“It wouldn’t be at the top of my agen-
da,” Scharre said. “I’m really more con-
cerned about cyber and more traditional
kinetic attacks on those DoD infrastruc-
tures than something more exotic like a
high-altitude EMP.”
As of press time, the Defense Depart-
ment had not provided comment for
this story.
Studies have recommended a number
of steps to protect critical infrastructure
against electromagnetic pulses including:
various methods of equipment shielding
and surge protection; adding “firebreaks”
to the national electric grid to limit the
scope of damages and power outages;
and investments in boost phase and
space-based missile defense technology
that could shoot down enemy nuclear-
armed ballistic missiles before they were
able to release an EMP.
 Scharre said EMPs raise interesting
questions about deterrence because
the pulses wouldn’t kill people directly.
“You would have sort of this non-
kinetic attack where the [nuclear]
blast wouldn’t kill anyone. It would be
disrupting the infrastructure, but that
might have second order effects that
could lead to mayhem and death and
other problems.”
It’s unclear how U.S. policymakers
would react, he said.
“Would it be seen as a nuclear event
or as a non-kinetic event? Is it some-
thing that’s either worse than a con-
ventional bomb [attack] or less than a
conventional bomb [attack]?” he asked.
“There’s just no good way to know
how big the effect would be as well as
how people would respond,” he added.
“It’s one of the reasons why you do
worry that it could be appealing to an
[enemy] actor if they might see it as
a cheap way to disable U.S. electrical
infrastructure or disrupt the United
States in a way that there was a percep-
tion that it was less escalatory than a
more traditional form of attack.”
The situation is further complicated
by the fact that geomagnetic disturbanc-
es are natural phenomena that, unlike
a nation-state actor, cannot be deterred
militarily.
“It seems like a low probability event
and I think it’s easy to be dismissive, but
it’s probably a prudent measure to shore
up the resilience of our electrical grid,”
Scharre said.
If there were a geomagnetic distur-
bance and a large section of the country
lost power for a period of time, people
would be angry that the government
hadn’t done more to prepare, he said. “It
can look like hype and people overreact-
ing [to the threat] until one of those
events occurs, and then everyone wants
to know why didn’t we act sooner.”
Dodge noted that bolstering defenses
against electromagnetic pulses will come
with a price tag.
“There is a great deal we can do,” she
said. “The question is how to fund it and
who pays for what?”
Trump’s executive order noted that
the federal government must foster
efficient, cost-effective approaches to
enhance resiliency.
In a 2017 report for the EMP Com-
mission, Graham said protecting and
defending the national electric grid and
other critical infrastructures from elec-
tromagnetic pulses could be achieved at
reasonable cost and with minimal dis-
ruption to existing systems.
Scharre said electric companies and
other stakeholders might be reluctant to
spend large amounts of money harden-
ing their assets. Measures that make sys-
tems more resilient and robust add costs,
and they are expenses that don’t add
value for businesses and shareholders on
a day-to-day basis, he noted.
The government could end up fund-
ing those measures directly or creat-
ing incentives for companies to do so
through tax breaks or other means,
Scharre said.
The Heritage Foundation policy
paper said critical national defense assets
that rely on the electric grid should be
hardened by the federal government at
the expense of taxpayers, and utilities
should be allowed to recover costs for
EMP-related investments.
“It’s a little bit silly to assume that the
private market will automatically step
in and do things when there is not a
profit incentive to do so,” Scharre said.
“It’s going to require some government
involvement to make that happen.” ND
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 25
SALES
TAKING OFF
INTERNATIONAL MARKET FOR F-35 HEATS UP
BY YASMIN TADJDEH
Twelve countries have committed to orders of the
F-35 joint strike fighter either as formal partner
nations or through foreign military sales. As production of the
fifth-generation systems ramp up, the joint program office and
manufacturer Lockheed Martin are looking to expand their
global footprint even further.
Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway,
Turkey and the United Kingdom currently are in formal part-
nership with the United States on the F-35 program. Israel,
Japan and South Korea have made orders through the foreign
military sales process. Belgium also recently signed on to pur-
chase platforms.
Vice Adm. Mathias Winter, program executive officer
for the F-35 joint program office, said his team is currently
examining a number of new potential FMS candidates. These
include nations such as Singapore, Greece, Romania, Spain and
Poland, he said in written testimony to the House Armed Ser-
26 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
vices subcommittee on tactical and land forces in April.
Additionally, “the F-35 FMS team is also focused on
responding to formal requests for proposals from both Finland
and Switzerland, with U.S. government response expected in
August and November, respectively,” he said.
Winter also noted that in December, Japan announced
that it plans to purchase an additional 105 aircraft. That will
include 63 F-35As and 42 F-35B short take-off and vertical
landing platforms. Lockheed Martin and Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries operate a final assembly and check-out facility, or
FACO, in Nagoya.
“With this anticipated purchase, Japan will be the largest
international customer of F-35s with 147 planned aircraft,”
Winter said.
More than 390 F-35s are currently in the global fleet,
Winter said. That number will swell to nearly 500 by the
AIR FORCE
end of 2019. Production will ramp up as operational testing
concludes in the fall of 2019 and the program enters full-rate
production, he added.
“To prepare for increased quantities, production experts
from across the United States government are working with
our industry partners to deliver quality parts on time and at
affordable costs,” he said. “To achieve efficiencies, the program
has incorporated a number of performance initiatives and
incentives across the entire supply chain to support F-35 pro-
duction lines in Italy, Japan and the United States.”
In November, the F-35 joint program office awarded Lock-
heed Martin an undefinitized contract action for low-rate
initial production Lot 12. That obligated $6 billion — $3.5
billion from the United States and $2.5 billion from interna-
tional countries — in funding for a total of 255 aircraft. That
includes 89 systems for international partners and 60 F-35s
for foreign military sales. Deliveries of Lot 12 are scheduled to
begin in January 2020.
Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment
Ellen Lord said the F-35 joint program office is in contract
negotiations with prime contractor Lockheed Martin regarding
the LRIP Lot 12 buy and hopes to have a contract in place by
July.
Lockheed has said it is offering the F-35A for less than $80
million per plane for Lots 12 through 14, which is lower than
the price tag of $89 million per aircraft that was part of the
deal signed for Lot 11.
This increased activity bodes well for the future of the air-
craft, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group,
a Fairfax, Virginia-based defense and aerospace market analysis
firm.
Aboulafia said he was initially concerned that the price tag
for the platform would make it an unattractive option for
many cash-strapped nations.
There are “a very limited number of customers willing to
sign for a $90 million fighter, but they’ve been doing better
than expected,” he noted.
Historically, there have been seven or eight global custom-
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 27
ers willing to pull the trigger on purchasing a similarly priced
fighter. There about 30 or 40 nations that are willing to buy a
fighter with the same price point as the F-16, which typically
costs around $50 million, he said.
“But they’ve made significant inroads with some custom-
ers,” he said. Lockheed and the joint program office have been
“making the argument that it’s OK to have fewer [aircraft]
and pay more.”
For example, he noted that when Israel signed on as an FMS
customer it chose to substantially reduce the number of new
aircraft it planned to buy in favor of fewer, but more advanced
and costly F-35s.
Overall, the global fighter market has been changing to
emphasize the procurement of fewer, but more capable and
expensive planes, Aboulafia said. But while that sea change
has so far been paying off for Lockheed, the next round of
FMS customers will really test the proposition, he noted.
“The real test [is selling to] the Polands and Greeces of the
world,” he said.
Lockheed Martin sees Europe as a key market opportunity,
said Steve Over, director of F-35 international business devel-
opment at the company.
“Europe is probably the seat of interest for the F-35,” he
told National Defense. “I see a future in the 2030 timeframe,
where, just like the F-16 today is the NATO standard fighter
of choice, you’re seeing NATO allies recapitalize those F-16s
with F-35s.”
By the 2030s, Over said he expects there will be more than
500 joint strike fighters in NATO nation inventories.
Poland is a strong area of interest for Lockheed Martin,
Over said.
“Poland has recently announced their intent to move for-
ward with an F-35 acquisition, which we’re really excited
about,” he said. Key to that will be working with the Polish
government and industry on ways for indigenous industrial
participation in the program, he said.
“We’re working on that right now with [the] Polish govern-
ment and Polish industry … [but] those conversations just
haven’t matured to a level where ... we can divulge exactly
where we are on those,” he said.
A company spokesperson noted that Lockheed already has
a foothold in Poland. Because of its acquisition of Sikorsky
— which was completed in 2015 — Lockheed acquired PZL
Mielec which is based in the country.
PZL Mielec is Lockheed’s largest manufacturing facility
outside of the United States. The facility manufactures the
S-70i Black Hawk utility helicopter and the M28 twin turbo-
prop aircraft. Additionally, it employs 1,700 people directly
and sustains work for 5,000 others in its Polish supply chain,
according to the company. Lockheed plans to leverage PZL
Mielec’s broader knowledge of the Polish defense industry as
it pursues an F-35 contract, the spokesperson said.
Industrial participation — where a nation has a stake in
building parts or components of a weapon — has become
increasingly important as U.S. manufacturers pursue inter-
national opportunities. For Lockheed, arranging that is a key
strategy, Over said.
“Industrial benefits are an essential ingredient as every
nation moves forward to try to purchase the F-35,” he said.
Whether a country is “looking for direct manufacturing
opportunities on the F-35 program or other indirect industrial
28 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
opportunities, ... Lockheed has a history and a well-established
track record of satisfying those types of requirements.”
Poland — as a former member of the Warsaw Pact — has
long been interested in shucking off its Soviet-era equipment,
said Dan Darling, senior military markets analyst at Forecast
International, a Newtown, Connecticut-based market consult-
ing firm.
“They are getting rid of everything that is of Russian origin,”
he said. It is almost guaranteed that the nation will opt for the
F-35 as it pursues new fighter jets, he added. Not only have
government officials been talking about the system consis-
tently, but the nation has been steadily increasing its defense
budget over the years.
Additionally, Warsaw is a strong U.S. ally and the purchase
of the F-35 would more closely align it with Washington, he
said.
“WITH THIS ANTICIPATED
PURCHASE, JAPAN WILL
BE THE LARGEST
INTERNATIONAL
CUSTOMER
OF F-35S ...”
While Europe and Asia are key focus areas for Lockheed,
the Middle East may soon be a hotspot should the U.S. gov-
ernment allow the company to sell to partner nations in the
region, Aboulafia said.
Historically, there has been a five-year gap between when
Israel purchases a high-end U.S.-made weapon system and
other Middle Eastern nations can buy it, he noted.
“You’re coming up on that and that’s going to be really
interesting,” he said.
Whether or not the United Arab Emirates will purchase the
system is still a big question mark, Aboulafia said. Ultimately,
it is possible the country may choose to purchase a mix of
F-35s and a foreign-made fourth-generation fighter — such
as the French-made Rafale — “so they don’t put all their eggs
in the U.S. basket, which of course is politically very difficult
there.”
Nations such as Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states will
 also likely be interested when the opportunity to purchase the
F-35 arrives, he said.
“Given the warmer relations between the Gulf countries
and Israel, it’s going to be a lot easier these days,” he said. It’s
“no longer the adversarial ‘70s and ‘80s dynamic.”
However, as the joint program office and Lockheed look
to extend the sales of the fifth-generation fighter globally, a
political battle over the F-35 is underway between the United
States and Turkey.
Turkey is one of the program’s original nine partner coun-
tries and, according to Winter, currently accounts for 6 to 7
percent of the aircraft’s supply chain. But a recent move by
Ankara to purchase the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air
missile defense system has put Turkey’s future F-35 participa-
tion into question.
In a recent op-ed titled, “A U.S. Fighter Jet or a Russian Mis-
Kenji Wakamiya,
Japan’s state minister
of defense, speaking
during Japan’s first
F-35A aircraft reveal.
sile System. Not Both,” published in the New York Times in
April, Sens. Jim Inhofe, Jack Reed, Jim Risch and Bob Menen-
dez said Turkey will have to choose between the S-400 and
the F-35. Inhofe, of Oklahoma, and Reed, of Rhode Island, are
the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Ser-
vices Committee, respectively. Risch, of Idaho, and Menendez,
of New Jersey, are the chairman and ranking member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, respectively.
“By the end of the year, Turkey will have either F-35
advanced fighter aircraft on its soil or a Russian S-400 surface-
to-air missile defense system,” the senators said. “Turkey’s
purchase of the S-400 would be incompatible with its com-
mitments to NATO and reduce its interoperability with allies.
LOCKHEED MARTIN
Purchasing the S-400 would create an unacceptable risk
because its radar system could enable the Russian military to
figure out how the F-35 operates.”
The senators noted that the S-400 issue has already resulted
F-35 INTERNATIONAL MARKET
in the Defense Department suspending some F-35 activities
associated with Turkey.
In April, Acting Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Charles E.
Summers Jr., said until Turkey forgoes the delivery of the
S-400, the United States has suspended deliveries and activi-
ties associated with the stand-up of Turkey’s F-35 operational
capability.
The senators noted that Turkey has legitimate air defense
needs and suggested the U.S.-built Patriot system could be an
alternative, but Ankara had rejected that offer.
“With the S-400 scheduled to arrive in Turkey in July and
the F-35s scheduled to arrive in November, it is time for Presi-
dent [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan to choose,” they said. “It is our
hope he will choose to abandon the S-400, defend Turkish
skies with the Patriot system and save the F-35 arrangement.”
Should Turkey not forgo the S-400, sanctions would be
imposed via the Countering America’s Adversaries Through
Sanctions Act, which would hit the country’s economy hard,
they noted.
“No F-35s will ever reach Turkish soil,” they said, adding that
the country had planned to purchase more than 100 platforms.
“Turkish participation in the F-35 program, including manufac-
turing parts, repairing and servicing the fighters, will be termi-
nated, taking Turkish companies out of the manufacturing and
supply chain for the program.”
The lawmakers noted that Turkey already has invested more
than $1.25 billion into the joint strike fighter program.
Winter, speaking during the HASC hearing, said that there
had not yet been a disruption to the supply chain. Turkish-
built parts, as well as those from other partners nations, con-
tinue “to flow to not only Forth Worth but to Cameri in Italy
and Nagoya in Japan,” he said. “What we need to make sure is
that any disruption to the supply chain — no matter where it
comes from — we are putting in place the appropriate mitiga-
tion steps.”
Lord recently noted that Turkey’s exit from the program
could cause problems down the line.
“We see a potential slowing down of some deliveries over
the next two years, some potential cost impacts,” she told
reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon in May. “But right
now, we believe we can minimize both of those and are work-
ing on refining” that analysis.
While the S-400 issue may be causing headaches in Ankara
and Washington, it is unlikely that the impasse will have any
negative ramifications on future potential F-35 foreign military
sales, Aboulafia said.
“I think other countries are very mindful this is uniquely
Erdogan dysfunction,” he said. “It really is beyond dysfunc-
tional.”
Darling said the situation between the United States and
Turkey is an extraordinary circumstance that won’t affect the
F-35’s FMS prospects.
“Everybody who purchases ... through FMS, they are aware
of the politics of it,” he said. Countries that purchase military
equipment from Western nations — such as France, Germany
and the United Kingdom — are always at the mercy of for-
eign suppliers, he added. ND
— Additional reporting by Jon Harper
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 29
Leidos: Building tomorrow’s
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© Leidos. All rights reserved.


