Government Executive - Authors - George Cahlink

Restoring Hope

George Cahlink — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Strong management, innovation and a few lucky breaks are allowing workers to rebuild the Pentagon faster than expected.

sk Will Colston the age of his infant son, and he's quick to reply, "He's 157 days old." Colston pauses for a few seconds for a rough calculation and then adds, "That's about six months old."

Colston, project manager for the team rebuilding the Pentagon after last fall's terrorist attack, measures his life in days-not months or weeks-since Sept. 11. That also happens to be the day his wife gave birth to their child, Noah. Days, hours and minutes are crucial for the roughly 1,000 construction workers who have vowed that Defense employees will be back at work in the refurbished outer ring of the Pentagon on the one-year anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. The remainder of the damaged building will be repaired by next spring.

"The Sept. 11 goal serves as our vision. It has forced us to put any problems on the table and get them resolved quickly," says Colston, who, like many of the project's managers, regularly pulls six-day workweeks that stretch well over 12 hours a day. Unwavering resolve among the construction team has been critical to speedily rebuilding the Pentagon. Equally vital have been a series of contract reforms, quick thinking by managers and a few lucky breaks that have allowed the effort, aptly named Rising Phoenix, to move several weeks ahead on its ambitious schedule.

Built hastily during World War II, the Defense Department headquarters has become a crumbling fortress that fails to meet local, state or federal building codes. Since 1993, the 5.5-million-square-foot Pentagon has been undergoing a $3 billion, two-decade renovation designed to bring it into the 21st century. The building comprises five, 1-million-square-foot "wedges" that will be gutted and rebuilt successively so that at any one time no more than a fifth of the Pentagon's workers have to be relocated. Each wedge houses about 5,000 employees.

On Sept. 11, Pentagon construction crews were doing final, touch-up work on the first wedge after more than three years of renovation. Some Defense employees already were moving into new office spaces. "We were down to checking the marble [floor] tile for cracks," says David Kersey, project manager for British construction firm AMEC Inc., which held a $280 million contract for the Wedge 1 renovation. Fewer than 100 AMEC workers and subcontractors were onsite, while a new construction team, led by Hensel-Phelps Construction Co. of Greeley, Colo., was setting up shop to begin the next round of renovations.

Hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 tore into the Pentagon at 350 miles per hour, tearing through three of the building's five rings before exploding in a fireball that killed 125 Pentagon workers and 64 airline passengers. (No construction workers died.) The plane hit at a 45-degree angle, causing it to travel through both the newly renovated Wedge 1 and a portion of Wedge 2 that was awaiting renovation. All told, about 400,000 square feet were damaged by flames, smoke and water from a fire that burned for two days.

Lee Evey, program manager for the Pentagon renovation project, says that if the building had not been under repair, there could have been 10,000 Defense employees in Wedges 1 and 2. Instead, there were only 4,600 workers in the 2 million square feet of offices, some having just moved into new Wedge 1 offices while others were waiting to move out of Wedge 2.

Several improvements related to the renovation also kept down the death toll. "The building performed phenomenally. The changes we made as a result of the renovation ensured there were as few casualties as possible," Evey says. For example, a newly installed sprinkler system quickly squelched the fire in Wedge 1. Wedge 2 did not yet have a sprinkler system, and the fire burned there for nearly two days. In some areas it burned so hot that windows melted into puddles.

Structural enhancements also proved their worth. A newly installed reinforced steel structure outfitted with Kevlar webbing kept Wedge I standing for about 35 minutes, despite bearing the brunt of the attack. Hundreds of workers were able to escape before the section collapsed. Also, the blast-resistant windows installed in the outer ring of the renovated wedge at a cost of $10,000 apiece likely prevented injuries or even deaths that might have resulted from flying debris.

Managing Chaos

Recovery operations by firefighters, federal investigators and disaster experts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency required sifting through more than 10,000 tons of limestone façade and twisted steel to collect evidence and locate victims. Suddenly, managers for the federal government's largest building renovation were thrust into the role of supporting recovery crews at the nation's second-largest disaster site. "It seemed chaotic, but there was a jumbled order to it," says Evey. Initially, recovery crews had predicted it would take as long as eight weeks to sort through rubble and identify any remains, but the job was done in two weeks due in part to support provided by the renovation workers.

The experience of Pentagon renovation program managers in contingency planning and contracting for a large project also paid dividends in the recovery effort. Managers ordered floodlights and power generators for the recovery crew shortly after the plane hit, correctly anticipating that the work would continue around the clock for several days. Also, the managers quickly distributed architectural drawings to recovery crews, enabling them to navigate the wreckage. The program office even asked a local printer to be on call 24 hours a day, in case extra copies were needed.

When the FBI needed new, clean dumpsters for preserving evidence, program managers ordered them quickly from suppliers already on contract for the renovation. When the FBI requested construction of a more stable road leading into the recovery site, renovation managers had no trouble getting gravel delivered. They also proposed a simple solution when recovery crews complained that crash site security checks were slowing delivery trucks: Ask FBI agents to ride shotgun to get each truck through faster. Beginning in mid-October, Pentagon construction crews were back on site to demolish and remove damaged portions of the building.

Estimates suggested it would take as long as eight months to remove the debris and begin rebuilding. But construction crews, working 24-hour days, seven days a week, had the site ready for rebuilding before Thanksgiving. Now, renovation managers face their greatest challenge-quickly rebuilding the damaged portion of the building without scaling back or delaying the Pentagon's long overdue modernization project.

A New Approach

Three days after the attack, Pentagon renovation officials made it clear they would continue the project while rebuilding. They awarded Hensel-Phelps, a Colorado-based construction firm, the first installment of a $758 million contract to renovate the remaining 4 million square feet (Wedges 2 to 5) by 2014.Originally, the contract was to be awarded Sept. 11. Hensel-Phelps and the Wedge 1 contractor, AMEC, agreed to jointly rebuild Wedge 1 and the damaged portion of Wedge 2. The repair costs could top $700 million. The success of those agreements-and ultimately, the rebuilding and renovation of the Pentagon-will hinge on a series of contract reforms made in recent years by project managers.

Five years ago, Evey, a former Air Force and NASA contracting chief who had no construction experience, took over the Pentagon renovation project and found a "broken" program management structure. Since 1993, renovation teams had missed most of their key deadlines, lawmakers had frozen spending because of cost overruns, and contracts had been awarded based only on cost, not performance. Evey found the cost overruns and delays largely were attributable to an acquisition strategy that was as outdated as the building's electrical system, which had not met code since 1953. The traditional contracting approach to federal construction, known as "design-bid-build," required hiring a designer to spend months drawing up highly detailed renovation plans. The design plans for Wedge 1 took eight months to create and were more than 3,500 pages long. The bidding was then opened to builders who offered firm, fixed-price bids for the work, which went to the lowest bidder, with little consideration for past performance.

Michael Sullivan, deputy program manager, says design-bid-build contracts often create adversarial relationships between contractors and clients. With fixed-price contracts, the only way a firm can make additional money, Sullivan says, is by making changes in the design. "It forces them to find faults to make money. That's not the type of relationship you want with your contractor," says Sullivan. As a result, the Pentagon renovation project is now using design-build contracts, a popular tool in the private sector, for future renovations. The design-build approach saves time, by scrapping lengthy design documents and open bid competitions, and holds contractors accountable for their work.

Unlike traditional construction deals, design-build contracts cover only cost and materials. The contractor can only turn a profit by earning an incentive worth 10 percent of the contract value if it meets quarterly performance goals. All design-build contracts are audited by the Defense Contract Audit Agency to ensure that labor and material charges do not hide profits. The government and contractor evenly share any cost overruns that do not exceed 10 percent of the contract's cost. The contractor covers any overruns beyond 10 percent. Any savings are also split, with 70 percent going back to the government and 30 percent to the contractor. Sullivan says design-build contracts will help keep both the renovation and rebuilding work on schedule because they tie a contractor's profits directly to their performance. Already, he says, design-build contracting has proved successful in its first test, saving Defense $1 million in building the Pentagon's $99 million remote delivery facility, which opened on time last year.

Tom Schwieger, operations manager for Hansel-Phelps, says the design-build contract has been even more valuable in light of Sept. 11. Hansel-Phelps, poised to win the Pentagon renovation contract well before the attacks, expected to begin work on 1 million square feet of space in Wedge 2 by Dec. 1, 2001. However, only about 300,000 square feet of that space was ready for renovation in December because some had been destroyed and the rest was needed to house workers displaced from Wedge 1 by damage from the attack. Schwieger says the contract gives Hansel-Phelps the flexibility to begin renovating some of the space and to delay rebuilding the rest. Under the old contracting methods, he says, making any changes to the original plan would have taken months, because it would have required modifying the contract. "Now, everything does not have to be suggested, bid and approved," he adds.

Sullivan says that allowing contractors to offer designs plans can lead to better use of building space. For example, the Pentagon's original renovation plans called for modular furniture that needed to be taken apart to be moved. Hensel-Phelps came up with reconfigured office plans including freestanding furniture and better placement of lighting and utilities wires. "Flexibility is so critical in this building, because military personnel rotate in and out at least every three or four years," he says.

Looking Ahead

Building contractors aren't the only ones providing project managers with insight into improvements that can be made during ongoing renovations. Several task forces, such as the Building Evaluation Task Force Group and the Pentagon Force Protection Project Action Team, have been created to interview workers who were in the building on Sept. 11, review building policies, and consult with outside experts on building safety and security.

Among the results: All wedges now will have luminescent fire exit signs and arrows along baseboards rather than electric exit signs over doorways. Those in the building Sept. 11 complained it was difficult to see signs above doors while they were crawling out of the smoke-filled corridors on their hands and knees. "None of [the suggestions] for the most part are particularly Earth-shaking, but all summed up together we think they'll make this building significantly better," says Evey.

Meanwhile, Congress has become a backer of the Pentagon renovation project. After imposing spending caps and refusing to adjust construction funding to account for inflation in the past, lawmakers following the attack pledged an additional $795 million to the renovation work, in addition to emergency rebuilding funds, so that the Pentagon can be completely restored by 2010. With those additional dollars, a better contracting strategy and safety upgrades, Evey may not be joking about his new motto for the Wedge 1 rebuilding: "It's so much better the second time around."

]]>

Showdown on Shutdowns

George Cahlink — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Base closure panel polls reaction to a plan that collides with more than 200,000 military and civilian jobs.

The Defense Department wants to save $50 billion during the next two decades by closing 33 major bases and realigning scores of other military installations from Maine to Hawaii. The Pentagon forwarded its recommendations to the independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission in May. The plan would eliminate more than 200,000 military and civilian jobs at bases that would shrink or shut down and create almost 200,000 jobs at other facilities. The commission is reviewing the plan at public hearings across the country and will send a final list to the president by Sept. 8. If the president approves the list, Congress has 45 legislative days to reject it, otherwise the bases will start closing and moving late this year.

California, which lost tens of thousands of jobs in past BRAC rounds, would fare better this time, losing about 2,000 jobs and no major bases.

The Air Force would close and realign two remote bases in the Dakotas. Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., would lose its 2,645 jobs, but remain open for future use. Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., the state's second-largest employer with 3,852 jobs, would close.

The Navy would move submarine operations out of New England by closing the New London Submarine Base in Connecticut (8,460 jobs) and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine (4,510 jobs).

Indiana would gain more than 3,000 civilian jobs if more than 20 Defense Finance Accounting Service operations nationwide are consolidated at a federal facility in Indianapolis.

In Texas, the services would close the Red River Army Depot, the Air Force's Brooks City Base and Naval Station Ingleside. Still, 6,150 jobs would move to the Lone Star State.

