EXECUTIVE SUMMARY/BLUF: Below are items of interest to Middle Georgia leadership. Thank you for your continued support and, as always, let us know how we can better serve you. SYNOPSIS: Department of Defense Budget As reported last month, the President’s budget was submitted for a total of $750 billion with the Air Force budget at $165.6 billion. Through the month, the Department of Defense and the Air Force testified before both the House and Senate to defend the budget before Congress. The House Budget Committee introduced H.R. 2021, Investing for the People Act of 2019. This is not a budget; the Budget Committee instead favored a vote increasing budget caps. This went to the full floor with the following caps, $664 billion for defense in 2020 and $680 billion in 2021. For non-defense, caps were set to $631 billion in 2020 and $646 billion in 2021. Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) caps were set at $69 billion. That is a total of $733B for defense in 2020. The vote never reached the full floor as the Democrat Party could not agree on the language. Instead, the House set overall caps to $1.3 trillion to allow negotiations to begin with the Senate. Advanced Battle Management System Two considerations for the new ABMS that the Partnership is tracking closely is the acquisition of the system and how that system will work. From that we should be able to determine what we need to do as a community to support the Department of Defense in their pursuit of the technologies needed for this concept. During recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Air Force Posture in response to a question posed by Senator Perdue, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Goldfein, stated that “Increment One is focused on taking the current sensors we have and advancing and connecting them in ways that they’re not currently connected. Increment Two is about bringing on new sensor capability. Many of those are going to be in space. Increment Three will connect it all together. We’ve just brought on an architect, Mr. Preston Dunlop, to lead us through that. His first stop was to meet the ‘doctors of battle management’ at Robins. We’re on track, and Robins is going to lead the way.” State Legislation We are grateful for the work our state delegation put forth this session to make Georgia a leader in becoming “the most military friendly state in the nation.” Our Middle Georgia Delegation was front and center in tackling issues that impact our military—and were successful in getting those bills passed and to the Governor’s desk for signature. A special thanks to Senator Larry Walker, who secured an additional $200,000 for the Georgia Joint Defense Commission, the Partnership’s #1 priority on the state legislative agenda. We would like to also thank Sen. John Kennedy, and Representatives Shaw Blackmon, Heath Clark and Dave Belton for their tireless advocacy. Additionally, this legislative session saw several bills pass that will make it easier for military spouses, indeed anyone moving to Georgia, to gain their needed professional certifications. Central Georgia Technical College and Robins Air Force Base Partnership On April 5th Central Georgia Technical College (CGTC) and Robins Air Force Base announced a first of its kind partnership at the former Boeing manufacturing facility at the Middle Georgia Regional Airport. CGTC will run their aviation program out of the old Boeing building and they will be joined by the base’s 402nd Commodities Maintenance Group. Senator David Perdue, Governor Brian Kemp, Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert McMahon, Brig. Gen. John C. Kubinec, Mayor Robert Reichert and CGTC’S President Ivan Allen were in attendance, as well

as 450 other notable Middle Georgians. This partnership also includes Macon-Bibb county and the State of Georgia. This partnership will work to build the workforce pipeline, not only for Robins Air Force Base, but for industries throughout the state of Georgia. Middle Georgia STEM Alliance Update Why a Middle Georgia STEM Alliance? Think “customer – supplier” and Supply Chain Management. Customers are the business and industry entities, particularly Robins AFB, who have an insatiable need for a ready pool of job applicants with the basic skills of science, technology, engineering, and math, to hire. Employment opportunities are created by retirement, attrition, career progression, and the growth of military missions, new industry and economic development across the region.

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Department of Defense Budget

As reported last month, the President’s budget was submitted for a total of $750 billion with the Air Force budget at $165.6 billion. Through the month, the Department of Defense and the Air Force testified before both the House and Senate to defend the budget before Congress. The testimony was very interesting to watch, and if interested, all the testimony can be found on YouTube.

The House Budget Committee introduced H.R. 2021, Investing for the People Act of 2019. This is not a budget, and it looks as though the House does not intend to introduce one. The Budget Committee instead favored a vote increasing budget caps. This went to the full floor with the following caps, $664 billion for defense in 2020 and $680 billion in 2021. For non-defense, caps were set to $631 billion in 2020 and $646 billion in 2021. Overseas Contingency Operations caps were set at $69 billion. That is a total of $733B for defense in 2020. The vote never reached the full floor as the Democrat Party could not agree on the language.