USS Arleigh Burke
(DDG 51)
Navy Shipbuilding Plan Could
Soon Be Tossed Overboard
BY JON HARPER
The Navy’s new 30-year ship-
building plan is intended to
send a strong demand signal and pro-
vide predictability for the industrial base.
However, trends that are informing a
new force structure assessment could
soon upend the blueprint.
In March, the service submitted its
fiscal year 2020 long-term shipbuild-
ing strategy to Congress. The version
released last year was criticized by law-
makers and analysts for being too con-
servative with the timeline for increasing
the number of battle force ships in the
service’s inventory. Under that construct,
the Navy would not have reached its
goal of a 355-ship fleet until the 2050s.
However, this year’s plan is much more
aggressive.
NAVY
“Through the judicious application
of predictable shipbuilding profiles and
stable, on-time funding, the timeframe
for achieving the overall inventory [goal]
was accelerated by 20 years,” the docu-
ment said.
The service currently has 289 battle
force ships. Under the new schedule, the
fleet would grow to 314 ships by 2024
and 355 vessels by 2034. The blueprint
includes the procurement of 55 ships
over the next five years, but service life
extensions of DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-
class destroyers are the principle driver
of the 20-year acceleration of the pro-
posed fleet expansion, the report noted.
Promoting the health of the indus-
trial base by implementing a predictable
shipbuilding plan was a key theme in the
strategy.
“We are at a level of fragility that
without consistent and continuous com-
mitment to steady acquisition profiles as
proposed in this plan, the industrial base
will continue to struggle and some ele-
ments may not survive another ‘boom/
bust’ cycle,” it said.
However, a new Navy force structure
assessment is underway, and the results
are expected to be released by the end
of the year.
Ronald O’Rourke, a naval affairs spe-
cialist at the Congressional Research Ser-
vice, said the assessment could lead to a
change in both the total ship count goal
and the mix of ships in the future fleet.
“They have dropped a lot of hints
that there could be a change in the fleet
architecture that could especially affect
the surface force so that you’d have
fewer large ships, more smaller ships,
and … large unmanned surface vehicles,”
O’Rourke said during a panel discussion
at the Heritage Foundation after the
2020 plan was released.
Earlier this year, Chief of Naval Oper-
ations Adm. John Richardson suggested
the 355 number is not set in stone.
“Technology is moving fast, and so
how that [number] may change in
response to these new technologies that
are emerging, we’re very open to that,”
he said during remarks at the Brookings
Institution.
Moreover, a number of trends could
make it difficult for the Navy to main-
tain the steady acquisition profiles that
the 2020 plan envisions.
Strains on the industrial base could
create hiccups, officials and analysts
noted.
“We’re relying very heavily on industry
to tell us when we’ve reached the limits,
and we’re seeing that in a couple specific
shipbuilding lines,” Deputy Chief of
Naval Operations for Warfare Systems
Vice Adm. William Merz said at this
year’s annual Sea-Air-Space symposium.
“We’re focusing on what we can to do to
keep that capacity open.”
Shipbuilders are already taking steps
to increase their capacity, including hir-
ing more workers, he said.
There is particular concern about
submarine construction. In a few years,
General Dynamics’ Electric Boat and
Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport
News Shipbuilding will be trying to pro-
duce two types of submarines, Virginia-
class attack subs and Columbia-class
ballistic missile subs, at the same time.
“It’s a huge ramp up that we’re doing
in the submarine industrial base,” said
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 31
Eric Labs, a senior analyst for naval force
and weapons at the Congressional Bud-
get Office. “We’ve already seen some
perturbations, some delays in Virginia-
class submarine deliveries.”
The Columbia-class, which is intended
to replace the Navy’s aging Ohio-class
ballistic missile submarines, is the Navy’s
No. 1 acquisition priority. Procurement
of the lead ship is scheduled for fiscal
year 2021, and the service plans to buy
a total of 12 boats. The program is on a
tight schedule, and officials have said the
vessels will receive priority if funding or
production tradeoffs are necessary.
“We are still very concerned regarding
the Columbia-class class SSBN going
into serial production,” Merz said. “It’s
a very expensive ship ... [and] we
will pay for it by balancing the
other ship lines to make sure she
stays on track.”
In a report released in April
titled, “Columbia-Class Submarine:
Overly Optimistic Cost Estimate
Will Likely Lead to Budget Increas-
es,” the Government Account-
ability Office said the Navy’s $115
billion procurement cost estimate
for the program is not reliable,
partly due to overly optimistic
assumptions about labor hours
required and cost saving measures.
In its official response to the
report, the Navy pushed back
against the findings, but noted
that it will provide updated cost
estimates with current data before
requesting funding for lead ship
construction in 2021.
Labs said there is a long history
of cost growth for lead ships in a
new class of vessels. Over the next
five to six years, the Navy will introduce
several new lead ships including the
Columbia, a new frigate, a new large sur-
face combatant and unmanned vessels,
he noted.
The Navy estimates that its 30-year
plan will require an average of $20.3 bil-
lion across the future years defense pro-
gram for its shipbuilding and conversion
account, and $26 billion to $28 billion
annually in subsequent years.
Analysts say those funding levels
might be feasible, given Congress’
strong support for shipbuilding in recent
years and during previous eras of naval
buildups. Lawmakers have appropri-
ated more than $20 billion annually for
shipbuilding budgets over the past three
32 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
fiscal years, according to the Congres-
sional Budget Office. However, growing
operations and sustainment costs could
sink the plan, analysts warn.
The programmed sustainment cost for
the 30-year plan is $24 billion in 2020,
which rises to $30 billion in 2024. When
the battle force inventory reaches 355 in
2034, the estimated cost to sustain the
fleet will approach $40 billion, according
to the Navy.
“I would argue that this shipbuilding
plan is more or less a placeholder that
the Navy put out to describe how you
would get to 355 ships if you thought
that this was the objective that you
were intending to reach,” said Bryan
Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for
Virginia-class submarine
USS North Dakota
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
and a former Navy officer. “The chal-
lenge with this fleet is it’s going to cost
way too much to sustain and to man
compared to what the Navy is likely to
have available in funding, so this is prob-
ably not achievable.”
Changing the mix of large and small
surface combatants and relying more on
robotic systems might offer the oppor-
tunity to “break this linkage” between
number of ships, number of personnel
and sustainment costs, Clark said.
Unmanned surface vessels and
unmanned underwater vessels, by defini-
tion, won’t need sailors onboard to oper-
ate them, and they could be less costly
to maintain, he noted.
“Your cost curve starts to change” as
USVs and UUVs are substituted for
large manned platforms, he said.
“What the Navy is likely to do in your
next budget [and shipbuilding plan] is
look at ways to start reducing the size of
the fleet as measured in traditional ways
like numbers of manned hulls, and look
at new ways to evaluate naval capabil-
ity … as they seek to decompose this
manned fleet into smaller units of issue
that might be less manpower intensive
and less expensive to maintain.”
If the Navy keeps its 355-ship goal,
it might have to make some changes in
the way it counts battle force ships, said
Robert Levinson, a senior defense ana-
lyst with Bloomberg Government.
“The only way you would probably
get there by 2034, I think, with realis-
tic projections about budget is you’re
going to have to count some of these
unmanned ships” that the Navy plans to
procure, he said during a recent briefing
for members of industry.
Richardson warned against using
accounting gimmicks to reach force
level goals.
“The thing that really matters is how
much naval power do those platforms
deliver, … and not so much ship count,”
he said at the Sea-Air-Space conference.
At some point, USVs and UUVs
might count against the battle force, he
said. “But we have to be very careful to
make sure that we’re not constructing
 something that … counts on a tally but
doesn’t deliver naval power at the end
of the day.”
However, as the quantity and capabil-
ity of robotic systems grow, they could
reduce the requirements for manned
ships, he said. “You can anticipate some
adjustments within the composition of
the naval force.”
Officials are already exploring those
possibilities as part of the ongoing force
structure assessment.
“We are expending a lot of effort
examining the anticipated role of
unmanned systems and how that might
affect the shipbuilding plan,” Merz said.
“We are all-in on developing the capabil-
ity and getting it in the field as quickly
MK 18 mod 2 unmanned
underwater vehicle
as we can … [but] we are not in a posi-
tion yet to really discuss how or when
we’re going to start replacing battle
force ships.”
The Navy’s interest in developing this
type of technology was unmistakable
at the Pentagon’s Lab Day exhibition
in April, where the Office of Naval
Research and Naval Sea Systems Com-
mand had a number of booths where
they showed off a variety of the USV
and UUV projects they’re working on.
Last fall, the Sea Hunter USV pro-
totype — which has a 132-foot hull
— reached a major milestone when it
sailed more than 3,000 nautical miles
from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to San Diego
NAVY
without human intervention, said Jero-
my DeJaco, the Sea Hunter test director
at ONR.
A second platform is being built by
Leidos. ONR is aiming to transition the
Sea Hunter to Naval Sea Systems Com-
mand in 2020 to further the technology.
In April, NAVSEA released a draft
request for proposals for a medium
unmanned surface vehicle, or MUSV.
And over the next five years, the service
plans to procure 10 large USVs, 108
Mk-18 undersea vehicles, 44 small/medi-
um UUVs, three large diameter undersea
vehicles, and nine extra-large UUVs,
according to the latest shipbuilding plan.
“Our commitment in our last budget
to the tune of almost $3 billion for just
unmanned surface vessels should be
enough signal to industry that we’re very
serious about this,” Merz said.
However, President Donald Trump
recently threw a wrench in the Navy’s
plans to retire the USS Harry S. Tru-
man aircraft carrier in 2024 rather than
refuel it. The decision to forgo the re-
fueling was meant to free up money
for autonomous systems and other
emerging technologies. In the wake of
congressional pushback against the idea,
Trump announced in a tweet that he had
reversed the decision and the Truman
would remain in the fleet.
Unless Congress adds additional fund-
ing to the budget to continue bankrolling
the Truman, the service will have to fig-
ure out how to pay for it.
“It’s about $3.5 billion,” Levinson said.
“They may have to dig it out of … some
of these other ships.”
In the coming years, the procurement
of robotic platforms could help the Navy
expand its industrial base — which has
shrunk to seven private new-construc-
tion shipyards and four prime contrac-
tors — said Jerry Hendrix, vice president
of the Telemus Group and a former
Navy officer.
“You can build that [type of system] at
the existing defense shipbuilding yards,”
he said. “But there’s also other yards on
the Gulf Coast. There’s also yards on the
Mississippi and even up into the Ohio
that have the capability of doing that …
because these platforms have different
configurations and don’t require as big a
graving docks or construction facilities.”
Merz said there’s going to be “a lot of
work for the whole spectrum of ship-
yards” as these systems proliferate and
increase in size.
Levinson noted that there are “lots of
players” working on the technology.
While the Navy and industry are bull-
ish on unmanned platforms, Congress
ultimately holds the power of the purse
to buy them. Some lawmakers have vest-
ed political interests in having manned
ships constructed in their districts.
Nevertheless, “there’s very much
a receptive audience to bring that
[unmanned capability] in as part of the
Navy combat fleet,” Labs said. “At the
same time, that doesn’t mean they’re
necessarily going to let go of the larger
[manned vessels] … right away.”
Analysts say the uncertainty engen-
dered by the ongoing force structure
assessment, and questions about how
other trends will affect the long-term
shipbuilding plan, creates challenges for
industry.
“Navy officials and industry officials
state repeatedly that stability and pre-
dictability is beneficial for industry,”
O’Rourke said.
However, “the kind of developments
we’ve been talking about … are going
to create a complicated situation where
industry is going to have to address a
situation of evolution in requirements,
evolution in technology and program
plans,” he added. “They will have to
adjust to that … as we move into this
new period where we will have to be
apparently making changes in programs
due to the changing threat and emerging
technological opportunity.” ND
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 33
 also previously experimented with
Reapers to Give Marine Corps MQ-9s during its weapons and tactical
instructor courses in Yuma, Arizona.
New Set of Warfighting Tools Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the
Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, a Washington, D.C.-based
BY YASMIN TADJDEH contractor-operated agreement for two think tank, said the platforms will be a
The MQ-9 Reaper — a Gen- years. It has been used for multiple key enabler for electronic warfare mis-
eral Atomics-built drone that types of missions. sions in the future.
has been used extensively over the past “The MQ-9 Reaper provides The service currently has plans to
decade for military strikes against insur- increased lethality to the Marine Air- integrate Intrepid Tiger II program pods
gents across the Middle East and Africa Ground Task Force by providing per- onto the MQ-9s, he said. Intrepid Tiger
— may soon be a permanent fixture in sistent intelligence, surveillance and II is a family of communications and
the Marine Corps’ inventory. reconnaissance and strike capability, electronic warfare payloads that provide
In President Donald Trump’s fiscal which the Marine Corps has not previ- airborne electronic attack and electronic
year 2020 budget proposal, the Marine ously possessed in an unmanned sys- warfare support for Marine aviation
Corps requested three systems, with an tem,” he said. platforms, according to the service.
additional three planned for fiscal year Harrison noted that the service has The Marine Corps has previously
2021. The service asked for
$117 million to purchase the
MQ-9 Reaper
first three systems, according
to a Marine Corps spokesper-
son.
Rear Adm. Randy Crites,
deputy assistant secretary of
the Navy for budget, said the
platforms fulfill an urgent
operational need for the ser-
vice.
“We intend to transition this
to a program of record once
we complete the program vali-
dation process,” he said during
a briefing with reporters at the
Pentagon.
Lt. Gen. Steven R. Rudder,
deputy commandant of the
Marine Corps for aviation,
said the service currently uses
contractor-owned, contractor-
operated MQ-9s.
“The purchase that we have
in this year’s budget allows
us to buy these systems that
we’re already operating,” he
said during an April hearing
of the House Armed Services
subcommittee on tactical and
land forces.
The move will allow the
Marines to install certain
weapons and conduct missions
that they cannot currently
execute under the existing
contracting mechanism, he
added.
Capt. Christopher Har-
rison, a spokesperson for the
Marine Corps, said the service
has been operating the Reaper
under the contractor-owned,