More than 20,000 jobs in the Washington area would move to Fort Belvoir and Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia and Fort Meade, Md.

In Georgia, Fort Gillem, Fort McPherson and the Naval Supply School Athens would close. But the state would gain 7,423 military jobs as thousands move to Fort Benning and Submarine Base Kings Bay.

Winners & Losers

States with the most jobs (civilian, military and contractor) won or lost as a result of the latest round of the BRAC process.

Winners:
Maryland	Georgia	Texas	Colorado
+9,293	+7,423	+6,150	+4,917
Losers:
Connecticut	Maine	District of Columbia	Alaska
-8,586	-6,938	-6,496	-4,619

All told, the Pentagon recommends relocating 133,769 military jobs and 84,801 civilian jobs.

For a state-by-state look at bases slated for closure and realignment, go to:
http://www.govexec.com/pdfs/brac2005.pdf

]]>

Oversight Overhaul

George Cahlink — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The Defense Contract Management Agency remakes itself to catch up with customers and changes in what the military is buying.

Shortly after taking command of the Defense Contract Management Agency in late 2003, Air Force Maj. Gen. Darryl Scott met with senior staffers to learn the results of the agency's customer service surveys. They slid seven pages of handwritten notes on a legal pad across a conference table to their new boss and asked him if he recognized them. Scott shrugged his shoulders. He had no idea.

As it turned out, he was looking at the notes from a DCMA customer service interview with him in 2001 when he was Air Force deputy assistant secretary for contracting. Scott had delivered a tough assessment of DCMA, outlining numerous flaws and concluding that working with the agency was frustrating. "We were too internally focused. We cared more about our own process than we did in results and service," Scott says now.

He took aim at the problem almost immediately. Just months into the job, he got word that an Air Force space program monitored by DCMA was $1.5 billion over budget and two years behind schedule. "What are we doing? Is DCMA asleep at the switch?" Scott asked. No, DCMA analysts told him, they knew about the potential overruns, but never notified the Air Force because notification wasn't required under the agency's rigid operating manual, known as the One Book. Scott fired off an e-mail to all DCMA employees last March, titled "Bye-Bye, One Book-Hello, Performance Management." He told employees that henceforth they would be judged on how well they met customer needs, not how well they followed strict policies in the book. "This is not about processes, waivers and deviations-it's about satisfying customer demands," Scott wrote. To underscore that point, he also announced that the One Book would be abolished in 90 days.

The Defense Contract Management Agency is a largely civilian, 11,500-person support organization that ensures that large Defense procurements-mainly of weapon systems-meet schedule, budget and performance requirements. The agency monitors contractors, tests products and advises program managers. Its quality assurance specialists work in contractors' factories to make sure that no shortcuts are taken in manufacturing weapons. DCMA contract administrators help Defense program managers write and enforce highly technical contracts. The agency boasts that it keeps an eye on nearly 16,000 Defense contractors that hold 317,000 contracts worth about $932 billion at hundreds of company facilities and government offices worldwide. DCMA supports about 60 percent of all Defense contracts. It also is paid by NASA to monitor some of its contracts.

To improve customer service, DCMA leaders recently reorganized the agency to match product lines, instead of geography. The agency is hiring new workers and launching initiatives to improve services. But its workforce is shrinking, and contractors are reluctant to change. What's more, Defense contracts are evolving. Instead of weapons systems and equipment, services now are the bulk of Defense procurement, especially in war zones, and buying them requires a new set of contract management skills.

Tightening the Reins

For years, DCMA employees worked in 800 locations, mainly in the United States. Most worked at contractor facilities or in one of 47 field offices responsible for programs and contractors in their regions. Another 400 were permanently stationed overseas. All offices and employees east of the Mississippi River were managed by the agency's Eastern district headquarters in Boston, while those west of the Mississippi were managed by Western district headquarters in Carson, Calif. Those offices reported to agency headquarters in Springfield, Va. DCMA only became an agency in 2001 after being a command within the Defense Logistics Agency for more than a decade.

Scott says the geographic alignment made sense when the command first was formed in the early 1990s. Then, weapon systems generally were built by a single contractor and managed by one program office in the same area. But as weapon systems have become more complex, they frequently involve dozens of contractors in many locations, sometimes reporting to multiple Defense program offices. For example, 35 DCMA field offices support contractors building the Joint Strike Fighter, while 17 support contractors building the Army's Future Combat Systems. "Customers were having to talk to every single office. What they wanted was a single contact within DCMA," says Scott.

In April, the agency announced plans to eliminate its decentralized management structure next year and replace it with one that groups employees into five commodity sectors: aeronautical; space and missile systems; shipboard and electronic systems; ground combat and support systems; and systems sustainment. DCMA says the move will make it easier for customers to interact with it. Sallie Flavin, DCMA's deputy director, says the agency cannot assume program managers will come to it for contract support. They have the option of doing the work themselves or hiring private sector consultants. "If customers decide they want something else, part of that is shame on us because we are not providing what we could," she says. The commodity sectors will be managed out of the former regional offices in Boston and Carson, Calif., which will report to agency headquarters. No jobs will be lost, and few offices will move as a result of the realignment.

DCMA already has made significant workforce reductions. Since 1990, the staff has been cut by more than half, from more than 25,000 workers to about 12,000. Meanwhile, the value of Defense contracts has risen from $752 billion in 1990 to $980 billion today. Scott says no more personnel reductions are planned, and the restructuring will make it easier to centrally manage employees and move them to watch over high-risk weapons contracts. "We are a risk-based agency; we evaluate programs, and then we move resources around the agency to respond to that risk," Scott says.

DCMA's shift toward more centralized control also could mean more consistent contract management. The quality of the agency's services has varied, depending on which field office was supporting a contract. "We all need to be playing from the same sheet of music," says Robert Murphy, DCMA's deputy executive for program and customer relations support, who has extensively polled agency customers about their satisfaction. On the other hand, John Douglass, president of the Aerospace Industries Association in Arlington, Va., says contractors are leery of the agency's realignment because the same DCMA employees will oversee multiple contractors. That could increase the chance that they might share one company's competitive information with others. Moreover, Douglass says, many companies have learned how to work within DCMA's decentralized structure and view that experience as a competitive advantage over other firms in winning military contracts.

Overseas Oversight

Army Lt. Col. Frank Steinbugl, deputy director for contract operations for DCMA's international district, recently spent 30 days in Iraq, where the Joint Contract Command needed help devising a strategy for managing thousands of service and supply contracts valued at about $3.4 billion. Monitoring support contracts in Iraq has proved a huge challenge for the military, and now for DCMA, because local vendors have no experience with government acquisition rules.

"They don't understand our policies regarding integrity and fair and reasonable costs," Steinbugl says. "They just don't exist over there. Any business that is successful over there has managed to find their piece, take a cut and to hell with the rules." Record-keeping often is sparse, few companies in Iraq have access to the Internet, and slow-moving border crossings and checkpoints often delay deliveries for weeks, he says.

DCMA personnel stationed abroad also oversee traditional contracts and monitor the Pentagon's foreign military sales. But beginning with the fighting in the Balkans in the mid-1990s, DCMA has been asked to provide additional personnel who can go into war zones temporarily to make sure vendors are providing adequate goods and services. Those monitors have seen more assignments as the military services have come to rely increasingly on companies to handle logistics. In 2003, the agency had about 40 military and civilian personnel deployed to global hot spots. By April 2005, that figure had more than doubled to 94, including 67 in Iraq, 11 in Kuwait and nine in Afghanistan. Next year, the number could reach 120. About 40 percent are civilians.

Last spring, DCMA launched an effort to hire 200 more civilians within a year. As a condition of employment, they had to agree to work overseas, mostly likely in Iraq, for up to six months within 90 days of being hired. Hazardous duty pay and higher grade levels in war zones can increase employees' earnings by as much as 50 percent. In the past, DCMA relied on staff volunteers to fill overseas jobs. Since the hiring effort began, the agency has employed about 50 additional workers for positions abroad. Hundreds of applicants failed physicals or backed out after learning they could be living in austere trailers at military bases where mortar attacks occur daily.

Connie Short, director of the combat support center, says DCMA is running short of qualified civilians willing to serve multiple tours in Iraq. Military service members already average two six-month overseas tours during their three-year assignments at DCMA. "Any time you go into a war zone, it's a hard sell," she says. Operations in Iraq have proved especially challenging for the agency, she says.

Predicting staff needs there is tough because the number of service contractors changes as troop levels fluctuate. The agency has begun assigning liaison officers to combatant commands and the Joint Staff to improve planning for overseas military operations. "One of their jobs is to get into war plans before they happen, so we know what the requirements will be," Short says. "Iraq wasn't planned, so we have had to do it on the fly."

Managing for Customers

Though DCMA polls its customers to see whether they are pleased with its work, agency chief Scott believes those surveys don't go far enough. He says DCMA should be asking three basic questions: What do you need? How do we know if we are doing that? Will this help meet your larger goals? "We are looking for macro measures from the agency that we can translate into smaller goals to manage for the customer," he says. For example, DCMA currently asks the Naval Air Systems Command to rate the quality of spare parts purchased under contracts managed by the agency. Under the new approach, DCMA still would focus on quality, but also would ask whether contract support was helping NAVAIR meets its larger goal of reducing weapons repair costs by 20 percent.

Scott also wants to offer contractors better service. The agency cut the time it takes to approve payments to contractors from four days to one and a half using a Web-based system. It also has taken steps to reduce a backlog of contracts that have not been officially closed out. Closeout permits contractors to discard detailed records they must retain, sometimes for as long as a decade, after a weapon has been delivered. Since 2001, the agency has streamlined closeout and cut by 76 percent the number of contracts that have been awaiting closeout for five years or longer.

Customer relations chief Murphy, who oversees a biennial review of customer satisfaction required by Congress, says the agency has improved noticeably between 2002 and 2004, based on a survey of customers in the military, other government agencies and industry. In 2004, 98 percent said the agency provided important products and services, up from 84 percent in 2002, while 96 percent believed the agency is needed, up from 82 percent in 2002. Only 8 percent of those surveyed in the military services believed they could provide the services offered by DCMA.

Larry Johnson, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2128 in Hurst, Texas, which represents DCMA employees in several Southwestern states, says every new DCMA commander has ideas for reforming the agency. Thus, it's in a "constant state of change and turmoil," he says. Scott's plan to eliminate the One Book, for example, has run up against the fact that many of the agency's policies and processes are required by law. As a result, Scott's initiative has caused "a hell of a lot of confusion" and has been only partially accomplished, Johnson says.

Douglass, meanwhile, says the contractors he represents still generally believe DCMA oversight is overdone. He says a contractor building a military aircraft engine might face more than 50 inspections between designing and fielding. The Federal Aviation Administration, he says, performs only one test before fielding commercial aircraft engines, with the possibility of stiff fines if standards are not met. Defense should adopt a similar streamlined approach, he contends.

Scott acknowledges that the agency still has somewhat rocky relations with contractors. That's part of the reason for his customer-based initiatives. "There are some contractors who have appreciated us as partners in the acquisition process," he says. "There are other contractors who see DCMA as kind of like acne on a teenager, something that has to be lived with until you outgrow it."

]]>

Armor All

George Cahlink — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The Army pulled out all the stops to add armor to Humvees in Iraq, but still couldn't keep up with the demand.

When the Iraqi insurgency first flared in 2003, the Army quickly assembled a handful of military and civilian workers at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland for a special project. The eight-member team-which included a physicist, an Army major with an engineering background, a welder and a machinist-were given 30 days to find a cheap and easy way to protect thousands of the service's Humvees from roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.

