March 1, 2021 Japan-U.S. Support Agreement Dod Budgets
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March 1, 2021 Japan-U.S. Support Agreement Update 01: Extended One Year Washington and Tokyo have decided to extend an agreement on Japanese financial support for approximately 54,000 U.S. troops in the country, Japan’s government said Wednesday. A Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement confirmed a 18 FEB report by the Kyodo news agency that said the agreement, which had been due to expire next month, would be extended for a year. Under the deal, Japan will pay roughly $1.91 billion toward the cost of utilities, labor and training for American military personnel during the coming fiscal year, on par with the current level, according to Kyodo. Cost-sharing talks will resume in April, after Japan's fiscal year 2021 begins, the report said. Former President Donald Trump had demanded Japan pay $8 billion a year for hosting U.S. troops in the country, former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” published in June. [Source: Stars & Stripes | Seth Robson |: February 17, 2021++] ********************* DoD Budgets Update 01: Process Too Slow To Beat China, New Report Says A new report argues for a sweeping overhaul of the Pentagon’s 60-year-old defense budgeting and appropriations process, so it can match the fast-moving commercial sector and outpace China’s technological development. The paper, scheduled release 25 FEB, argues that numerous acquisition policy reforms over the years have failed to get the best results because the Planning, Programming, Budget and Execution, or PPBE, process has eluded change. The authors, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Industrial Policy Bill Greenwalt and the Hudson Institute’s Dan Patt, recommend the U.S. consider more agile defense budgeting. “Specifically, the U.S. needs the ability to launch and terminate new development efforts more quickly, to pivot the direction of ongoing investments, and combine the outputs of multiple efforts at various levels of maturity in such a way as to force competitors to respond to U.S. initiative,” they write. The paper, obtained by Defense News, comes as policymakers worry the Pentagon isn’t investing to develop the advanced technologies that are considered crucial to future warfare. The report is timely, as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., said Tuesday at a hearing on emerging technologies that PPBE process is “one of those relics of days gone by,” and asked how it could be changed to provide better “organizational responsiveness.” Similarly, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the panel that Congress and the Defense Department need to collaborate on steps beyond acquisition reform. “The DoD’s problem is not innovation, but innovation adoption,” he said. “It’s outdated, industrial-age budgeting process creates a valley of death for new technology, allowing basic research funding and also procurement of weapons systems, but preventing the flexible investment needed in prototypes, concepts, and experimentation of new concepts and technologies like AI.” Schmidt lamented that the budgeting process requires American defense planners to lock-in programmatic decisions more than two years in advance. Amid evermore complex and predictive program requirements, the time it takes the Pentagon to go from identifying a need to making a contract award has increased from about one year in 1950 to seven years, according to the report. Meanwhile, program timelines for new start systems have increased by a factor of four for aircraft and two for ship hull and machinery from 1970 to 2020. The authors make several recommendations: • Congress and the Pentagon should launch a pilot project around one or two pressing operational challenges using an alternative resource allocation process aimed at fostering adaptability in capability delivery. • They should also sponsor a commission of expert stakeholders to study changes to the PPBE and appropriations processes that balances America’s need to compete and Congress’ constitutional role. • The policy and research community should conduct comparative analyses of the bureaucratic research allocation processes between the U.S. and China. Chinese budgetary, requirements, and acquisition processes for defense are ripe for study, they write. It appears that Russia and China take more adaptive, more iterative development approaches to field systems more rapidly ― and that the Chinese military lacks the constraints of the American military’s multi-year budgeting process. The United States military used to be more adaptive. After World War II, the B-52 bomber saw 13 design iterations in 12 years, with thrust increasing by a factor of four. When the B-52H’s arrived, “the design had iterated and evolved into a robust vehicle with the longest planned service life of any military aircraft,” the authors write. “The history of the B-52 can foreshadow a radically different future for U.S. defense acquisition, where we focus less on performance against prediction, and more on the speed of capability delivery and learning,” they