34 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
 integrated the system on the EA-6B
Prowler but those will be retired this
year, Clark said.
Intrepid Tiger pods onboard a Reaper
would allow the Marine Corps to con-
duct missions such as “jamming, decep-
tion jamming to try to confuse the
radars, ... or they can do noise jamming
to try and just drown out the radar’s
ability to hear anything,” he said.
They can also be used to passively
listen for enemy signal emissions, he
added.
Having such a capability in the ser-
vice’s inventory will be important as the
military faces great power competition
AIR FORCE
with peer competitors such as Russia
and China, Clark said.
“Great power competition plays out
to some degree in places like Syria,” he
said. “The Russians have been using Syr-
ia to test out some of their electronic
warfare systems.”
Additionally, the Marine Corps is
conducting a series of experiments
and demonstrations in the Asia-Pacific
where it is executing missions out of
austere bases, he said.
“What they’re thinking of doing is
maybe using ... the MQ-9s off of those
places in the Philippines to do surveil-
lance for them, as well as to do some
of these electronic warfare missions,”
he said. “It’s really a way to try to give
the Marines more of a capability to deal
with great power competitors more so
than … the lower-end stuff they did in
Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Acquiring the Reaper will allow the
service to conduct surveillance and elec-
tronic warfare in the South China Sea,
he added.
The Marine Corps would also be
able to employ the MQ-9 in an armed
reconnaissance role in places such as
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Africa, he
added.
Clark noted that General Atomics
has continuously improved the Reaper
over the years, giving it longer endur-
ance and the capacity to carry more
payload all while keeping it affordable.
Additionally, it’s at a price point where
it’s cheap enough that it can be used for
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 35