During the next month, the team met every morning to brainstorm. In the afternoon, they'd test crude models of their ideas from the day before, built overnight by the research lab's machinists and welders. Some options were quickly ruled out. Adding lightweight composite armor to the vehicles wouldn't work because it would take far too long to manufacture. Plexiglass windows and aluminum doors were too easy to destroy. The unique armor used for the Army's Stryker vehicle-a reinforced steel cage attached to the frame-wouldn't work because it made the Humvees nearly two feet wider and harder to turn.

The trial-and-error sessions marked the first stage in the Army's sometimes quixotic and much-criticized quest to armor all vehicles in Iraq. The service's struggle to field Humvee armor kits revealed weaknesses in its procurement and logistics systems-among them an inability to shift funds quickly to meet rising demand. But in taking on the challenge, managers and employees found a way around many of the problems, turning 13 million pounds of steel and 40,000 windows into nearly 13,000 Humvee armor kits.

Within a month of getting its marching orders, the Aberdeen Proving Ground team had settled on a common-sense approach that involved producing one-and-a-half-ton sets of armored plates and reinforced doors with bulletproof windows that could be bolted onto Humvees in four to six hours. "There was no one breakthrough technology. It was the mind-set that you could develop an armor kit that you could make hundreds of and logistically get it quickly from the United States to the theater to install," says Michael Keele, a mechanical engineer at Aberdeen who worked on the team that designed the kits.

The concept proved so popular that the Army has since developed add-on armor for all its unprotected vehicles in Iraq and has moved to purchase additional armored vehicles. But the process has taken longer than expected, despite the $1.5 billion the Army has spent on add-on armor and the $1.8 billion it has used to buy new vehicles since 2003. The service only finished fielding the add-on Humvee kits this month, and expects to complete its purchase of 10,000 new armored Humvees by June. Armor kits for other larger trucks, which primarily add steel to the cab areas where drivers sit and protect cables and other exposed parts, might not be completed until early 2006.

The Army has been maligned for not getting armored vehicles to Iraq faster. The Government Accountability Office concluded in an April report (GAO-05-275) that the service had not made full use of its production capabilities or properly allocated funds to meet the demand for armored vehicles. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., repeatedly has chastised the service in public hearings and has said the Army supply system "suffers a case of the slows." Much is at stake: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this spring that about 40 percent of the 1,037 troops killed in Iraq since major combat operations ended died as a result of attacks on military vehicles.

Soldiers have protested the shortages too. An Army Reserve platoon serving in Iraq refused orders last year to deliver fuel to a dangerous area, claiming it was a "suicide mission" because their vehicles lacked armor. In December, a National Guardsman raised the issue with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a town hall meeting, prompting Rumsfeld to infamously reply, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," and add, "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can [still] be blown up."

Lt. Col. Jeff Voigt, the Army's system coordinator for add-on armor, says the service did the best it could, given the ever-increasing demand for better-protected Humvees. "I do not think we could have done it any better," he says. "The Humvee kits were a tremendous success story."

Inside Job

The story of armored Humvees begins in the mid-1980s, when the Army began fielding them to replace jeeps, which had been a staple of the service since World War II. The new vehicles were designed to be jacks-of-all-trades-rugged enough to serve as launchpads for anti-tank missiles and fast enough to be used as ambulances. But they were supposed to be used behind the front lines, not in the face of regular enemy attacks. Up until the past year, most of the 111,000 Humvees in the Army's fleet did not have permanent doors or roofs, only canvas canopies with plastic windows.

The Army had only 235 armored Humvees in Iraq during the first months of the conflict. War planners had not foreseen that U.S. forces would remain there for the long term. But when the Iraq mission changed from fighting to occupation in the summer of 2003, the Army decided it needed about 1,400 armored Humvees in the country and ordered forces around the world to send such vehicles to Iraq.

It soon became clear that these would not be enough. So the Army considered ordering new up-armored Humvees. Options to do so proved to be limited because the Army only had one manufacturer that could produce such vehicles-O'Gara-Hess and Eisenhardt, a division of Armor Holdings Inc. The company said it would take months to ramp up to a peak production rate of almost 500 vehicles per month. That's when Army officials decided to launch the project at Aberdeen Proving Ground to figure out how to design and build add-on armor kits for existing Humvees.

In September 2003, Maj. Dan Rusin, an Army mechanical engineer and computer scientist who served on the project, drove four prototype doors from the Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Md., about 75 miles south to Army Materiel Command headquarters at Ft. Belvoir, Va. In a parking lot there, he showed then-AMC chief Gen. Paul Kern and his staff how armor could be attached to Humvee doors. Kern, who recalls soldiers he led in Vietnam attaching chain-link fencing to their vehicles to deflect Viet Cong attacks, ordered a colonel to take one of the doors to Iraq and ask field commanders there to evaluate the armor kits.

In Iraq, troops already had taken to scrounging scrap heaps for metal to make their own makeshift protection, known as "hillbilly armor." They also placed sandbags against Humvee doors and even hung flack vests over plastic windows. Army commanders took one look at the prototype doors and asked how soon full armor kits could be sent overseas.

Before the kits could be built, however, Army engineers had to determine how two tons of steel and glass could be added to Humvees without leaving them stuck in the sand. During Columbus Day weekend in October 2003, a handful of Army designers and engineers met at Aberdeen to settle on the final design. They debated ways to reinforce support pillars attached to the Humvees so armor could be hung, drew diagrams showing where holes should be drilled, and, as an added twist, figured out how all the work could be done with tools soldiers already had in Iraq. By Monday, they had settled on a design and were ready to build.

Normally, the Army does not begin building hardware without a set of detailed requirements from those in the service who will use it. Rusin, however, knew the kits were desperately needed in the field and sought to create an "irreversible momentum" for the project by building the first 40 kits before specific requirements had been set. He pushed the Army Research Laboratory and the service's Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center in Warren, Mich., to build those first kits using excess materials they already had on hand. By Halloween, Rusin had succeeded. He flew to Iraq to make sure the first 40 kits were installed correctly.

Working around the system had paid off. Congress and the Army approved the order of 1,000 kits in December after they saw the first models fielded in Iraq. The next challenge would be figuring out how to manufacture them in large numbers. "We had plenty of resources here for building 100 kits, but not thousands," says Lt. Col. Craig Langhauser, deputy director of the Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center.

Production Problems

The Army could have turned to a contractor to manufacture the kits, but officials figured that would take too long and leave the service with huge bills if requirements changed as the insurgency ebbed and flowed. So the Army turned to its aging network of in-house manufacturing facilities, located within its depots and arsenals. "You don't need a contract with us," says Fred Smith, deputy director of the Army's Ground Systems Industrial Enterprise. "You can change your mind a hundred times. We won't like it, but will do it for you."

The manufacturing facilities quickly stepped in. Letterkenny Army Depot in south central Pennsylvania, for example, rearranged its production lines to shift from repairing missiles to building armor kits. "I'm not knocking private industry, they've supported us tremendously," says the depot's commander, Col. William Guinn. "But often they can't stop supplying one customer just to do work for us."

Even with the depots and arsenals kicking in, it was difficult to meet the Army's ever-increasing demand for armor kits. In early December 2003, the service said it wanted 1,000 kits. But by the end of the month, it had ordered another 3,670 kits. Smith says the Army's facilities were on target to meet that requirement in March 2004 by building about 100 kits per week at five depots and two arsenals. In February, the program was ahead of schedule, with some kits already on their way overseas.

But the situation changed again in early March, when the insurgency escalated. The Army asked for another 2,090 armor kits. To make them, the depots and arsenals needed to purchase armor to bend, weld and cut. The Army's main supplier, Mittal Steel USA of Conshohocken, Pa., told the service it would take at least six months to deliver the thick steel plates needed to fulfill the new order. Due to "Buy American" provisions in federal law, the Army had no other options.

In early March, Hunter caught wind of the problem and sent a top staffer to visit Mittal Steel. Its owners agreed to delay their commercial work to meet the military's demand. Tom Dean, the company's armor plate manager, says the firm could have produced more armor much more quickly if it had known upfront how much would be required. "The post-mortem on this won't be pretty," he says. Even when the Army increased its requirements, Dean says, the service often took six to eight weeks to come up with the money for the new orders.

Once steel started coming in, the Army was able to open a sixth manufacturing plant at a naval facility in Crane, Ind., and increase production to 1,000 armor kits a week. By April 2004, all 6,760 kits the Army had requested had been manufactured. But then the orders started piling up again: 1,516 in May; 492 in June; 1,000 in August; 2,515 in October; and 450 in January. All told, the Army now had ordered nearly 13,000 kits-most of them on a piecemeal basis as new threats emerged in Iraq. This led to lags in production.

If the Army had known how much it would ultimately need upfront, Smith says, he could have ordered the materials at once, set up production lines and had all the kits needed built within six months after the program kicked off in late 2003. Instead, the project took nine months longer, finally finishing in April 2005. Rising steel costs over that time caused the price of the kits to increase from $6,200 to $6,800 for each two-door Humvee and $9,500 to $10,500 for four-door models.

Col. Robert Groller, the Army's project manager for tactical vehicles, concedes the service has a "lousy process" for matching its requirements with funding to produce armor kits. Every time new requirements were added for the kits-such as air conditioning units for the now-covered vehicles or better windshields-orders could not be placed until money either was received from Congress or reprogrammed in the Army budget. "The question of doing it was never the problem; it was just a question of how fast we could get the money," he says.

At the Pentagon, Voigt says it usually takes three to six months to win approval from the Office of Management and Budget and Congress to shift or add funds. In the case of the armor kits, the Army cut that down to 30 to 60 days. Sometimes, he says, the service even rolled the dice by paying for materials before money could be reprogrammed.

Gary Motsek, director of support operations for Army Materiel Command, gets frustrated when the Army effort to field the armor kits is criticized. "Name one other acquisition program that has gotten out this fast," he says. "If anyone thinks it's slow, I don't know what they are smoking."

]]>

Bye-Bye, Captain

George Cahlink — Wed, 25 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Several retired submariners offered spirited defenses of Mooney, arguing the Navy was blaming him for its own outdated maps. Even the father of the sailor killed in the collision initially backed the commander. But these testimonials had little impact on the Navy's investigation of the crash, which found Mooney should have looked more closely at navigational charts, checked water depth more frequently and traveled at a slower speed.

Adm. John Nathman, head of the Navy's Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., criticizes those who rallied around a skipper they liked without knowing the facts about the accident. "If we believe that as a commander you are responsible for the command, then what goes along with that is if you don't deliver, you are probably going to go away," Nathman says.

The Navy has long had a reputation for giving broad authority to its commanding officers-who number nearly 1,300 today-but holding them to exacting standards in which a single mistake can end a career. Lately, however, the service has gained more attention for ousting commanders for personal misconduct, ranging from extramarital affairs to alcohol abuse.

A recent report by the Navy inspector general's office found that commanding officers were more likely to be fired for improper behavior than for poor job performance. In 2003 and 2004, more than half of the 38 commanders fired were removed be-cause of misbehavior. In 2001 and 2002, such issues accounted for less than a third of all firings.

Navy leaders asked the IG to investigate the reasons behind officers' dismissals after more than 30 captains, commanders and lieutenant commanders were removed between February 2003 and June 2004. Historically, the Navy ousts about 12 commanding officers annually.

The IG found no single cause for the increase in top officers losing their jobs, but noted that a "CO's failure to follow established regulations, laws, moral or ethical principles, occasionally after being counseled, was the primary cause of most" of the actions. The report also found that most dismissals for misbehavior involved adultery or alcohol abuse.