The budget caps are important as the Budget Control Act of 2011, also known as sequestration, is still the law. This would bring the overall Defense budget well below what the Department says would provide the needed readiness for our forces and meet the National Security Strategy. The Democrat Progressive Caucus wanted to increase domestic spending to match defense and the Blue Dog Democrat Caucus would have like to have seen decreases in both domestic and defense spending. In response, the House used a procedural maneuver, a “deeming resolution,” to set the overall caps at $1.3 trillion. This will allow the House and Senate leadership to negotiate a resolution. The hope in Congress is to come to an agreement to set caps for the next two years, when the Budget Control Act of 2011 ends.

Air Force Secretary Wilson and Chief of Staff Gen Goldfein testified for the Air Force. Secretary Wilson’s opening statement highlighted that the budget is aligned with National Security Strategy, stated the Air Force is too small to do what the Nation is asking it to do, noted we are fielding tomorrows Air Force faster and better using the authorities granted by Congress. Finally, she noted that on-time budgets are an important part of sustaining the advancements made to recover the readiness of the service.

Advanced Battle Management System

Two considerations for the new Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) that the Partnership is tracking closely is the acquisition of the system and how that system will work. From that we should be able to determine what we need to do as a community to support the Department of Defense in their pursuit of the technologies needed for this concept.

This system is more than an Air Force system. Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Goldfein stated during testimony that ABMS is moving from a platform centric approach to a fusion of sensors and capabilities. He also stated there is significant movement to shift from a platform solution in battle management to a network solution. He continued

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that this is our future in Joint Warfare, taking every sensor, every shooter to connect them together and noted this will be at risk with lower budgets. The Department of Defense, through the Air Force, looks to incorporate systems input from all battlespaces, air, information, land, sea, cyber and space to achieve military goals. This is a very lofty goal. The acquisition process will be critical to see a working system in place in the next 10 years, and the Air Force has promised the current JSTARS will support the Combatant Commanders until “Increment Two” of the new system is in place.

During recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Air Force Posture in response to a question posed by Senator Perdue, General Goldfein, stated that “Increment One is focused on taking the current sensors we have and advancing and connecting them in ways that they’re not currently connected. Increment Two is about bringing on new sensor capability. Many of those are going to be in space. Increment Three will connect it all together. We’ve just brought on an architect, Mr. Preston Dunlop, to lead us through that. His first stop was to meet the ‘doctors of battle management’ at Robins. We’re on track, and Robins is going to lead the way.”

One of the integral components needed to get ABMS up and running is agile software. Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Will Roper, is responsible for seeing the new acquisition processes are in place that allows ABMS, and many other technologies, to build quickly. One of the processes he has advocated is Air Force innovation teams. Teams have started all around the country to include Space Camp in Colorado Springs, Kessel Run in Boston, BESPIN in Alabama, with program code names like Kobayashi Maru, Mad Hatter and Soaring Buffalo. The focus is on Development and Operations, Agile DevOps as the Air Force is calling it.

DevOps is a commercial method, a set of practices that automates the processes between software development and IT teams, in order to build, test, and release software faster and more reliably and eliminate silos that often occur across teams. These teams are partnerships between the Air Force and industry, using airman and contractors to rapidly code in response to requests from operational units.

Kobayashi Maru is a team working to develop a cloud-based data library system tracking items in space. The system is expected to expand beyond space to include all air and space objects and will include all data gathered in the current space-based Air Battle Management System. Per Secretary Roper, “This is the first time I’m aware of where we’re treating the acquisition strategy of a program based mainly on the data it produces. We’re going to wrap an acquisition plan around the data.” This is the approach the Air Force likely will take to build the systems needed for the Advanced Battle Management System.

We believe the intent of ABMS is to pull together data input from most weapon systems that are communicating in the battle space. The information pulled, from space assets, to F-35s, F-22s, tankers, intelligence platforms and Remotely Piloted Vehicles, to ships at seas, and ground forces will likely flow to cloud-based processing. That data will need Artificial Intelligence to sort the huge amounts of information, providing battle managers at a fusion center the key bits of actionable data needed for a battlefield effect. All this at

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the speed of light, and the speed of processing. This is a tall order indeed. If successful, a Commander on the battlefield would be able to see, in almost real-time, the situation in the air, information, land, sea, cyber and space environments and make decisions based on that data.

The acquisition processes the Air Force is currently pursuing, and the news coming out from those venues, has been positive. We look forward to more information on the transition to ABMS and will watch to see how this impacts Middle Georgia and will work to anticipate what we can do as a community to support these efforts.