great power competition-type missions,
he said.
“It’s a great electronic warfare
platform because it will be detected
— especially if it’s emitting, doing
jamming — so you might as well use
something that’s cheap to do that,” he
said. If an “adversary decides to shoot it
down, it’s unmanned, it’s only $10 mil-
lion, $12 million at the most. And you
can certainly buy enough of them that
if you lost one, that’s something you can
recover from compared to even an EA-
6B where you wouldn’t want to lose
any of those.”
General Atomics — the manufacturer
of the Reaper — declined to be inter-
viewed for this story.
Harrison noted that while the deci-
sion to purchase a handful of Reapers
will give the service new persistent
strike capability, the long-term objective
is for the Marine Corps to be able to
gain valuable insight from operating and
sustaining a group 5 unmanned aerial
system via its Marine Air-Ground Task
Force unmanned aircraft system expe-
ditionary, or MUX, program. Group 5
systems are a category of drones that
have the greatest size and endurance
compared with other unmanned aerial
vehicles. The service has requested
$21.16 million in the fiscal year 2020
budget for the program, he said.
“MUX will be a critical capability
for future Marine Corps expeditionary
operations, providing the service persis-
tent intelligence, surveillance and recon-
naissance that is strike capable with
vertical/short take-off and vertical land-
36 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
Tactically Exploited
Reconnaissance
Node (TERN)
ing capability to operate from amphibi-
ous assault ships,” he said. “In addition
to its strike capability, MUX will also
provide airborne escort for existing
platforms, as well as cargo resupply for
distributed operations.”
The funding requested would pro-
vide technical concept maturation and
experimentation for MUX, ensuring the
program remains on track to provide
the Marine Corps with an operational
capability by fiscal year 2026, he said.
The effort includes the development of
system architectures and rapid proto-
typing of critical components to inform
a future program of record, he said.
Harrison added that the MUX pro-
gram has already benefited greatly due
to lessons learned from previous opera-
tions and experiments with Reapers.
Clark noted that it would be possible
for the MQ-9s and MUX systems to
work together in the future.
With “the MQ-9, the benefit of using
it in concert with these aircraft would
be that it has got a really long endur-
ance,” he said. “You could have a Reaper
deploy with it as overwatch ... [with]
armed support.”
In one possible scenario, the Marine
Corps could deploy troops via MV-22
Ospreys from the Philippines to a far-
away location. The tilt-rotor aircraft
could carry them several hundred miles,
but another system — such as the
MUX — could be used to deliver cargo
ashore. The Reaper — which has an
endurance of nearly 24 hours — could
follow and protect it or conduct elec-
tronic warfare support, he explained.
However, Clark noted that he hasn’t
seen a lot of momentum occurring with
the MUX program.
“The problem is that it’s a develop-
mental effort and the Marine Corps
doesn’t have a lot of developmental
money,” he said. Based on compari-
sons to other large, vertical-launch
unmanned aircraft programs, such
as the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency’s Tactically Exploited
Reconnaissance Node, or TERN, effort
that predated MUX, Clark said he
anticipated the aircraft to cost substan-
tially more than a traditional military
helicopter such as the MH-60.
“It made it a difficult proposition for
the Marines to develop and then buy a
lot of these MUX,” he said. “That’s why
the MUX effort has ... sort of stalled.”
However, the Reaper would be able
to conduct some of the missions that
the MUX is envisioned to do, he noted.
“If you can deploy the MQ-9 from a
land base that’s a long way away, you
can use it to do armed reconnaissance
that the MUX might do,” he said. “It
might be able to do some of the ISR
that the MUX might have done. It just
wouldn’t be able to do the cargo carry-
ing job that the MUX can do.”
However, an MV-22 would be able to
take on the cargo delivery mission, he
added.
“The MQ-9 gives them part of that
alternative way, and I think that’s kind
of what they are looking at,” he said. It
could give the Marines a way to make
up for the fact that they might not be
able to develop the MUX, he added.
“Between the MV-22 and the MQ-9,
you’d probably be able to do everything
you could do with the MUX, just not as
well necessarily,” he added.
Congress will have to appropriate the
funds for the new Reapers, but Clark
said he doesn’t expect there to be much
pushback.
What the Marine Corps is doing is
“really intriguing,” he said. “This is really
the first case of a service looking at
using an MQ-9 in more of a high-end
warfare application rather than simply
to do reconnaissance [and] strike in the
Middle East.”
Harrison noted that the Marine
Corps also expects lawmakers to be
amenable to the request, noting that
both the Reaper and MUX efforts fulfill
an important requirement at a lower
DARPA
cost than legacy aircraft. ND
 Army Charts New Path rogue states to the real threat.”
Dickinson said the Army wants to
create air-and-missile defense battalions
For Air and Missile Defense that each have a variety of platforms
at their disposal. These formations will
have “tailored force packages” to counter
BY CONNIE LEE but from a training standpoint as well,” specific threats, he noted. For instance,
To counter new and evolving he said. one unit may have Patriot missile sys-
weapons on the battlefield, the Tom Karako, director of the missile tems and a terminal high-altitude area
Army has created a new roadmap aimed defense project at the Center for Strate- defense system, whereas another may
at beefing up its air-and-missile defense gic and International Studies, said in an pair Patriot with an indirect fire protec-
force. interview that combining these capabili- tion capability.
The document — released in March ties has been a “long time coming.” “We’ve got to have capabilities that
— outlines the service’s vision for its “We need to move away from having are mixed together in order to provide
systems and soldiers from now through these capabilities in stovepipes — and us a capability that can counter every-
2028 to help prepare it for multi- segregated — to having robust and lay- thing … from a UAS up to a ballistic
domain operations. The last time the ered defenses against the full spectrum missile,” he said. “Tiered, layered missile
Army released such a blueprint was of threats,” he said. defense is one of the main messages
about four years ago, Lt. Gen. James Russia is already using a variety of within this document.”
H. Dickinson, commanding general of air-and-missile capabilities to fight The composition of these units will
Army Space and Missile Defense Com- in Ukraine, he said. It is “mixing and be based on specific situations, he said,
mand/Army Forces Strategic Command, matching” unmanned aerial systems, because “the threat may not be the same
told reporters. cruise missiles and artillery, he noted, across the entire battlefield.” The future
“The operational environment has and the United States will need to force will need to be “agile, rapidly tai-
definitely changed and become more adapt. lorable, scalable, and able to fight mul-
complex,” he said. Additionally, there is “There’s no time to be beating around tiple, complex, integrated attacks,” the
“more of a great power competition,” he the bush,” Karako said. “If we’re going to document stated.
noted at the Association of the United adapt to great power competition, then The roadmap is divided into four
States Army’s Global Force Symposium we’re going to have to pivot our active lines of effort. These include develop-
in Huntsville, Alabama. air-and-missile defenses away from just ing air-and-missile defense technologies;
In support of the 2018
national defense strategy, the
Army must have air-and- Indirect fire protection capability
missile defense forces that can
counter advanced adversaries
such as Russia and China, the
roadmap said.
The operational tempo for
these forces “will remain high,
supporting current commit-
ments while simultaneously
developing capability to sup-
port multi-domain operations,”
it noted.
The changing battlefield
is pitting the service against
advanced weapons such as
unmanned aerial systems and
sophisticated ballistic missiles,
Dickinson said. Additionally,
hypersonic vehicles are “loom-
ing,” he noted.
This means the Army will
need to use a mix of coordi-
nated capabilities to counter
these threats, Dickinson said.
“How do you do that? You
synergize it within the docu-
ment so that you’re addressing
each one of those not only
ARMY