The IG did not find evidence of systemic problems and did not make sweeping recommendations for change. But the report did call for better risk-management training for commanding officers, refresher courses on creating the proper command climate, self-assessment training, and the use of "360-degree" reviews, in which subordinates anonymously rate their bosses' job performance.

Nathman, who was the vice chief of naval operations when the report was released in late 2004, says the service will implement its recommendations. He says the report largely put to rest concerns among some admirals that the pace of war and an increase in the rate of deployments of Navy ships and personnel played a role in the dismissals. He adds the spate of firings probably was no more than a statistical anomaly that will correct itself during the next few years. Still, he says, the officers in charge of the service's various commands, such as aviation and surface warfare, should use the report to reinforce the need for ethical behavior among the Navy's commanding officers.

Successful COs will always welcome the Navy's demands on them, Nathman says. "When you leave command for a noncommand [job], it feels like this pack fell off your back. You feel like you are free," he says. "It's a nice feeling-and it lasts about a week until you want to command again."

]]>

Oldest shipyard may be drydocked in latest base-closing round

George Cahlink — Tue, 17 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark told the Base Realignment and Closure Commission on Tuesday that the Navy has too much capacity in its four shipyards. He says the service decided to recommend closing its Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, because its nuclear submarine fleet has fallen from about a hundred a decade ago to about 50 today.

The Portsmouth shipyard primarily repairs nuclear attack submarines.

Last week, the Pentagon recommended closing 33 major bases and realigning scores of others in its first attempt in a decade to downsize and reposition military installations across the United States. The recommendations are being reviewed by an independent nine-member BRAC panel that must deliver a final list to the president by Sept. 8. If the president approves those suggestions, Congress has 45 days to accept or reject them in their entirety.

About 84,000 civilian jobs would move if the Pentagon's recommendations are approved. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, on an island opposite Portsmouth, N.H., would stand to lose the most civilian jobs of any single installation--4,032, though some of them may be shifted to other shipyards. The work would be shared among the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state, and the Norfolk, Va., Naval Shipyard.

Navy officials told the BRAC commission that an alternative they had considered was to close the Pearl Harbor facility, but that proved far more expensive than shutting down Portsmouth. The Navy expects it will save $1.26 billion over the next 20 years, after first investing $448 million to shut down the yard and move work elsewhere.

Navy Secretary Gordon England said at the hearing that the Navy examined moving more work to keep it open, but that would have forced other shipyards to operate less efficiently and create breaks in work schedules. England stressed that the decision had nothing to do with the quality of the shipyard's work, which he called "excellent."

]]>

Guns vs. Benefits

George Cahlink — Sun, 15 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Expanded health care, increased survivors' payments and other perks might crowd weapons out of the Defense budget.

In September 1998, the Joint Chiefs of Staff went to Capitol Hill and demanded their share of the nation's peace dividend. Congress agreed and since has awarded billions of dollars in pay raises and new benefits to service members and military retirees. Now, the Defense Department complains it got more than it asked for and is beseeching lawmakers to stop adding benefits, particularly for retirees.

Pentagon budgeters estimate the cost of pay increases and expanded benefits added since 2002 will total about $100 billion by 2009 and could reach $125 billion if proposed benefits are added. The fiscal 2005 Defense budget is $401.7 billion, and Pentagon planners worry that soaring benefits might threaten billions of dollars earmarked for weapon systems, research and development, and military operating costs.

"This is a very big issue because it shrinks the discretionary budget. We feel our hands are being tied by Congress," says Amy Lee, a Pentagon analyst of personnel and readiness programs. Her boss, Defense personnel chief David S. C. Chu, offered an even more blunt assessment when he was interviewed for a Jan. 25 Wall Street Journal article.

He said lawmakers' largesse has become "hurtful" and warned that benefit costs were "taking away from the nation's ability to defend itself." He has suggested slowing benefits growth and using cash instead of permanent benefits as a recruiting incentive.

Cindy Williams, a principal research scientist in the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says lawmakers' eagerness to support the military and retired military personnel who are their constituents has played a key role in adding billions of dollars for benefits. For example, allowing all military personnel who retire after 20 years of service to receive 50 percent of their basic pay added $1 billion annually. Expanding TRICARE, a Defense-

managed health care program, to include military retirees over age 65 added $4 billion a year. Allowing veterans with moderate to severe disabilities to collect both full military pensions and disability benefits costs an additional $500 million each year. Increased payments to the over-62 survivors of deceased military retirees carry a $200 million annual price tag.

Williams says it's probably not politically possible to roll back the expansion of military benefits, but the Pentagon might have other options. Defense could offer buyouts to retirees who opt out of TRICARE and could encourage uniformed personnel to leave the services before they become eligible for retirement pay.

Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, says that during the past 20 years Defense has spent about 35 percent of its annual budget on military pay and benefits (including $139 billion in fiscal year 2005). Though the benefits portion has remained relatively steady, the per-person cost has increased as the number of military personnel has fallen nearly by half since the end of the Cold War.

In recent years, military benefits spending has come close to equaling the roughly 37 percent of the Defense budget that annually goes toward weapons. The remainder goes to operating costs, such as civilian salaries and training. "If funding for military pay and benefits were to continue to grow as rapidly in the future, it seems likely that such funding would crowd out increases currently projected for other weapons programs," Kosiak says.

Nevertheless, lawmakers are considering opening TRICARE to more reservists and increasing benefits for the families of military personnel killed in combat, which could add another $7 billion in costs in 2006. Few legislators seem willing to challenge powerful military and veterans lobbying groups, especially during wartime.

Steven Strobridge, director of government relations for the 370,000-member Military Officers Association, recently accused the Pentagon of being "penny-wise and pound-foolish" in attempting to slow benefits growth. He says better pay and benefits are key to military retention and readiness. Pentagon personnel analyst Lee acknowledges that Defense faces a tough battle to rein in benefits spending. "The Congress and DoD are not quite seeing things in the same way," she says.

]]>

Bye-Bye, Captain

George Cahlink — Sun, 15 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Lately, the Navy is more likely to dismiss officers for misbehavior than poor job performance.

USS San Francisco Cmdr. Kevin Mooney lost his job earlier this year after his nuclear submarine slammed into an undersea mountain in the Pacific Ocean, killing one sailor, injuring 98 crewmen and nearly sinking the vessel. His firing was one of the highest-profile dismissals of a skipper in recent years, partly because of the strong backing he received from the submariner community to keep his job.

]]>

Base realignment plan would cut 18,000 civilian jobs

George Cahlink — Fri, 13 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

"Our current arrangements, designed for the Cold War, must give way to the new demands of the war against extremism and other threats of the 21st century," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a prepared statement Friday.

The Pentagon wants to close 33 major bases, realign 22 more and make hundreds of other changes at smaller bases. Those recommendations will be reviewed by an the independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission this summer, which will then prepare a final list for President Bush by Sept. 8. The president has until Sept. 23 to accept or reject the list before sending it to Congress, which has 45 legislative days to reject it or the recommendations become law.

The Defense Department's moves will affect 133,769 military jobs and 84,801 civilian positions at hundreds of installations nationwide. Of those jobs, 122,987 military and 66,578 civilian jobs will move to other bases, while 10,722 military jobs and 18,223 civilian jobs will be eliminated or turned over to private contractors. The Pentagon estimates its base closing recommendations will require hiring 2,818 additional contractors.

Like past base closing rounds, the Defense Department will offer civilian employees at affected bases a variety of career options, among them moving to a new base, being placed on a priority list for other jobs in the area, and incentives to take early retirement. Defense has established a Web site that details assistance offered to its displaced civilians.

The largest relocation of civilian jobs will occur in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, where thousands of Defense civilians work in leased office space. Nearly 23,000 Defense jobs, including 15,754 civilian positions, will move to more secure space at military installations, including thousands to nearby military bases, among them Fort Belvoir, Va. and Fort Meade, Md. Fort Belvoir stands to gain 5,729 civilian jobs and Fort Meade will add 2,915 civilians.

A recent George Mason University survey found that more than 40,000 Defense workers are in leased space that does not meet homeland security requirements. Rumsfeld said moving them to to military bases would guarantee those security standards are met.

Some civilians moving to Fort Belvoir will take spots now occupied by 816 civilian and 75 military personnel, who make up Army Materiel Command headquarters. The command is being relocated to Redstone Arsenal, Ala.

The Defense Finance and Accounting Service, a largely civilian defense agency that processes employee payroll and payments to contractors, will be relocated and consolidated from more than 20 locations into three large facilites.

Military industrial facilites also will see major changes under the Pentagon's plan. Red River Army Depot in Texarkana, Texas, with 2,491 civilians, will be closed and much of that work will go to other depot facilities, including Anniston Army Depot, Ala., and Letterkenny Army Depot, Pa.

Also, the Navy will close Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, where 4,032 civilians overhaul submarines, and move most of that work to its three remaining shipyards in Virginia, Hawaii and Washington.

Other major closings and realignments for civilians include:

Closing the Army's Communications and Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, N.J. (4,652 civilians)
Closing Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va. (1,948 civilians)
Closing the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington and building a joint health care facility in Bethesda, Md. (2,357 civilians)
Closing Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas (1,268 civilians)

The states losing the most civilian jobs are: Virginia (8,843), Maine (4,139), New Jersey (3,713) and Texas (3,175). Those gaining the most civilian jobs are: Maryland (9,012), Indiana (2,641), Alabama (2,018) and Kentucky (1,482). ]]>

Rumsfeld: Pentagon won’t ax more than 10 percent of bases

Tom Shoop and George Cahlink — Thu, 12 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The 2005 base closing list, if adopted by the independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission, Congress and the president, will result in $5.5 billion in recurring annual savings, Rumsfeld said. Net savings over 20 years will total $48 billion. Adding in changes from closing overseas bases and bringing troops back to the United States brings the total to $6.7 billion per year, or $64.2 billion over two decades, Rumsfeld said.

The "global posture review" recently completed by the Pentagon "informed BRAC deliberations in important ways," Rumsfeld said. Those deliberations, he said, involved tens of thousands of hours of staff time to analyze 25 million pieces of data.

Military communities around the country have been anxiously awaiting announcement of the BRAC list that will come Friday morning. Lawmakers will be first notified by 9:15 a.m. and then the Pentagon will hold a briefing to announce its BRAC recommendations at 10:30 a.m.

The nine-member BRAC panel will begin reviewing the list next week and give its final recommendations to the president by no later than Sept. 8. The president and Congress then must accept or reject the list in its entirety.

]]>

Base closing recommendations expected Friday

George Cahlink — Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The Defense Department is set to announce on Friday how many of the nation's 425 military installations it wants to close or realign. An independent, nine-member Base Realignment and Closure Commission will then begin reviewing those recommendations next week and give its final recommendations to the president by no later than Sept. 8. The president and Congress then must accept or reject the list in its entirety.

The commission will hear testimony from Defense officials involved with the BRAC process next week, including: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers on Monday; top uniformed and civilian leaders from the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps on Tuesday; top uniformed and civilian leaders from the Army on Wednesday; and senior defense officials on Wednesday and Thursday.

Senior Defense officials briefed reporters this week on details of the BRAC process, but declined to say when the final list would be announced or offer any indications of how many or what kinds of bases would be on it.

The Pentagon is required to publish its recommendations in the Federal Register no later than Monday, May 16, but the announcement is expected sooner to avoid leaks. Congressional sources and BRAC lobbyists say lawmakers have been told to expect base closing announcements Friday morning.

Philip Grone, deputy undersecretary for installations and environment, said at the briefing that the closings will further several Defense goals including accelerating military transformation, maximizing joint utilization of military bases and eliminating unneeded bases so more money can go toward warfighting. The Pentagon says it has saved billions from four previous rounds of base closings in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 that closed 97 major installations and realigned 55 other major bases.