State Legislation We are grateful for the work our state delegation put forth this session to make Georgia a leader in becoming “the most military friendly state in the nation.” Our Middle Georgia Delegation was front and center in tackling issues that impact our military—and were successful in getting those bills passed and to the Governor’s desk for signature. A special thanks to Senator Larry Walker, who secured an additional $200,000 for the Georgia Joint Defense Commission, the Partnership’s #1 priority on the state legislative agenda. We would like to also thank Sen. John Kennedy, and Representatives Shaw Blackmon, Heath Clark and Dave Belton for their tireless advocacy. Additionally, this legislative session saw several bills pass that will make it easier for military spouses, indeed anyone moving to Georgia, to gain their needed professional certifications.

The following bills have been sent to the Governor’s Desk for his consideration. HB 25, HB 59 and HB 64 listed below will clear the Department of Defense state legislative priorities for this year. Their passage makes Georgia one of, if not the most, military friendly State in the Union.

HB 25 by Representative Dave Belton (R-Buckhead), co-sponsored by Representative Shaw Blackmon (R-Bonaire). The bill seeks to provide military service members civil relief concerning certain contractual obligations due to circumstances of active duty, to enhance service member consumer protections under the law to include certain television, video, and audio programming services, internet access services, and health spa services for when service members receives military orders to relocate for a period of service of at least 90 days to a location that does not support the contract. HB 33 by Representative Eddie Lumsden (R-Armuchee), co-sponsored by Representative Heath Clark (R-Warner Robins), amends Georgia law relating to weapons carry license, gun safety information, temporary renewal permit, mandamus, and verification of license, so as to provide for an extension of time for the renewal of a weapons carry license or renewal license for service members serving on active duty outside the state. HB 59 by Representative Dave Belton (R-Buckhead), co-sponsored by Representative Heath Clark (R-Warner Robins), which allows children of active duty military personnel to register in a local school district based on the parent's official military orders, rather than requiring the family to establish residency.

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HB 64 by Representative Brian Prince (D-Augusta). The bill seeks to address instances where children of military families are subject to abuse allegations. For each child who is the subject to abuse allegations, the child welfare agency is to determine whether the parent or guardian of such child is on active duty in the armed forces of the United States. If so, the agency is to notify the applicable military installation’s family advocacy program of the allegation of child abuse that relates to the parent or guardian of that child. HB 395 by Representative Sandra Scott (D-Rex) provides that when a law enforcement agency receives a report that a veteran or active duty member of the military, who is believed to have a physical or mental health condition related to their service, is missing, an investigation will immediately be opened to locate them.

Central Georgia Technical College and Robins Air Force Base Partnership

On April 5th Central Georgia Technical College (CGTC) and Robins Air Force Base announced a first of its kind partnership at the former Boeing manufacturing facility at the Middle Georgia Regional Airport. CGTC will run their aviation program out of the old Boeing building and they will be joined by the base’s 402nd Commodities Maintenance Group.

Senator David Perdue, Governor Brian Kemp, Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert McMahon, Brig. Gen. John C. Kubinec, Mayor Robert Reichert and CGTC’S President Ivan Allen were in attendance, as well as 450 other notable Middle Georgians. This partnership also includes Macon-Bibb county and the State of Georgia. This will work to build the workforce pipeline, not only for Robins Air Force Base, but for industries throughout the state of Georgia and will create an additional 300 jobs.

Middle Georgia STEM Alliance Update

Why a Middle Georgia STEM Alliance? Think “customer – supplier” and Supply Chain Management.

Customers are the business and industry entities, particularly Robins AFB, who have an insatiable need for a ready pool of job applicants with the basic skills of science, technology, engineering, and math, to hire. Employment opportunities are created by retirement, attrition, career progression, and the growth of military missions, new industry and economic development across the region.

Suppliers are the K-12 schools, public and private, technical colleges, universities, and training programs such as the VECTR Center. Some students enter the workforce directly from high school. Others prepare for careers at technical colleges, which offer certificates and two- or four-year degrees. Some careers require specific bachelor’s and master’s degrees in specific disciplines.

Good Supply Chain Management requires support for regional academia and mitigation against product leaking from the pipeline. Of course, not every student will be an engineer. But, every contributor to tomorrow’s workforce will need literacy and basic 6

skills for using technology effectively. STEM Outreach seeks to raise awareness for students and parents how essential these skills are to future education and a productive and lucrative career.

The Middle Georgia STEM Alliance support the Supply Chain connecting academia, parents, teachers, and students, with business and industry, creating tomorrow’s STEM workforce for Robins AFB and economic development across the region.

Thank you to our Presenting and Platinum Sponsors

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