from a materiel standpoint,

J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 37
building capability for multi-domain
operations; providing trained and ready
forces; and maintaining forward pres-
ence and building allied and partner
capacity.
Intercontinental ballistic missiles are
the most dangerous aerial threat, the
document stated. The most common
threats include intermediate-range and
theater-class ballistic missiles, cruise mis-
siles, unmanned aerial systems, rolling
airframe missiles, and fixed-wing and
rotary-wing aircraft. Airborne threats are
even more harmful when enemies use
them in integrated attack and from dif-
ferent directions, it said.
The Army’s current forces have assets
to counter ballistic missiles, but it needs
to improve its ability to fight maneuver-
ing forces at close range, the document
noted. Avenger short-range air defense
units currently do not have the surviv-
ability, mobility, range and lethality they
need, the document noted.
To get at this problem,
the Army plans to bring Lt. Gen. James
in the indirect fire protec- H. Dickinson
tion capability, or IFPC.
With a kinetic missile
interceptor and a net-
worked sensor, IFPC will
be a transportable system
that can counter cruise
missiles, unmanned aerial
systems up to 55 pounds
and rolling airframe mis-
siles. Initial operational
capability is slated for fis-
cal year 2023, according
to the roadmap.
The need for more short-range air
defense capabilities has been one of the
service’s top challenges for years. In the
2015 report “National Commission on
the Future of the Army,” servicemem-
bers and experts pointed out that the
active component did not have short-
range air defense battalions and that
those within the National Guard were
occupied in the national capital region.
This left the service unable to provide
protection in high-threat areas such as
Northeast Asia and Eastern Europe, the
report said.
“Short-range air defense represents
another example of an important short-
fall,” it said. “In the post-Cold War era,
the Army envisioned little threat from
the air forces of potential adversaries.
Recent activities in Ukraine and Syria
have demonstrated the threat environ-
38 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
ment has changed.”
The Army’s new air-and-missile
defense roadmap also highlights the ser-
vice’s push to build capacity with part-
ner nations. Dickinson said this is key to
the Army’s global air-and-missile defense
architectures, capabilities, planning and
designs across the world.
The Army is running an exercise
called “Nimble Titan” to explore differ-
ent air-and-missile defense capabilities
from around the globe, he said. About
26 countries are participating in the
event.
“Our ability to continue to work with
our partners and allies in terms of bring-
ing them into our collective defense
building capacity — as well as capabil-
ity — is fundamental to what we do,”
he said. “We’ve never fought alone.”
To build ally and partner capacity, the
service plans to rely on foreign military
sales, building interoperability through
doctrine, organization, training, materiel,
leadership and education, personnel,
facilities and policy, and having persis-
tent engagement at all levels of com-
mand, the document stated.
Building interoperability between
nations is “pretty feasible” when allies
have common U.S.-built weapon sys-
tems such as Patriot, Dickinson noted.
However, the service will still need to
find ways to work with other missile
defense platforms, he said.
“It’s a little more challenging when
you have a weapon system that’s not
necessarily a U.S-built system,” he said.
“But still, at the end of the day we’ve
got to be able to interoperate and inte-
grate with those systems. Because that’s
how you build that collective capabil-
ity.”
To successfully carry out the plans
outlined in the roadmap, Karako
advised the Army to “stay the course
and don’t get distracted.”
“The history of Army air-and-missile
defense is … a windy path of things
that are started and then stopped and
then changed and then restarted and
then stopped,” he said.
However, the Army will need to have
“sustained and predictable funding” for
missile defense capabilities, Dickinson
said. Many of the efforts outlined in
the roadmap are multi-year projects, he
noted.
“We need consistent and predictable
funding [for] more than two years so
that we can keep that development
moving along at the speed of relevance,”
Dickinson said. “That document is
based upon consistent and predictable
and sustained funding so that we will
have these capabilities by 2028.”
President Donald Trump’s fiscal year
2020 budget request called for $4.6
billion in missile defense procurement
including base and over-
seas contingency funds.
One of the major missile
defense efforts outlined
in the request includes
providing $737 million
for the production of 147
Patriot missile segment
enhancement missiles and
40 launcher mod kits.
The roadmap was also
based on the assumption
that current research-
and-development efforts
— such as directed energy
and advanced sensors —
will yield new capabilities by 2028, the
document noted.
“Significant delays to the programmed
delivery dates of these capabilities
will leave the force with capability
and capacity shortfalls, resulting in the
adversary gaining advantage with sys-
tems that will overmatch our defenses,”
it said.
Dickinson said the roadmap could
evolve in the future to accommodate
potential changes in the operational
environment or weapons programs.
“If we have a significant change to
the operating environment, we would
go in and update it,” he said. “If we had
a significant change in one of the pro-
grams — whether it’s a funding or a per-
formance perspective of that program
— that might spur us to put an update
ARMY
out.” ND