Grone dismissed earlier reports suggesting that one in four military bases could be closed or realigned. He says studies show that Defense has 24 percent extra space on bases, but that some of that will remain in case it's needed for wartime "surge" operations.

Michael Wynne, undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment, said that in past rounds, the BRAC commission backed about 85 percent of the Pentagon's recommendations. He says the Defense Department expects that even fewer will be overturned in this round.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said she would file a federal lawsuit on behalf of Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich if any of the state's National Guard bases are included in the closure list.

Illinois has Air National Guard bases in Springfield and Peoria. Madigan and other BRAC opponents contend that the federal law prevents closure of National Guard bases in a state without the consent of its governor.

That reading of the law is disputed by BRAC supporters who contend the commission has the authority to close bases.

-- CongressDaily contributed to this report.

]]>

Panel urges overseas base realignment slowdown

George Cahlink — Thu, 05 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

"The sequencing and pace of the proposed realignments could harm our ability to meet broader national security and could impact both the military's ability to protect national interests and the quality of life of the servicewomen and men affected by the realignment," stated a report from the Overseas Basing Commission, a six-member panel appointed by Congress to review the U.S. overseas basing plans.

The Pentagon is not required to enact the report's recommendations, only take them under advisement.

The report comes the week before the Defense Department is set to announce its recommendations for closing and realigning bases in the United States. The commission did not review domestic basing, but its recommendations on overseas basing could have an impact on whether more space is needed stateside for the 70,000 troops returning from Europe.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that the impact of the base realignment and closing process would not be as severe as once expected because more bases would be needed as the military pulled forces out of Western Europe. The report suggests those movements should be smaller and might be years away.

The commission did say that it fully backed the need to reposition forces around the globe in light of new security concerns. But it recommended the efforts be "slowed and reordered" to ensure better coordination across the government.

A chief concern is that the Defense Department has made little effort to coordinate the realignment of forces overseas with other federal agencies that have a stake in national security matters-ranging from diplomacy to commerce. The report says there is no "interagency entity" charged with coordinating the repositioning and determining the impact it would have on all activities related to national security.

Other recommendations and concerns cited by the report were:

The Pentagon has estimated the costs at $9 billion to $12 billion, but the commission says the tab is probably closer to $20 billion.
Withdrawing all heavy Army forces in Europe could harm the service if new conflict broke out in the Balkans. The panel recommended keeping a least one heavy brigade in Europe rather than returning it stateside until the Balkan and Iraqi missions are complete.
The Marine Corps should curtail plans to move large numbers of personnel out of Okinawa, Japan.
Delaying overseas movements until the Pentagon settles on plans for domestic military base closings (BRAC), completes the Quadrennial Defense Review and other key ongoing studies.

]]>

Pentagon’s base closure list will be hard to challenge

George Cahlink — Tue, 03 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Military bases that are spared when the Pentagon submits its base realignment and closure hit list later this month will be able to breathe easier than bases in previous rounds, because it will be harder this time for the independent BRAC Commission to add bases to the Defense Department's list.

Several BRAC lobbyists and experts, speaking on condition they not be named, said legal changes give the Pentagon more power than before in crafting lists.

The nine-member BRAC commission will review the Pentagon's work at a series of public hearings over the next several months, the first of which took place Tuesday. The panel has until Sept. 8 to make final recommendations to the president. If the president approves the list, it will be forwarded to Congress, which then has 45 legislative days to accept or reject it. In previous BRAC rounds in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995, the commission accepted about 85 percent of the Pentagon's recommendations for closure or realignment. But sometimes the panel made unexpected changes. The most famous came in 1995, when the BRAC panel surprised the Air Force and hundreds of civilian defense workers in San Antonio and Sacramento by recommending that two of the service's five depots be closed. This time, it will be harder for the commission to make such changes, due to a series of provisions in the law authorizing the current BRAC round. They include the following requirements:

That seven out of the nine commissioners vote to add a base to the list or expand a proposed realignment. In the past, only five had to support any additions.
That two BRAC commissioners visit any base that the panel is even considering closing or realigning. In the past, only a single commissioner needed to visit a base -- and only after the panel had agreed to add it to the list.
That the BRAC panel give the Defense secretary 15 days to testify or provide a written response about any additions being considered. In the past, no such requirement existed.

The rules governing removing a base from the list remain relatively unchanged from the past four rounds. To strike a base from the list, the commission must demonstrate that the Pentagon deviated substantially from future force structure projections and the criteria used to decide what bases are closed or realigned. There's no set rule for how many votes are needed to remove a base from the list, but in the past, a majority vote has been required to overturn a Pentagon decision. ]]>

Study: Northeast, Midwest hit hard by previous base closings

George Cahlink — Mon, 02 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

"With increased attention to the military's role in defending the homeland and responding to terrorist threats, it is clear that the Northeast-Midwest needs a strong military presence. [The 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process] must not erode the military presence now in the region," states an April 2005 report from the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a nonpartisan organization that studies issues affecting 18 states from Maine to Illinois.

The report comes as the Defense Department is putting the finishing touches on its list, due out no later than May 16, of which domestic military bases should be realigned or closed. Pentagon officials have said that as much as 25 percent of all space on military bases may be unneeded.

The nine-member nonpartisan Base Realignment and Closure Commission will begin debating closures this week and will spend the summer holding public hearings on the Pentagon's list before making final recommendations to the president on Sept. 8. If the president backs the recommendations, Congress will have 45 legislative days to accept or reject the list in its entirety.

According to the institute's report, in the BRAC rounds between 1988 and 1995, 35 of the 95 bases closed were in Northeast or Midwest States. Military personnel levels in the region fell by 41 percent, while Southern and Western states lost 21 percent of their personnel.

The Northeast and Midwest states that have lost the most military and Defense civilian personnel since 1987 are: Pennsylvania (61,420); New York (57,727); New Jersey (43,695); and Michigan (34,640). But those states lag far behind California, which has lost more than 200,000 personnel since 1987.

The 18 Northeast and Midwest states hold about 40 percent of the nation's population, but have less than 25 percent of all Defense Department personnel, the study found.

]]>

Defense weighs strategy for releasing base closure list

George Cahlink — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

According to a Defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, lawmakers likely will receive base realignment and closure recommendations about an hour before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld holds a press conference to announce them in early May. Those recommendations are expected to be hand-delivered to congressional offices, the official said.

The recommendations will be published on the Defense Department's Web site immediately following Rumsfeld's remarks. A separate Web site will be created to provide personnel information for federal employees whose bases are closing or whose jobs are being relocated.

Commanders of military installations could be given as much as 12 hours advance notice if their base is on the list.

Military communities across the nation are eagerly awaiting the announcement to find out if their bases will be closed or realigned. The Pentagon initially suggested that about a quarter of space on all military bases was unneeded, but Rumsfeld recently downplayed those comments, saying some of the space would be needed to accommodate troops relocating back to the United States from Europe.

Once the Pentagon recommendations are released, the independent Base Realignment and Closure commission, chaired by former Veteran Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi, will review them at public hearings, conduct its own analysis and make final recommendations to the president by Sept 8. If the president backs those recommendations, then Congress has 45 legislative days to reject or approve them in their entirety.

The Pentagon has formed a communications task force, headed by Dick McGraw, special assistant to the secretary of Defense, that is addressing concerns about the date on which the report will be released, who will be notified in advance, and how the actual list will be announced to military communities around the country. The Pentagon even hired a consulting firm, BearingPoint Inc., to assist in crafting its BRAC communications plan.

Federal law requires that the Defense Department publish a list of which bases it wants closed in the Federal Register no later than Monday, May 16, but that date will likely move up amid concerns that the information would leak out over the weekend before being published.

The Pentagon could release the list on the preceding Friday, but officials worry about headlines that might be created by releasing it on Friday the 13th. Options are being weighed to make the announcement as early as Tuesday, May 10, according to Defense officials and BRAC lobbyists.

Meanwhile, the independent Overseas Basing Commission will announce on May 10 its recommendations for how U.S. forces should be based overseas. The commission was appointed by Congress to assess whether overseas bases should be closed, realigned or established in new areas.

Al Corenella, a South Dakota businessman who heads the commission and served as a BRAC commission member in 1995, says the report originally was expected in August, but the release date was moved up so that it could be considered in domestic base closure deliberations. Unlike the BRAC commissions, the overseas panel's recommendations are advisory only.

]]>

Base closing announcement may come early

George Cahlink — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The list could be announced as early as Tuesday, May 10.

Federal law requires the Pentagon to publish the base closure list in the Federal Register by no later than May 16. Pentagon officials, however, are worried that the list could leak out over the weekend before it's published that Monday morning.

Additionally, the Pentagon normally contacts lawmakers whose bases stand to lose jobs in advance of the official announcement. They would be easier to reach during the week in Washington rather than having to track them down over the weekend, when many return to their home states.

The solution seemed simple enough: Announce the list on Friday, May 13. However, Defense officials said they worried about the headlines that would be generated by announcing base closings on the notoriously hard-luck day. Now, the Pentagon is weighing announcing it on May 10, 11 or 12.

Whenever the list is announced, other steps in the base realignment and closure process will remained unchanged. The independent BRAC commission is expected to hold 15 hearings across the country on the list before making final recommendations to the president by Sept. 8. The president either can reject the list or send it to Congress by Sept. 23. Lawmakers have 45 legislative days after that to approve or reject the list in its entirety.

Military communities across the country have been closely watching the BRAC process for clues as to whether their installations will remain open. The Pentagon had once projected that a quarter of all military bases would close, but recently has downplayed those estimates, saying the closings may not be as severe as forces are moved from Europe and Asia back to the United States.

Meanwhile, President Bush announced in a speech Wednesday that some military bases that are closed could be used to house oil refineries to help ease the nation's energy crunch. The Associated Press reported that Bush has ordered the Energy Department to step up discussions with communities near such bases to try to get refineries built.

]]>

Future Combat Zone

George Cahlink — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Six years ago, the Army decided to stake its future on an untested approach to acquiring futuristic weapons in support of a grand theory about the nature of 21st century warfare. The resulting program, known as Future Combat Systems, has turned out to be the most expensive and complex procurement effort in Army history. According to current estimates, the service will spend well in excess of $100 billion by 2014 to develop the "system of systems," which includes manned and unmanned air and ground vehicles and sensors tied together by a wireless network. The Army's bid for unprecedented speed and killing power requires double the amount of computer code than is contained in the Joint Strike Fighter's systems, relies on 53 new technologies and requires more than 100 network interfaces.

The challenge is so daunting that "I don't think we could manage it by ourselves," says Col. Charles Jorgenson, the Army's deputy program manager of business integration for FCS. He says the service lacks both the management and technical personnel to develop and integrate that many different systems. So it has decided not to try. In March 2002, the Army outsourced much of the management of FCS by hiring Boeing to serve as the program's lead systems integrator.

Boeing is slated to be paid about $21 billion to select and manage the contractors that will build the 18 FCS systems, design the overarching network that those systems will plug in to, and make sure the first FCS components are delivered on time and within budget to reconfigured Army brigades beginning in 2014.

The Army isn't the first federal agency to turn to a lead systems integrator to manage a complex and highly technical acquisition effort. Boeing also serves as lead integrator for the Missile Defense Agency's ground-based interceptor missiles, while Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are managing the design and procurement of the Coast Guard's Integrated Deepwater System partnership to assemble a new fleet of aircraft and ships. None of these programs, however, is as big as Future Combat Systems, nor has any attracted as much skepticism.