wrote. “This approach presents a path to reverse the Chinese advantage in systems fielding timelines, and a scheme to continuously force their hand and expenses in responding to a breadth of fast- paced U.S. developments.” Over time, an emphasis on “cost, price, technology maturity, fairness, socio- economic factors, and perceived efficiency,” has “deemphasized the significance of time as an incentive to invention.” The paper delves into alternative processes like portfolio-based budgeting or a venture capital-based model that prize adaptability over stability. On 23 FEB, Schmidt said that in the area of artificial intelligence, the United States is “one or two years ahead of China, not five or 10.” A co-chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, Schmidt called for an urgent new national competitiveness approach in the areas of AI, 5G networking and hypersonic weapons. “We can’t spend 15 years building the first hypersonics while China and Russia are already working on it. We need a different methodology,” he said. Forthcoming recommendations from the AI commission will include accelerating several key technologies using iterative design approaches. “You’re wasting money with existing design cycles, it’s not helping with preparedness,” Schmidt said. [Source: DefenseNews | Joe Gould | February 25, 2021 ++ ********************* DoD/VA Concurrent Receipt Update 11: Fight For CRSC Presses On Retired Army Maj. Richard Star, 51, passed away early the morning of 13 FEB after a years-long battle with lung cancer linked to burn pit exposure on deployments. A former combat engineer with multiple overseas tours, Star spent the last months of his life advocating for disabled and medically retired veterans. “Rich Star saved countless lives by clearing roads in Afghanistan of IEDs, and now in his legacy he’s still working to clear the road for concurrent receipt for his fellow servicemembers,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Mark Belinsky, director of currently serving and retired affairs for the Military Officers Association of America. Chapter 61 retirees, like Star, are service members who were medically retired due to injuries sustained on duty prior to achieving 20 years in service. Under current laws, such retirees are not eligible for concurrent receipt, meaning their military longevity pay is reduced by the amount of VA disability compensation they receive. Service members have earned both their retirement pay and their disability compensation, Belinsky said, and having one shouldn’t mean receiving less of the other. The Major Richard Star Act, introduced by Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) on Feb. 27, 2020, would have secured the right of concurrent receipt for approximately 43,000 Chapter 61 retirees injured in combat zones. Although it received support in both houses of Congress, the act failed to pass last year. Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Mike Crapo (R-ID) alongside Reps. Raul Ruiz (D-CA) and Bilirakis plan to reintroduce the Major Richard Star Act on 22 FEB, according to Belinsky. Chapter 61 retirees injured in a combat zone make up only a small portion of the total veterans ineligible for concurrent receipt, however. “The whole concurrent receipt problem has an estimated $33 billion price tag on it,” said Belinsky. “So, the smallest increment to chip away at the larger concurrent receipt injustice is the Major Richard Star Act, which is targeting those injured in combat.” Star joined the Army in 1988. His first deployment was in support of Operation Desert/Desert Storm. He later deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, performing road construction and IED clearance operations. On his last deployment, Star began having difficulties with breathing and coughing blood. Doctors in Kuwait downplayed his health issues and blamed them on air quality and asthma. When he returned stateside in 2018, Star discovered that he had stage four lung cancer. While going through surgeries and chemotherapy, he learned that he would not concurrently receive his retirement and disability pay through the DoD. “When we lose somebody to combat, that’s one thing, but to lose somebody to negligence, to medical malpractice that’s easily preventable… is shameful and an injustice in itself,” said Natalie Khawam, Star’s lawyer. Khawam worked in 2019 to pass the SFC Richard Stayskal Military Medical Accountability Act, which secures active-duty service members the right to compensation for medical malpractice in military facilities — medical malpractice like downplaying respiratory issues. Star and his lawyer had filed claims under the act, but the Defense Department has delayed the creation of rules and processes to adjudicate and pay claims under the act, according to Khawam. Such rules were initially expected on Jun. 30, 2020, but the DoD has repeatedly extended its deadline, blaming the COVID-19 pandemic and presidential transition for the delays. Khawam was outraged to see Star pass away before compensation could be secured for his wife and family under the SFC Richard Stayskal Military Medical Accountability Act.