Army Uses ‘Mad Scientist’
Gathering to Explore
Emerging Technologies
BY CONNIE LEE
AUSTIN, Texas — To better
understand new technologies
and scientific efforts that could aid
warfighters, the Army is connecting
with industry and academia through its
“Mad Scientist” initiative.
The service is asking itself where the
military challenges and opportunities
are moving forward, Lee Grubbs, Mad
Scientist director, said in an interview
with National Defense on the sidelines
of the program’s annual conference.
“We translate that into real-person
speak — civilian speak. We look at
where analogies of that exist in the
commercial world.”
As the service has shifted focus from
counterinsurgency to large-scale opera-
tions, the Army decided the time was
right to bring back the Mad Scientist
program a few years ago, Grubbs said.
The 2018 national defense strategy puts
a renewed focus on countering great
power adversaries such as Russia and
China.
ISTOCK
The conference was held in April at
the University of Texas-Austin, because
its Cockrell School of Engineering is
one of the top engineering schools in
the country, he said. This year’s themes
were robotic technologies and the
future of space and ethics.
When picking a school where the
conference will take place, the Army
considers which has the resident exper-
tise, Grubbs said. “In this case, you have
a great confluence of robotics capability,
people who were experts in space and
the topics we want to” discuss.
Previous events under the Mad Scien-
tist initiative sometimes included clas-
sified sessions, he noted. However, the
program is now almost entirely open
source-based.
“It’s almost completely collaborative
across academia and industry,” he said.
“We brought it back and changed it
based on where the Army was at the
time.”
Grubbs said the Mad Scientist initia-
tive is not focused on creating programs
of record. Rather, the intent is to “col-
laborate, bring in creative thinkers [and]
explore ideas in different ways.” After
those ideas are coalesced, they are pre-
sented to individuals and organizations
that can carry them forward, he said.
The initiative relies heavily on com-
mercial industry so the Army can
explore emerging technologies where it
is not leading the way, he noted.
“The explosion in biology is not
something that’s happening in a DoD
lab,” he said. “It’s originating in com-
mercial labs looking for where there
might be profit — artificial intelligence,
autonomy, robotics.”
The conference’s themes and topics
are tailored to the Army’s warfight-
ing concepts, Grubbs said. Two years
ago, the event also followed a robotics
theme to align with the release of its
robotics and autonomous systems strat-
egy, he noted.
The strategy detailed the Army’s
push to integrate such systems into its
force to help counter enemies that are
becoming increasingly more capable.
The document focused on address-
ing three challenges, which included
increased speed of adversary actions,
increased use of robotics by adversaries,
and increased congestion in dense urban
environments where communications
will be stretched to the breaking point.
Robotic technology will be a central
aspect of future human-machine col-
laborations and human-machine combat
teams, Robert O. Work, former deputy
defense secretary and senior fellow at
the Center for a New American Secu-
rity, said at the conference.
“Robotics is going to be a force
multiplier. They are being increasingly
used to augment — not just replace
— humans,” he said. “They will work
together as teams.”
Russia already has big ambitions for
its investments in robotics, he said,
noting it is testing systems in combat
in Syria. Moscow has stated its inten-
tion to roboticize one-third of its entire
force structure by 2030, he added.
However, Work expressed doubt about
Russia’s ability to reach this goal.
“I don’t think they have the economic
wherewithal and I don’t think they
have the technical wherewithal,” he
said. “They don’t have the innovative
ecosystem to do that, but this is the
Army’s primary competitor.”
The technology will also be useful for
the United States as it tries to reduce
costs associated with maintaining its
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 39
force structure, he said. Manning units
has “just become so expensive,” he said.
“We’re going to have to have unmanned
systems to replace humans simply
because we won’t be able to afford all
the humans we want.”
During the conference, experts high-
lighted new technologies that could
prove useful in the future. Maruthi
Akella, professor of aerospace engineer-
ing and engineering mechanics at the
University of Texas-Austin, said he is
working with the Defense Department
on initiatives that will help thwart
enemy detection systems. The idea is
to fly drones in a way that would make
the adversary’s technology think there
is a “phantom aircraft.” This would help
distract enemies while the military con-
ducts attacks, he noted.
“The enemy resources are tem-
porarily focused on something
that doesn’t exist and you go and
execute your strike mission,” he
explained.
The weakest part of robotic
systems is usually the commu-
nication channel, which could
be hijacked, spoofed or com-
promised, he said. To secure it,
the algorithm of the channel
must be “hardened” and the way
information is processed must be
changed, he noted.
Akella said some of his work
with the Army and defense con-
tractor General Dynamics has focused
on examining how to make commu-
nication channels between drones and
ground control systems more robust.
For example, the future airborne capa-
bility environment initiative focused
on maintaining secure channels while
ensuring that the systems were still able
to operate quickly and autonomously,
he noted.
The ethics of using artificial intel-
ligence for military purposes has long
been controversial. Ken Fleischmann,
associate professor at the school of
information at UT-Austin, said applying
the technology to the battlefield can be
complex because robots must decide
if someone is a threat before attacking
them.
“We can build AI that does very well
at chess ... or Jeopardy,” he said. How-
ever, that is “very different from having
a robot that is going to behave ethically
on the battlefield.”
The most fundamental consideration
40 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
when applying AI to military systems is
ensuring that users are able to under-
stand why machines make their deci-
sions, he said.
“It’s very important that you under-
stand what is the context, how the
machine is working and what it’s actu-
ally telling you,” Fleischmann said.
“That’s going from transparency to trust
to human agency.”
The conference also addressed GPS
spoofing. The Pentagon has been exam-
ining ways to prevent adversaries from
replacing GPS signals with false or mis-
leading information that could wreak
havoc on battle plans.
Todd Humphreys, associate professor
for aerospace engineering and engineer-
ing mechanics at UT-Austin, said this
“THE INITIATIVE RELIES
HEAVILY ON COMMERCIAL
INDUSTRY SO THE ARMY
CAN EXPLORE EMERGING
TECHNOLOGIES WHERE IT
IS NOT LEADING THE WAY.”
technique is being used by the Russians
to protect the location of President
Vladimir Putin. Humphreys contributed
to “Above Us Only Stars: Exposing GPS
Spoofing in Russia and Syria,” a report
by the think tank C4ADS that explored
this phenomenon. The study found that
spoofing was found to occur in areas
where Putin was present. Moscow is
using techniques that are “extremely
potent,” Humphreys noted.
Ironically, these activities have actual-
ly provided enough information to track
Putin’s locations, creating a “space-based
Vladimir Putin detector,” Humphreys
said.
“His secret service is generating these
[spoofing] signals so that they can kind
of put a protective bubble around him,”
he noted. “But I’m not sure they under-
stood that we could follow that location
from space.”
Using information gathered by the
International Space Station, Humphreys
said he was also able to detect where
spoofing activities were coming from.
They were originating from an airbase
in Syria that the Russians have been
operating out of since 2017, he said.
“When we were listening from the
altitude of the International Space Sta-
tion, the only thing we could hear was
this massive jammer,” he said. “We call
it a ‘spoofer jammer’ because it does a
little bit of spoofing and a little bit of
jamming.”
Hypersonic vehicles are another
technology of interest for the Pentagon.
Alex Roesler, deputy director of the
integrated military systems center at
Sandia National Laboratories, said dur-
ing the conference that the lab is exam-
ining ways to integrate autonomous
capabilities into hypersonic systems.
This would help the military
increase its lethality, engage
mobile targets and use systems
that are able to attack on their
own, he noted.
It would also cut down on the
time needed to conduct mission
and flight planning for hypersonic
tests, he said. Today’s tests require
a large number of personnel and
weeks of planning. However, with
autonomous capabilities, this pro-
cess could be reduced to a few
minutes, he noted.
“The analysis is time consum-
ing,” he said. “What we think is
needed are solutions that are arti-
ficial intelligence- and machine learn-
ing-based that automates that analysis.”
An autonomous hypersonic vehicle
could also develop new capabilities by
being put through virtual wargames, he
noted.
“Set up a virtual environment, let a
machine play out thousands upon thou-
sands of hypersonic engagements and
have it learn from those what tactics
and strategies work and don’t work,”
he said. “Then see if you can take that
intelligence and embed it onto the plat-
form.”
The Mad Scientist program also hosts
crowdsourcing events, Lee said. For
example, one recent event was geared
toward ideas on how to leverage AI
for non-lethal operations such as intel-
ligence gathering and mission prepara-
tion, he noted.
“Mad Scientist [isn’t] just conferenc-
es,” he said. “It is a full-time exploration
of the operational environment from
today to the future.” ND
 BY BRYAN BYRD, ALEXANDER HASTINGS,
Government Contracting Insights
JENNIFER PLITSCH AND CARL WIERSUM
Changes in IP Rights May be on the Horizon
Q Recent findings by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology could limit the scope of U.S. government rights to
intellectual property, to the benefit of contractors.
Over the past year, NIST has studied strategies for maximiz-
ing innovation through government-funded research. In April,
the organization published its findings in NIST Special Publi-
cation 1234, “Return on Investment Initiative for Unleashing
American Innovation.”
The report recognizes that “[s]ince the 19th Century, Ameri-
can economic prosperity and national security have been based
upon innovation — the process of invention and commercial-
ization of new ideas into products and services in the market-
place. … America’s future competitiveness will be driven in
part by our ability to capture the economic and national secu-
rity benefits of emerging technologies.”
NIST’s findings are designed to inform future policy decisions
throughout the federal government — including the Defense
Department — in order to better pave the path between feder-
ally funded invention and marketplace commercialization.
These future policy decisions could have tremendous
impact. The U.S. government invested approximately $150 bil-
lion in research and development in 2017 alone, representing
about one-third of all U.S. R&D spending.
The NIST report presents 15 findings, organized under the
umbrella of five strategies from President Donald Trump’s
initiative to promote economic growth and national security
by improving the transfer of technology from federally funded
R&D to the private sector.
The five strategies include: identifying regulatory impedi-
ments and administrative improvements in federal technology
transfer policies and practices; increasing engagement with
private sector technology development experts and investors;
building a more entrepreneurial R&D workforce; support-
ing innovative tools and services for technology transfer; and
improving understanding of global science-and-technology
trends and benchmarks.
Federally funded inventions produced by contractors and
grantees are subject to a government use license, which gen-
erally provides that the U.S. government has a nonexclusive,
nontransferable, irrevocable, paid-up license to practice the
invention or have the invention practiced throughout the
world by or on behalf of the government. Government use
includes direct use by the agency for its own acquisition pur-
poses, potentially even with a different contractor.
But questions have been raised about the scope and purpose
of the license, including whether it could potentially be used
to obtain discounts on products developed from federally
funded R&D.
Indeed, NIST found that: “according to stakeholders, the
scope of the ‘government use license’ is not well-defined. Mar-
ket uncertainty is created by the lack of a clear definition of
‘government use’ that is limited to use directly by the govern-
ment — or a government contractor in the performance of an
agreement with the government — for a government purpose
only, including continued use in research and development
by the government. The scope of the government use license
should not extend to goods and services made, sold, or other-
wise distributed by third parties if the government — or a gov-
ernment contractor in the performance of an agreement with
the government — does not directly use, provide, or consume
those goods and services.”
These findings are a positive development that will further
underscore the limited scope of the government use license in
federally funded inventions.
March-in rights are the government’s rights, in certain
circumstances, to require a contractor, assignee, or exclusive
licensee of a subject invention to grant a license to a third par-
ty if necessary to achieve “practical application” of the subject
invention. Practical application includes utilizing the invention
and making its benefits “available to the public on reasonable
terms.”
These rights are subject to a number of conditions and an
extensive regulatory process. While the government has tra-
ditionally interpreted “reasonable terms” to mean reasonable
licensing terms, some commentators have argued that it should
include reasonable price terms such that march-in rights could
be used as a price control mechanism.
NIST found that: “according to stakeholders, the circumstanc-
es under which the government may exercise march-in rights
are not well-defined. Market
“These future policy uncertainty is created by the
lack of a clear definition of
decisions could have the use of march-in rights
that is consistent with statute,
tremendous impact.” rather than as a regulatory
mechanism for the federal
government to control the market price of goods and services.”
The report mentioned the potential opportunity to change
regulations to permit an agency to conduct an informal con-
sultation with a contractor or licensee in order to better under-
stand the nature of the issue and consider potential alternatives
before deciding to proceed with a potential march-in action.
NIST’s analysis of march-in rights is largely a positive devel-
opment that demonstrates the importance of ensuring that
such rights remain limited to the enumerated statutory bases
and are not expanded in a way that could curtail future private
investment in government-funded inventions.
As NIST has noted, its report “informs, but does not pre-
scribe, policy decisions.” Still, the document provides valuable
insight into potential priorities throughout the federal govern-
ment, including the Defense Department, and may serve to
spur future regulatory, legislative or administrative action —
presenting continued, significant opportunities for input from
industry and other interested parties along the way. ND
Jennifer Plitsch is a partner, Alexander Hastings is a special counsel,
and Bryan Byrd and Carl Wiersum are associates at Covington & Burl-
ing LLP.
J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 41
Ethics Corner BY DANIEL M. HARTNETT
Reduce Risks in Overseas Third-Party Relationships
Q Small- and medium-sized defense companies face potentially
significant legal, regulatory, financial and reputational risks
when engaging with overseas third parties. These risks stem
from increased corruption exposure due to the nature of the
defense industry, the limited resources smaller companies have
at their disposal and the inherent challenges in screening over-
seas third parties.
While engaging with overseas third parties may be a neces-
sity, it also potentially increases a company’s exposure to cor-
ruption. Overseas contracted defense work is often carried out
in countries known for this type of problem. Furthermore, the
work is often in an industry that is highly susceptible to cor-
ruption, such as logistics or construction support. Overseas
third parties can also have significant exposure to government
officials, thus increasing the chances of bribery or other corrupt
practices.
Properly identifying these risks prior to an engagement can
pose a challenge for small- and medium-sized defense firms.
Smaller companies often lack the resources to fund a large-scale
due diligence program. Even if a company conducts a thorough
third-party screening prior to an engagement, it may later run
into problems due to a failure to monitor high-risk relationships
after a third party is onboarded.
Smaller defense firms also face risk due to the inherent dif-
ficulty in performing due diligence on overseas third parties.
They may lack the in-house foreign language expertise required
for investigations. Adverse information can often only be found
in local language media sources, while legal and regulatory
databases are frequently only accessible to those who not only
know how to find them but are also able to read the content.
Regional cultural knowledge may also be required to provide
important contextual understanding for any potential red flags
identified.
Taken together, these challenges may increase smaller defense
contractors’ chances of running afoul of anti-bribery regulations,
such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Stating that an
alleged act of corruption was carried out by a third party, and
not the firm directly, is not a strong defense, as the ongoing
joint U.S.-U.K.-France investigation into alleged Airbus third-
party bribery shows.
Despite these challenges, however, smaller defense com-
panies do not have to break the bank by setting up elaborate
and costly due diligence programs. Instead, they can develop a
defensible and cost-effective program that mitigates much of
the risk posed by overseas third-party relationships.
A one-size-fits-all approach is neither effective nor efficient.
Defense firms engage with a wide variety of third parties, such
as suppliers, service providers, distributors, agents and buyers —
each of which presents its own type of risk. Developing a risk
assessment allows various third parties to be segmented into
low, medium and high risk. This assessment should use objec-
tive criteria that is relevant to the company. Criteria should
include, at a minimum, the industry sector, jurisdiction and type
of the third party; the nature of the contractor’s relationship;
42 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
and the third party’s relationship with government entities.
Use the assessment to create a systemic approach to screen-
ing third parties according to the contractor’s risk tolerance.
Avoid spreading limited resources too thin by focusing on low-
risk relationships. Instead, prioritize vetting the riskiest partners.
It is key, however, to identify some level of screening for all
third parties.
Conduct the prescribed level of due diligence prior to any
engagement. Once a program is in place, ensure that it is fol-
lowed across the enterprise. Avoid allowing subjective opinions
to override established policies unless cleared by informed lead-
ership.
Leverage knowledgeable and foreign language-capable inves-
tigators. Properly screening overseas third parties requires not
only local jurisdictional knowledge and foreign language capa-
bilities, but also cultural awareness. Ensure some level of foreign
language search is part of any screening effort, especially for
high-risk third parties. Pleading innocence due to an inability
to understand foreign language reports about corruption allega-
tions involving a new overseas supplier is a weak legal defense.
Consider using a third-party management system. Such sys-
“Failure to establish a defensible due dili-
gence program will all but guarantee a future
legal, regulatory or reputational headache.”
tems help improve staff efficiency and thereby reduce operat-
ing costs. They also ensure consistency of compliance efforts.
Furthermore, centralized control of all due diligence records
will help a contractor in the event of an audit.
Conduct ongoing monitoring of select third-party relation-
ships. This should be done according to both the company’s
risk tolerance and the risk profile of a third party. Prioritize
monitoring high-risk relationships over low-risk ones. For exam-
ple, third parties in jurisdictions or industries considered highly
corrupt should receive the lion’s share of monitoring efforts.
When appropriate, consider conducting periodic re-screening of
critical, but risky, relationships.
While no compliance program will eliminate a company’s
corruption exposure stemming from overseas third-party rela-
tionships, failure to establish a defensible due diligence program
will all but guarantee a future legal, regulatory or reputational
headache. However, efforts to mitigate these risks need not
drive a small defense company into the red. Instead, relying
upon a cost-effective, risk-based due diligence program that
works smarter, not harder, can help achieve a satisfactory out-
come. ND
Daniel M. Hartnett is an associate managing director in the compliance
risk and diligence division of Kroll, a division of Duff & Phelps, where
he advises corporate clients on third-party risk management. He can
be reached at daniel.hartnett@duffandphelps.com.
 News