The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2004 that the Defense Criminal Investigative Service was looking into possible ethics violations in Boeing's effort to win the contract. The Government Accountability Office has concluded that the "unprecedented complexity" of FCS puts it at "significant risk." In early April, after Sen. John McCain R-Ariz., sharply criticized the Army's use of a nontraditional procurement authority to award the contract, service leaders announced that they would restructure the FCS program.

Still, the Army believes that the focus should be less on the controversies surrounding how the next-generation weapon will be built and more on the overwhelming advantage it will offer in future wars. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, captured the thoughts of many in the service about the program's high-risk strategy at a February House Armed Services Committee hearing. "We are committed to the Future Combat System," he said, "but this is a journey. It is not a destination."

Getting Lighter

The Future Combat Systems journey began on a bare-bones airfield in Albania in the spring of 1999, when the United States agreed to provide 24 Apache helicopters to participate in a NATO-led effort to oust Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic's forces from Kosovo. The Army believed it could move the aircraft from their home installation in Germany to a military base in Macedonia in eight to 14 days.

But the effort became far more complicated when a lack of space at the Macedonian base forced the Army farther south to a rarely used installation in Albania. The base had little infrastructure, so the 465 Army soldiers needed to operate and support the 24 Apaches quickly grew to a force of more than 5,000. Ultimately, it took the Army nearly four weeks to deploy the Apaches to Albania at a cost of roughly $250 million-and they never were used against Milosevic. Pictures of soldiers and tanks and other armored vehicles stuck in muddy roads surrounding the base underscored concerns that the Army was too heavy for post-Cold War missions that required smaller forces and lighter vehicles. "You had an Army that could kick the living hell out of anyone, but it couldn't get there," says retired Lt. Gen. John Riggs, who was the Army's "objective force director" from 2001 to 2004.

Shortly after the fiasco, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who had commanded NATO's peacekeeping mission in the Balkans a few years earlier, became the Army's chief of staff and began pushing for the creation of a lighter, more mobile force. Shinseki called for the Army to reorganize into smaller, brigade-size combat units that would be able to deploy anywhere within 96 hours and sustain themselves for up to seven days.

Riggs, an Army aviator who logged 1,100 hours as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, was asked to lead the design of the new combat units and come up with systems to replace the Army's prized ground weapons, the Abrams tank and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Riggs had Shinseki's backing to scrap the Army's traditional method for building weapon systems. All the weapons for the new force would be designed and funded together, and tied into the same information network overseen by the lead systems integrator. That approach has two factors working in its favor: It is backed by an emerging warfighting concept and it is structured to draw the maximum amount of political support.

The Defense Department's Office of Force Transformation has spent several years pushing its vision of network-centric warfare, which calls for using information technology on the battlefield to quickly overwhelm technologically inferior enemies. Aligning the service's plan for purchasing the next generation of weapons systems with a strategy popular with Pentagon leaders has helped the Army win billions of dollars in initial funding to reconfigure its forces and start building FCS.

Combining 18 separate weapons programs under the FCS umbrella also makes the project less vulnerable to cuts on Capitol Hill. Typically, the Army has built weapons that are far less expensive than the multibillion-dollar ships and fighter planes pursued by its sister services. As a result, Army programs have had fewer backers among lawmakers and have proved more vulnerable to cuts. With FCS, the Army can issue briefing materials trumpeting the fact that the program involves contractors in "106 congressional districts in 29 states and growing!"

Before the advent of FCS, Army staff officers at the Pentagon had referred to the annual list of the top 10 Defense programs as the "chart of shame," because not a single Army system appeared on the list. That has changed in the proposed fiscal 2006 budget. FCS, at $3.4 billion, ranks as Defense's fourth-largest weapons program. Of course, that level of funding comes with strings attached in the form of increased scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Taking Fire

At a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing in March, McCain grilled Army officials about FCS, particularly the fact that they awarded the contract to Boeing using a provision known as "other transaction authority," rather than through the traditional procurement process. The special authority allows contractors to operate outside normal acquisition rules, such as those requiring vendors to provide extensive pricing data and to follow stringent ethics guidelines in the 1996 Procurement Integrity Act.

Congress gave the Defense Department authority to use OTA in 1989 to negotiate contracts with smaller companies that ordinarily did not bid on military work. But the approach had never been used on a program of the size and complexity of FCS. The Army justified its use by citing the urgent need for the new system and claiming the unique nature of the technologies required that the lead systems integrator attract nontraditional Defense contractors to work on it.

Claude M. Bolton, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, technology and logistics, said at the March hearing that OTA made it far easier to negotiate language in the FCS contract, by avoiding the 147 standard clauses in typical contracts that sometimes keep away contractors, especially small ones. Bolton says the Army has negotiated specific oversight language in the FCS contract that is at least as tough as the standard rules.

For example, Bolton says using OTA allowed the Army to sidestep burdensome requirements for certified cost and pricing data required under the Truth in Negotiations Act. But the FCS contract requires companies working under the Boeing umbrella to make the same financial disclosures required of public corporations. The contract also gives the Army access to contractors' financial records and allows independent reviews by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, the Defense Contract Management Agency and the Government Accountability Office.

Still, McCain ripped the use of OTA at the hearing. He noted that Boeing's chief financial officer, Michael Sears, had suggested that the approach be used for the FCS contract. Sears is now in federal prison as a result of his role in illegally negotiating a job at Boeing for former Air Force procurement executive Darleen Druyun while she still held sway over the company's contracts at the Pentagon.

Bolton, a former Air Force general who had worked with Druyun on acquisition efforts before joining the Army in 2002, told McCain he had never talked to Sears about the OTA strategy. The November Wall Street Journal report said investigators were examining communications between Bolton and Sears about rising overhead costs in Army aviation programs just before the Army and Boeing settled on the terms of the FCS contract.

Kenneth Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group in Falls Church, Va., that first tipped off Defense investigators about the Druyun scandal, is incredulous that the Army would allow Boeing to operate outside normal procurement rules. "The most ethically challenged defense contractor in the country is now charged with the most expensive, high-risk defense program, using an agreement that minimizes oversight and accountability," Boehm said at the hearing. "If that doesn't call for increased oversight, what does?"

The Institute for Defense Analyses, an independent research group funded by the Pentagon, issued a report on FCS in August 2004. IDA noted that in an unusual arrangement, Boeing is both building the FCS network and developing a smaller software package as a subcontractor. Ordinarily, a lead systems integrator does not have a stake in building significant parts of a program that it is managing. "Boeing has a large stake in the future of this program, thus creating a tension in Boeing's role and responsibilities," IDA said.

The institute found that the use of OTA authority had done little to attract non-defense companies to FCS, but downplayed other critiques of the technique. "The Army's and Boeing's conservative approach in creating this agreement defuses concern that use of [OTA] has created special risks for the program," its report stated.

Nevertheless, after McCain publicly questioned the use of OTA, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey announced on April 5 that FCS would be restructured to change it to a standard Federal Acquisition Regulation-based contract. "The OTA was appropriate for the earlier phase of FCS," Harvey said, but the standard approach "ensures FCS is properly positioned."

'Significant Risk'

The Army's Jorgenson insists that the service has always maintained strong oversight over FCS. He says 685 Defense employees have been assigned to the Army's FCS program office to monitor the contract, working with 5,300 contractor employees. The program is run by 16 "integrated product teams," which include both Defense employees and contractor representatives.

"The government is involved with all decisions," says Jorgenson, adding that when the product teams can't reach a consensus, issues are sent to a program decision board made up of senior Army and Boeing officials. The service has final say if board members can't agree on a program decision, such as what type of hardware will be used or whether or not schedules can be met.

Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing's vice president and program manager for Future Combat Systems, says the approach is working. He notes that 350 companies submitted proposals to bid for the 18 FCS subsystems, but not a single protest was filed after 23 subcontracts were awarded. And, he said, Boeing, which had bid for several subcontracts, was awarded only one, valued at $100 million.

Still, that's no guarantee that FCS can deliver on the vast promises it has made. Some independent observers have strong doubts. "The FCS is at significant risk for not delivering required capability within budgeted resources," said Paul Francis, GAO director of acquisition and sourcing management, during the March Senate hearing. "The program's level of knowledge is far below that suggested by best practices or DoD policy," he added. "Nearly two years after program launch and with $4.6 billion invested, requirements are not firm and only one of over 50 technologies are mature."

Francis noted that the program was originally slated to cost $79 billion, and said the effects of any further schedule changes on future costs would be "dramatic." A one-year delay, Francis said, could cost the Army more than $3 billion.

"What if the cost would double?" he asked. "What if we get the solution we want, but it's so expensive we can't buy it?"

Nobody in the Army seemed ready to answer that question.

]]>

Pentagon faulted for shortage of critical war supplies

George Cahlink — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The agency found the Defense Department spent more than $60 billion supplying troops with 2 million tons of equipment, spare parts and other items before, during and after major combat operations in Iraq from October 2002 to September 2004.

"Despite these expenditures, there have been widespread reports of serious shortages of critical items needed by U.S. troops," the report (GAO-05-275) stated.

Specifically, GAO cited shortages of batteries, tires, vehicle track shoes, body armor, meals ready to eat (MREs), Humvees with extra armor, and add-on armor kits for Humvees. Auditors found that those items were not available for five reasons that it called "systematic supply system deficiencies."

Those deficiencies were:

Inaccurate and inadequate funding of Army war reserve requirements. Auditors found that the Army has not fully funded its war reserve supplies for years, and even today, only about 24 percent of those reserves are funded.
Inaccurate supply forecasts. Army computer models used to forecast supply levels during peacetime did not have a mechanism for forecasting needs during a war. As a result, managers had to make manual forecasts that were often inaccurate due to unreliable data.
Insufficient and delayed funding. Officials at the Army Materiel Command often asked for more money to move more supplies to the theater, but the funding was delayed.
Acquisition delays. Some items were in short supply because vendors lacked key production materials or because long lead times were needed to produce them. For example, a lack of key materials was cited as the reason in delays in manufacturing body armor.
An ineffective distribution system. Auditors found improper packaging of air shipments, insufficient supply and transportation personnel, and poor tracking systems in Iraq.

GAO said the military services have taken several steps since the war began to improve supply chain operations. Auditors said a key step was assigning the U.S. Transportation Command to be the sole Defense agency responsible for supply chain management. ]]>

California may fare better in 2005 base closings, report says

George Cahlink — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

"Four BRAC rounds battered California, and their effects are still being felt throughout the state," says the nonpartisan California Institute for Federal Policy Research in its report. "Looking forward, the lessons of California's past base closures can inform the state's future course. A united front and strategic outlook can help the state's defense-oriented communities survive, and thrive, regardless of what the 2005 BRAC round may yield."

The Pentagon will release on May 16 a list of military bases that it wants to close or realign. Once the list is published, a nonpartisan BRAC commission will review it, hold public hearings and visit bases before making final recommendations to the president and Congress in September for their final approval.

California lost 93,546 military and civilian jobs when 24 bases were closed in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995. Today, the Golden State still has 93 military bases and about 130,000 military and 57,000 civilian personnel, which generate more than $100 billion for the state's economy.

The report says there are three ways to "affect" the final BRAC list: using "connections" at DoD or within the executive branch to stay off the Pentagon's list; influencing the makeup of the BRAC commission to ensure that state and community interests are represented; and finally, arguing for the removal of bases from lists at BRAC hearings.

The report found that California has been "active" in attempting to keep its bases off the Pentagon list, noting that statewide and local retention efforts are far better than in past years. But, the report cautions, the "private nature" of BRAC deliberations makes it impossible to know whether they are working.