WID Supports
All-Girl Robotics Team
Q Wearing custom-designed t-shirts and beaming smiles, the
12-year-old girls of the “Fusion Four” robotics team from Fair-
fax County, Virginia, schools accepted a $4,000 donation from
Women In Defense to fund their trip to Detroit for a major
robotics competition.
The Fusion Four team includes seventh-graders Reira Er-
ickson, Emma Hrabak, Devon Rudolph and Minah Sisco. The
group attended the 2019 FIRST (For Inspiration and Recogni-
tion of Science and Technology) Lego League World Champi-
onship in late April. Their division included teams of third- to
seventh-graders.
The $4,000 check — which was given in early April — was
presented at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Vir-
ginia, where Erickson, Hrabak and Sisco are students; Rudolph
attends Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax. WID, an affiliate
of the National Defense Industrial Association, also provided
the team with custom t-shirts.
What makes Fusion Four special is not only their interest in
robotics and science, technology, engineering and mathematics,
or STEM, subjects but also their ambition and initiative, WID
Executive Director Rachel McCaffrey said before a crowd of
parents and school administrators.
“These girls are the problem solvers,” McCaffrey said.
“They’re not looking to anyone else to solve the problems that
face our country or that face them at school.”
The Fusion Four team accepts a $4,000 donation from Women In Defense. Standing
behind the check, left to right, are team members Reira Erickson, Emma Hrabak,
Devon Rudolph and Minah Sisco. Adults with the girls are, from left to right: Penny
Gros, interim principal of Lake Braddock Secondary School; Rachel McCaffrey, execu-
tive director of Women In Defense; Ryan McElveen and Elizabeth Schultz, Fairfax
County School Board members; Tameka Brown, associate director of Women In
Defense; and Ilryong Moon, Fairfax County School Board member.
The girls, with the support of teachers, coaches and family,
designed a robot made of Legos to tackle problems associ-
ated with making untethered space walks safer for astronauts.
In December, their idea beat 81 other proposals from teams
composed primarily of boys, making Fusion Four the Northern
Virginia and District of Columbia representative in the world
championship contest.
“What really makes you guys great is you’re a team,” McCaf-
frey said. Together “you weren’t afraid to try and solve these
problems facing you in this competition.”
Encouraging young women to pursue STEM subjects and
careers is a key WID objective, and McCaffrey said this is just
the beginning for the Fusion Four.
“These are the young women who 15, 20, 25 years from
now will lead our country,” she said. “They’re not going to ask
someone else, ‘How are you going to fix this problem for me?’
They’re going to say, ‘Let me tell you how we’re going to solve
that problem.’” ND

Magazine Nominated for Multiple Awards

DUNFORD BESTOWED
EISENHOWER AWARD
Q Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, receives NDIA’s annual
Dwight D. Eisenhower Award during a dinner at the
NDIA / MELANIE YU
Q The National
Defense Indus-
trial Association’s
monthly magazine,
National Defense, was
recently nominated
by the Washington,
D.C. Chapter of the
Society of Profes-
sional Journalists for two prestigious awards.
Editor-in-Chief Stew Magnuson was selected as a finalist for editorial writ-
ing in the trade publication category for his September 2018 column, “The
STEM Pipeline Will Only Grow Smaller.” Additionally, Creative Director
Brian Taylor was selected as a finalist in the front-page design category for
three magazine covers: February 2018, May 2018 and December 2018.
Winners will be announced in June during an award dinner held at the
National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, Magnuson has also been named a finalist for the 2019
Aerospace Media Awards. He has been nominated for his story, “The Future

Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, in May.
From left to right: Richard D. McConn, chair of NDIA’s
board; Dunford; and retired Gen. Hawk Carlisle,
president and CEO of NDIA.
of Airpower: New Age of Autonomous Jets” in the best UAV/unmanned
systems category.
Winners will be announced during an award dinner at the Aero Club de
France in Paris in June. ND

J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 43
 JULY 30-Aug 1
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Procurement Division Meeting
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JUNE Washington, DC
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2019 Global Explosive
Washington, DC
Ordnance Disposal (EOD)
TrainingSystems.org/CapitolHill
Symposium & Exhibition
12-13 North Bethesda, MD
Training & Simulation Industry 11 NDIA.org/GlobalEOD
Symposium (TSIS) 2019 10th Annual Integrated Air and See ad on page 47
Orlando, FL Missile Defense Symposium
TrainingSystems.org/TSIS Laurel, MD
NDIA.org/IAMD
13-15
Ground Vehicle Systems
See ad on page 46
Engineering and Technology
Symposium and Advanced
13 15 Planning Briefings for Industry
WID National Conference NDIA Greater Hampton Roads Novi, MI
Arlington, VA Chapter’s Joint Warfighting NDIA-mich.org/events/gvsets
WomenInDefense.net/WIDConference19 Forum (JWF)
Newport News, VA
See ad on page 45
NDIA.org/GHRForum
22
NDIA Great Lakes 10th
19-20 Anniversary Celebration
How Washington Works 23-24 Milwaukee, WI
Reston, VA CBRN Defense Conference &
NDIA.org/HWWJune Exhibition
Wilmington, DE
NDIA.org/cbrn 26-28
25-26 See ad on page 46 iFest 2019
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Missile Defense Agency Small TrainingSystems.org/iFEST
Business Programs Conference 24-26
Huntsville, AL 2019 Department of The Navy
NDIA.org/TNmda Gold Coast SEPTEMBER
San Diego, CA

26-27
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TRIAD
Manufacturing Division Meeting
Chantilly, VA
Washington, DC
NDIA.org/ManufacturingJune
25 9
Central Florida 10-Year Gala UK-US-Canada-Australia
Orlando, FL Quadrilateral Conference
CFL-WID.org London, UK
NDIA.org/Quad

44 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
11-12 23-27 22-24
Fall 2019 Integrated Program Defense Systems Precision Strike
Management Division Meeting Acquisition Management Technology Symposium
Denver, CO (DSAM) Course Laurel, MD
NDIA.org/IPMFall Arlington, VA Classified
Precisionstrike.org

11-12 OCTOBER
MBDi Workshop 29-31
Arlington, VA 21-23 Multinational
NDIA.org/MBDSept 2019 Fall Joint Conference
NDIA/AIA Industrial Dresden, Germany
NDIA.org/MNC2020
16-18 Security Conference
2019 Undersea Warfare Scottsdale, AZ
Technology Fall Conference NDIA.org/ISCFall NOVEMBER
Groton, CT
NDIA.org/uswfall 21-24 12-14
See ad on page 47 22nd Systems and 35th Annual National Logistics
Mission Engineering Conference Forum
18-19 Tampa, FL Tampa, FL
Manufacturing NDIA.org/sme NDIA.org/Logistics19
Division Meeting
Oak Ridge, TN 22-24
Expeditionary
Warfare Conference
Annapolis, MD

J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 45
 Calendar

10TH ANNUAL
INTEGRATED AIR & CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL,
MISSILE DEFENSE RADIOLOGICAL AND
SYMPOSIUM NUCLEAR (CBRN) DEFENSE
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION
Defense Against Emerging Threats

July 11 | Laurel, MD | NDIA.org/IAMD July 23 – 24 | Wilmington, DE | NDIA.org/CBRN

2019
HYPERSONICS
CAPABILITIES CONFERENCE

Enabling Technological Superiority:

'HðQH'HYHORS'HOLYHU

July 30 – August 1 | West Lafayette, IN | NDIA.org/Hyper19

46 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U N E 2 0 1 9
 2019
GLOBAL EXPLOSIVE
ORDNANCE DISPOSAL
SY M P O S I U M & E X H I B I T I O N

Innovation for the Future

August 6 – 8 | North Bethesda, MD | NDIA.org/GlobalEOD

2019
UNDERSEA WARFARE
TECHNOLOGY
FALL CONFERENCE

Preserving Undersea Superiority –

A System of Systems

September 16 – 18 | Groton, CT | NDIA.org/USWFall

J U N E 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 47
Next Month

U.S. Hypersonics
■ Hypersonic missiles —
which are highly maneuver-
able and can travel at speeds
of Mach 5 or faster — are a
top priority for the Pentagon.
In our next issue, National
Defense examines how the ser-
vices are pursuing these types
of systems.

Adversary Hypersonics Artificial Intelligence

■ The Defense Department has identified Russia and China as ■ The Department of the Navy is exploring ways it can
great power competitors. Both nations are developing hyper- employ AI to enhance autonomy and decision-making. The
sonic weapons that could pose a threat to U.S. military assets technology could be a way to reduce the cognitive burden on
and the homeland. sailors and Marines.

Ground Robotics Arctic Strategy

■ The Army is asking for industry’s help as it seeks new ■ Sea ice is melting in the Arctic, opening up shipping lanes

WIKI COMMONS
unmanned platforms to extend the force’s range and lethality and routes to natural resources that were not previously acces-
on the battlefield. The service is eyeing a number of remotely- sible. The Coast Guard has a new strategy to increase its role
operated vehicles and weapon systems. in the region and counter foreign rivals.

JUNE 2019 Index of Advertisers

Interact with the companies whose products and services are advertised in National Defense.
ADVERTISER INTERACT PAGE NO.
Collins Aerospace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .collinsaerospace.com/gnc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Inside back cover
Federal Resources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .federalresources.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside front cover
Leidos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .leidos.com/autonomy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Maxim Defense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.maximdefense.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Oshkosh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oshkoshdefense.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
SKB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .skbcases.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Back cover

ADVERTISING
For information on advertising in National Defense or one of NDIA’s electronic offerings, contact:

Senior Vice President Sales Director Sales Coordinator

Meetings & Business Partnerships Kathleen Kenney Alex Mitchell
Christine M. Klein (703) 247-2576 (703) 247-2568
NDIA’S BUSINESS AND
(703) 247-2593 KKenney@NDIA.org AMitchell@NDIA.org
TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE
CKlein@NDIA.org Fax: (703) 522-4602 Fax: (703) 522-4602
NationalDefenseMagazine.org

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call our membership department at 703-522-1820 or visit us on the web at NDIA.org/Membership.

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