The commission makeup appears "favorable," the report found. Researchers noted it will be chaired by San Diego resident Anthony Principi, a former Veteran Affairs Secretary. Another commissioner, Philip Coyle, also lives in southern California, and four of the nine commissioners come from Western states. "West Coast concerns are unlikely to be ignored."

Finally, the report says, making the Pentagon list is often a "death sentence"-since the majority are approved by the commission-but that should not prevent communities from making a case to the BRAC panel based on military value. "Complaining about past inequities would be likely far less effective," the report recommends, "than explaining the detrimental implications for national security of an inadequate Pacific Coast defense infrastructure."

]]>

Army to overhaul future weapons system contract

George Cahlink — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

"It's not going to change Boeing's role as the lead system integrator at all," Army Secretary Francis Harvey told reporters on Wednesday.

Harvey expects little or no changes in the overall cost of the contract as a result of the negotiations, which will last three to four months. Instead, he said, the changes will be in contract language that will ensure Boeing follows the same rules required in most federal contracts.

The Future Combat Systems project involves developing the Army's next generation of manned and unmanned air and ground systems, which will be tied together by an information network. FCS will replace the service's heavy tanks and other equipment beginning in 2014. FCS is the largest and most complex acquisition ever undertaken by the Army, with 18 separate systems and more than 50 new technologies envisioned for it.

Unlike most weapons projects, the Army does not directly oversee the contractors building it, and instead has hired Boeing as its lead systems integrator to assemble and manage subcontractors and oversee deadlines and budgets. The Army has final approval of Boeing's decisions and provides broad program oversight.

The Army's novel acquisition strategy for developing FCS has come under congressional scrutiny in recent months because the contract was written without following federal acquisition rules. Instead, the Army used "other transaction authority," allowing it to negotiate the deal more quickly and to operate outside the Procurement Integrity Act, Truth in Negotiations Act, and other standard contracting rules. Those rules limit government employees from taking future jobs with contractors and require contractors to provide extensive cost information.

At a congressional hearing last month, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., raised sharp questions about OTA and charged that it made the contract ripe for fraud, abuse and wasteful spending. Army acquisition chief Claude Bolton defended the use of the nontraditional approach, saying it sped negotiations with Boeing and could help the service attract non-defense contractors to work on the FCS project.

Harvey said, however, that OTA was necessary only early on to attract multiple contractors to bid for the LSI work, but now that the deal was in place there is no need for it. Subcontractors working for Boeing developing the FCS components have deals that were negotiated under traditional contract rules, he added.

Harvey said that the Army had been weighing the changes since early in the year and they were not made simply to appease McCain.

In a prepared statement McCain said, "I am gratified by the Army Secretary's receptiveness to my concerns about the program and I am looking forward to seeing precisely how the Army implements its stated commitment to ensuring that the interests of the taxpayer are preserved."

]]>

Bush does end run around Congress, installs base closure panel

George Cahlink — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

On Friday, President Bush announced that former Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi had been appointed to head BRAC, and that the panel's eight other nominees had been put in place as well.

Presidents can make recess appointments for jobs that normally require Senate confirmation when lawmakers are not in session. The appointments have been used in recent years to avoid contentious nomination battles.

Lott had placed a "hold"-a Senate procedure that allows any member to block a vote on a nomination-on Principi and threatened to do the same for the other nominees. Lott long has opposed more rounds of military base closings, fearing that installations in his home state of Mississippi could be targeted, among them Columbus Air Force Base, Naval Station Pascagoula, and the Naval Air Station in Meridian.

The BRAC Commission plays a crucial role in deciding what bases are closed. Once the Pentagon announces on May 16 which bases it wants to close or realign, the commission will hold public hearings throughout the summer and make final recommendations for congressional and presidential approval in the fall.

Establishing the commission well before the list of closings is published is crucial to its effectiveness. Former BRAC staffers say the panel already is getting a later start than previous ones. If the commission is further delayed, it would not have time to collect data and do thee analyses required to change Pentagon recommendations and, in effect, would become a rubber stamp for the proposed list, they say.

The Pentagon has said that this round of base closings could be far bigger than the previous four held in the late 1980s and 1990s as the military downsized following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ninety-seven out of nearly 500 military bases were closed in those rounds.

Last month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld played down earlier estimates that more than 20 percent of domestic installations would close. Still, local military communities have waged extensive campaigns and spent millions of dollars on lobbyists to try to stay off the list.

In addition to Principi, others named to the commission are: former Rep. James H. Bilbray, D- Nev.; Philip Coyle, an assistant Defense secretary under President Bill Clinton; retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman Jr.; former Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah; retired Army Gen. James Hill; retired Air Force Gen. Lloyd Warren Newton; Samuel K. Skinner, who was White House chief of staff and Transportation secretary under President George H.W. Bush; and retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Sue Ellen Turner.

]]>

Base Hitter

George Cahlink — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Philip Grone has the unenviable job of proposing which military posts to shut down.

Philip Grone, the Defense Department's deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment, sometimes gets gentle ribbing from his former colleagues on Capitol Hill. "There are folks who have occasionally joked with me, 'You used to be over here, and now you're doing this,' " says Grone, who spent about 16 years as a congressional staff member before coming to the Pentagon.

But when the Defense Department announces which military bases it will close or scale back in 2005, they might not be so gentle. Grone is the Defense point man on those closings and likely will face sharp questions when the Pentagon releases its list on May 16.

"This is really the last time in a political generation we can do [base closings]. We really have to get this right," says Grone, who aside from overseeing the base realignment and closure process manages $650 billion worth of Defense installations covering 460,000 square miles worldwide, including environmental cleanups at former bases. His job requires Senate confirmation.

In 2001, Congress reluctantly agreed to shut down bases only after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued that billions of dollars were being wasted on excess properties, money that could be better spent on new weapon systems or war costs.

Lawmakers always have been wary of closing bases, which provide federal jobs and often generate billions of dollars for local economies.

Grone, 44, was first introduced to military installations issues in 1994, when he was a staff member for the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. He was helping then-Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah, come up with ways to protect jobs at the Hill Air Force Base repair depot in Utah. Those efforts led to a law that prohibits depots from contracting out more than 50 percent of that work.

At the Pentagon, Grone's role has shifted. Now he must base decisions about installations on their value to the military, not the number of jobs they generate for surrounding communities. "We can't have anything that even looks like politics in this process. It has to be driven by military value," he says.

Grone parlayed his experience with Hansen and several years as a legislative aide to former Rep. Willis Gradison, R-Ohio, into a series of jobs developing and managing the House Armed Services Committee's mili-tary construction budget.

With a reputation as a behind-the-scenes player, Grone garnered money for military installations even when defense budgets were tight. He helped craft legislation that enabled the services to build base housing without spending billions of dollars-through privatization. In 2001, he arranged a tour of 20 military bases with crumbling infrastructure that helped convince Congress to spend hundreds of million of dollars to make upgrades.

Grone's work caught the attention of the new administration, particularly Raymond DuBois, then the Pentagon's installations and environment chief, who hired him as his top deputy in 2001. When DuBois resigned in the fall, Grone was named his successor.

He is cautious about discussing BRAC deliberations. He'll only describe them as an "enormously complex task." Defense employees involved with BRAC analyses must sign statements promising they will not reveal any details. Even Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, who recently lobbied Grone at the Pentagon about keeping her state's bases open, told reporters the BRAC point man would not "tip his hand."

Grone shrugs off concerns about being too secretive and says his only goal is to come up with a well-reasoned list that will withstand the scrutiny of the BRAC commission, the president and Congress. In prior rounds, the commission backed 85 percent of Defense's recommendations. He says he's shooting for 100 percent this time.

If he succeeds, the folks on Capitol Hill won't be ribbing him anymore.

]]>

Trial by Fire

George Cahlink — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0500

The fight against insurgents in Iraq is teaching Army junior officers how to lead.

After Army Lt. Jordan Becker and his infantry platoon parachuted into Kirkuk and helped seize the Iraqi city in April 2003, they were handed a wholly different type of mission: Solve a local dispute by peacefully evicting families from 67 houses. In the first house, Becker found a cache of grenades, weapons and cash, along with a woman who threatened to set herself on fire if she were forced to leave.

The woman, a Kurdish refugee, had moved into one of the houses abandoned by Arab oil workers and their families who fled or were forced out after fighting began in Northern Iraq in 2003. Kirkuk, an oil-rich city of nearly 1 million, had been populated primarily by Turkmen and Kurds until the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein's regime conducted an Arabization campaign in the North, displacing local residents to make room for Arab oil workers. After the 2003 war, Kurds returned to the city and now covet it as the capital of a new Kurdish state.

Becker's job was to get the refugees to move out without a fight, get the oil workers back in and thereby get oil flowing again. But the 24-year-old lieutenant and his platoon hadn't trained for such an operation, with its overtones of ethnic conflict. They returned to base for guidance. "I didn't like the idea of doing 67 midnight raids to eject destitute families from homes they were squatting in," says Becker. He weighed options with his commander, a captain not much older than he, who ended the discussion by saying, "Keep working the issue."

Increasingly, the Army is asking junior officers in Iraq to rely more on their own ingenuity than advice from senior leaders or training manuals. The Army is trying to cultivate innovative, audacious leaders for a new era of rapid deployments by smaller units to global flash points. The Iraq war is forging a new junior officer cadre and shaping the overhaul of leadership training.

In February, the Army created a basic officer leadership course that all lieutenants must complete before taking command of a platoon. It aims to teach young officers not only to fire machine guns and operate radios, but also to lead small teams of soldiers in unfamiliar cultures and environments and in fluid situations. The Army also is tweaking courses for captains and has begun studying changes for field-grade officers-majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels. But the changes are starting among small-unit leaders who, a few weeks after completing training, find themselves leading dozens of soldiers.

"[In Iraq,] we're fighting a small unit war," says Gen. Kevin Byrnes, who commands the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. "It's being fought by staff sergeants, sergeants first class, lieutenants and captains every day. They are the ones out on patrol; they're the ones who are in this extremely complex environment where things change from the minute they leave their compound until they return in the evening. We've got to make sure our leaders are prepared for those complexities."

The 'Captains Crisis'

During the 1990s, the rate at which junior officers, primarily captains, left the Army nearly doubled, from 8 percent (1,497 of 16,933 captains) in 1996 to 14 percent (2,208 of 15,404 captains) by 2000. A prime cause was frustration with heavy-handed management and a training system that left no room for innovation. "They did not sign up to become bureaucrats, but you become one when you cannot exercise any discretionary authority," says retired Army Col. Don Snider, a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., who has written extensively about Army professionalism and leader development.

Also in the late 1990s, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki began reorganizing the service into smaller, more flexible units outfitted with new high-precision weapons. But Shinseki knew that transforming the Army would take more than reorganization and new weapons. Prompted by the rumblings of the "captains crisis," he ordered up the most far-reaching review of Army training and leadership development since the end of the Vietnam War. What was needed, he believed, was a corps of inventive, adaptable and creative junior officers committed to building careers in the renovated service.

The review's Training and Leader Development Panel published findings in mid-2001 based on interviews with 13,500 active-duty and reserve officers. Junior officers complained that they were micromanaged and discouraged from learning through their own mistakes and experiences. Perhaps most damning, many believed they had no future in the Army. Afraid of failing and being drummed out, senior officers had created an overly cautious culture, says Col. Steven Jones, TRADOC's director of leader development. The Army's future leaders were not being taught to lead.

The panel laid the groundwork for the Army's basic officer leader course and other leadership development changes. The report found the service's officer education system emphasized technical skills over basic soldiering and failed to teach officers how to collaborate with units from different Army branches. Lieutenants needed platoon leadership skills and more hands-on training, the panel advised.

As it finished its work, retired Army Lt. Col. Leonard Wong, now an associate research professor at the Army War College, published a report, "Stifling Innovation? Developing Tomorrow's Leaders Today," buttressing the panel's findings. He interviewed dozens of company commanders. In one widely cited passage, a commander said, "They are giving me the egg and telling me how to suck on it."

Shinseki backed the panel's recommendations. But as the Army began planning changes, terrorists slammed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Overhauling training would take a back seat to war.

Taking Initiative

Last spring, Wong, who has been working with TRADOC, visited Iraq to follow up on his earlier report. He expected to again find frustrated junior officers. Instead, he found radical changes. The ambiguous and unpredictable nature of insurgent warfare was forcing junior officers to adapt, improvise and operate with only minimal guidance, he says. One lieutenant leading a platoon told Wong about the broad direction his unit had been given: "The colonel told us to go out, find bad guys and kill them. That was our orders. That was our task and purpose. We were like, 'Roger, all right.' "

A company commander took the initiative to help Baghdad residents who couldn't afford to buy propane to heat their homes and cook. His troops determined that a handful of distributors controlled propane sales and charged exorbitant prices. The soldiers expanded the number of distributors and developed a licensing system. Prices fell. "It was a really great idea, and it was done by our field artillery information officer," the captain says.

Maj. Guy Jones, who served as secretary to the general staff of the 82nd Airborne Division in Ramadi, Iraq, from September 2003 to April 2004, says senior officers regularly issued broad orders calling for junior officers to achieve a desired effect without telling them how to do it. For example, a commander might say he wanted civilians to see U.S. troops as an assisting rather than occupying force. Junior officers could pursue many different methods, Jones says, including talking with local leaders and assisting with aid projects. In part, senior officers' lack of familiarity with post-combat occupation and counterinsurgency is forcing them to rely on junior officers' inventiveness, Jones says.

Junior officers told Wong that they were carrying out missions they'd never expected. "I've never been given a class on how to sit down with a sheik, who two days before I had seen on CNN," says a captain. "I don't know if he is trying to gain favor with me because he wants something. . . . It is just something you are going to have to learn on the job."

Another captain described how his company learned to conduct building raids and searches on foot. The group included 150 soldiers-whose motto was "Death Before Dismount"-and their 35 vehicles. Before the raids, the captain says, he took over an abandoned Iraqi warehouse and asked soldiers from an infantry battalion to train his troops to operate on foot. The soldiers would train for a day or two in the warehouse, then conduct live raids.

Troops regularly grapple with Iraqi cultural practices that run counter to Army training. For example, Iraqis regularly fire guns to celebrate special occasions, such as weddings. "Normally, if you see somebody shooting an AK-47, you are trained to kill them," a company commander says. "But in a lot of cases, that means they are happy about something. Maybe it's a wedding. You always have to think, 'why?' "

Capt. Michael Adamski, an intelligence staff officer with the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, served in Kirkuk from March 2003 to February 2004. He says his training at the Army's Intelligence School in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., did not prepare him for almost daily meetings with local mullahs about problems in their communities or his forays into bombed-out neighborhoods to try to place blame for the explosions that wrecked them.

Adamski says much of his training, completed in 2002, focused on easy-to-predict Soviet battlefield methods, not the continuously evolving low-tech tactics of insurgents. Moreover, he says, in urban and insurgent warfare, unmanned aerial vehicles and satellite imagery are not very effective, and human intelligence becomes crucial. As a result, Adamski says, he often set aside his normal job of analyzing intelligence to go out and gather raw data himself. "I was running around the city all the time to meetings with sources," he says.

An infantry officer who led a support platoon in Kirkuk estimates that about 70 percent of the junior officers he met in Iraq had adapted to the new style of fighting and leading. For example, a fellow officer with only cursory knowledge of the region's politics forged alliances with local leaders of four ethnic groups. Those relationships led to early warnings of enemy rocket attacks. But some junior officers did not adapt, the officer says, and even tolerated abuse among subordinates.

West Point's Snider says the Army has no choice but to rely on junior officers to make decisions and learn on the fly, because the bulk of the fighting in confined urban environments is done by small units. "The Army had to [push] power down to them, even though it knew it was not giving them knowledge on how to fight the insurgency," he says. Snider praises junior officers for their creativity, but he believes the insurgency has lasted longer than necessary because the Army has relied so heavily on inexperienced officers who lacked training. He says it will take another three to five years for the Army's lessons learned from counterinsurgency fighting to take root. "Make no mistake, the Army is playing catch-up," he says.

How 'the Other' Thinks

Jones concedes Army training might have to catch up with what junior officers are learning in Iraq, but points to the service's new basic officer leadership course as a sign of change. The effort is divided into three phases. The first will ensure that all officers are taught basic Army values before commissioning; the second will be a six-week course on small-unit leadership that all lieutenants must take; the third phase, to be conducted at each of the Army's 16 branch schools, will teach small-unit leaders how to collaborate with soldiers from other branches in combat. The new leadership course begins in July 2006.

Meanwhile, junior officers have created their own Web sites to share lessons from Iraq. Content ranges from how to properly respond to mortar attacks to how to help a soldier get home for the birth of a child. Senior leaders initially were concerned about the free flow of information in a non-secure Internet environment. More recently, the Army has begun paying for the sites, Companycommand.com and Platoonleader.com.

In Kirkuk, Lt. Becker couldn't search online for tips on how to move the Kurds out of the oil workers' abandoned houses. His company commander wasn't much help either. So he headed back to the first house he had visited, where he found the woman who had threatened self-immolation now sipping tea with her family. "I didn't feel like putting my helmet or body armor on, and there wasn't any danger that I couldn't take care of with my weapon. Nobody that outranked me was watching, so I headed over with my weapon slung over my back," he recalls. Becker started talking with the family about their hopes and dreams and the future of their country. Three hours later, without any prompting, one of the older men said he'd do whatever was needed to help build a new Iraq. Soon, the man and his family were moving.

Over 10 days, Becker had similar conversations with local leaders and other families living in those houses. He hadn't received much training about talking with Iraqis at Army Ranger school or in his ROTC classes at Washington's Georgetown University, but Becker had read up on Iraqi culture, regularly perused foreign newspapers and eagerly talked with foreigners while stationed overseas. "A solid understanding of how 'the other' thinks, be it the enemy, civilian population, or world public opinion, can only be gained by acquainting oneself with the intellectual currents of various milieus and not limiting oneself to traditional chief of staff reading list material, not that that is not a good start," Becker says.

In Kirkuk, Becker's varied experiences and nontraditional approach paid off. All 67 families moved out peacefully.

]]>

With top Air Force slots vacant, Pentagon takes over procurement programs

George Cahlink — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

"This action is not a punitive one; rather it is meant to assist the Air Force by overseeing and providing advice on important Air Force programs during a time of transition," Michael Wynne, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said earlier this week.

The programs are valued at about $200 billion and include the $59 billion C-17 cargo aircraft program and the $6.2 billion C-13OJ cargo aircraft program. The service's top acquisition programs, the Joint Strike Fighter and the F-22 fighter aircraft, already are managed by the Pentagon.

Wynne, who will oversee the programs, did not set a timeline for when the Air Force would resume managing them. He asked the Air Force to provide a list of significant decisions and milestones for each program that will occur over the next six months.

While the Pentagon stressed the action was not punitive, Air Force procurement programs have come under intense scrutiny in recent months after former Air Force official Darleen Druyun admitted to favoring Boeing in contract negotiations in exchange for a high-paying job with the contractor. Both former Air Force Secretary James Roche and former Air Force acquisition chief Marvin Sambur resigned in January because of the controversy.

Sambur had warned the scandal created a "leadership vacuum" in the service.

Acting Air Force Secretary Peter Teets, who also served as undersecretary, filled in on an emergency basis, but left the service at the end of March.

Michael Dominguez, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs, has been named acting Air Force secretary. He's a former member of the Senior Executive Service who's worked for the Navy and the Pentagon's Program and Analysis Office.

The White House has yet to nominate anyone for the job. Navy Secretary Gordon England had been considered a front-runner, but now is seen as a likely nominee to replace Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who recently was appointed to head the World Bank.

Meanwhile, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper is expected to retire in the fall and several other general officer assignments have been held up in the Congress by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as the result of the Boeing scandal.

The most high profile casualty was Air Force Material Command Chief Gen. Gregory S. Martin, who was seen as possible successor to Jumper. He withdrew his nomination to head the military's Pacific Command after McCain raised concerns over how well Martin supervised Druyun when both worked at the Pentagon.

The Air Force has been meeting with McCain in recent weeks to resolve his concerns and lift his holds on various nominees.

]]>

The Long Wait

George Cahlink — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Military communities likely will have to wait years to see any economic benefits from base closings.

Members of the Concord, Calif., City Council recently did something few local government organizations ever do: asked the Defense Department to shut down a military base in town.

"Most communities fight to keep their bases open, but ours is effectively closed," Concord City Manager Ed James told the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this year. "There is no job loss here. There's nothing out there but cows grazing."

In the late 1990s, the 12,800-acre Naval Weapons Station Concord became a ghost town after the Pentagon decided to mothball the munitions distribution port, which is located on Suisin Bay, about 35 miles northeast of San Francisco. The base, once home to thousands of workers and a major West Coast port for shipping munitions, was left with a caretaker crew of 60 civilian employees and 75 personnel in an Army support battalion that sometimes uses the base's port to ship ordnance overseas.

City officials believe the base's waterfront land is worth as much as $1 billion and could be used for new businesses, housing and parks. But they and other local government leaders might want to read a January 2005 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO-05-138) about how communities fare once bases are closed. They might not receive property right away-if at all.

Base realignment and closure decisions can take up to six years to implement if everything goes as expected, but a federal law requiring bases to be environmentally safe before they are transferred often lengthens the process. Since 1988, the Pentagon has held four base-closing rounds-the last one a decade ago-but more than 25 percent of the land on which the closed bases sit (140,000 acres) remains in the hands of the Defense Department.

Of that land, about 49,000 acres are still awaiting reclamation, which can carry an enormous price tag. For example, the cost of restoring almost 1,800 acres at McClellan Air Force Base in California is estimated to be $772 million, while cleaning up about 14,000 acres at Fort Ord, a former Army training base in the state, could cost $321 million. As of the end of 2003, the Defense Department had spent $8.3 billion cleaning up BRAC bases.

The Pentagon also has taken advantage of laws that allow it to hold on to land and lease it out. About 91,000 acres of land at former BRAC bases are still owned by the Defense Department and are leased to tenants ranging from other federal and state agencies to small businesses. As Defense spending has tightened, the military services have increasingly found leasing an attractive revenue-generating option.

Even when bases are handed over, it generally takes time for communities to recover from the shock of losing military jobs. GAO's analysis of Defense Department numbers shows that about 30 percent of the 130,000 Defense civilians jobs lost in past BRAC rounds still had not been recovered by communities as of the end of 2003.

The Pentagon has repeatedly said it has learned from past BRACs and expects transfers of land and economic redevelopment to go much faster at bases targeted for closure in the 2005 round. Officials at Defense's Office of Economic Adjustment note that since the first BRAC round, the time it takes to transfer properties has been cut by almost two-thirds. And they say local communities have done far more advance planning than in past rounds for how they'll redevelop local economies if bases are closed.

Back in Concord, local leaders look forward to the day their base is permanently closed. They talk about opening a thriving commercial port where military munitions were once loaded. As an op-ed writer noted in a local newspaper, "Concord Marina has a nice ring to it." But it may take some time to realize that dream.

]]>