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Humvee Recap Effort Killed; Army Won't Reap Savings

In a stunning reversal of fortune for the competitive humvee recapitalization effort, Pentagon officials plan to cancel the Medium Expanded Capacity Vehicle and shift the money saved to pay Navy and Air Force bills, Inside the Army has learned.

The net effect of the termination is that the Army stands to lose funds to its sister services amid overall efforts to cut the defense budget by $487 billion over 10 years. In that sense, the termination of the program could be viewed as an early casualty of the Pentagon's new defense strategy, which emphasizes air and sea power and may ultimately leave the Army struggling to find its role. News of the MECV cancellation was first reported by AOL Defense.

The money saved from MECV would not be spent on the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle -- a humvee replacement program that at one time was seen as endangered because recap was reportedly less expensive, according to an Army official. "The MECV requirement was generated by the need to equip only two units: the 82nd Airborne and the 101st," a congressional source said of the cancellation. "The cost to cover that relatively narrow requirement made it vulnerable in the budget end game."

More to come.

Inside the Army continues to advance the JAGM story it broke in December:

Scaled-Down Version Of JAGM Could Look A Lot Like A Beefed-Up Hellfire

As the Army goes about redesigning the Joint Air-to-Ground Missile program to save it from cancellation, service officials are considering as a starting point the weapon that the missile was supposed to replace, Inside the Army has learned.

If approved by Pentagon decision-makers, the new approach would effectively end an ambitious quest for two sophisticated -- but expensive -- components: A rocket motor that can work with both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, and a seeker capable of homing in on moving targets from far away and during bad weather.

While final details are not expected until the release of the fiscal year 2013 defense budget request later this month, the Army is envisioning a revamped development program based on the Hellfire missile, according to a service official. "It will be a JAGM program with an awful lot of Hellfire in it at the start -- if this works," the official said.

Sticking with Inside the Army for this inside look at the all-important NIE:

Summer Network Integration Evaluation Findings Briefed On Capitol Hill

Army network modernization leaders recently went to Capitol Hill to brief congressional staffers on findings and recommendations related to a host of systems tested during the summer 2011 Network Integration Evaluation, according to memos obtained by Inside the Army.

"In short, we answer the question, 'If you had to deploy tomorrow, do you want this capability solution in your full-spectrum tool box?'" states an executive summary signed by Lt. Gen. Keith Walker, the director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center.

While the Army has held one additional NIE since the June 2011 event addressed in the report, the results are not yet available. Findings from both events will figure into acquisition and fielding decisions for soldiers heading to Afghanistan in 2013.

The summer NIE exposed two "broad network shortcomings for Capability Set [20]13," according to Walker's report. "The Army lacks soldier-level connectivity and unit [mission command] capabilities, and must develop comprehensive requirements accordingly," he wrote. "The development of these requirements will provide much-needed direction to the Army materiel enterprise and provide common criteria against which hand-held and other MC solutions can be evaluated in future NIEs."

Related:

Raytheon Pushes MAINGATE To Replace Army's JTRS Ground Mobile Radio

An alternative wideband networking radio with a history of sales to a "classified customer" is the latest entrant in the contest to replace the Army's canceled Ground Mobile Radio.

Jeff Miller, director of Raytheon's Network-Centric Systems' Tactical Communication Systems, said last week that his company is positioning its Mobile Ad-Hoc Interoperable Network Gateway radio, or MAINGATE, to compete directly with other products vying for the Army's new Mid-tier Networking Vehicular Radio program. A formal request for proposals for the two-channel MNVR is expected next month.

MAINGATE was developed jointly by Raytheon and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. As first reported by Inside the Army last month, more than 100 MAINGATE radios have been sold to a classified customer operating in Afghanistan.

"It is a radio we designed specifically to be ready as a GMR replacement," Miller said in a Jan. 17 interview. "Between the different lab testing we've done, the integration at [Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment], and the [Network Integration Evaluation], we've really shown the Army MAINGATE is a viable alternative to GMR that's available now with the non-proprietary waveforms."

The latest:

Lockheed: Despite Weight Gain Concerns, Fixes Improved F-35B Ratio

The fixes made to the Marine Corps' short-takeoff, vertical-landing variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter actually improved the weight margin on the aircraft by 270 pounds, despite concerns by the Pentagon's acquisition chief last year that it would add to the aircraft's weight, a Lockheed Martin official told reporters Jan. 20.

Hours after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, MD, that the F-35B was off its two-year probation a year early, Steve O'Bryan, Lockheed Martin's vice president for F-35 program integration and business development, told reporters via teleconference that because of the fixes to the aircraft, "the weight margin to the requirement has increased -- in other words, the weight to the requirement has gotten better" by more than 270 pounds since January 2011, he said.

Essentially, that means the aircraft's ratio of pounds of thrust versus the actual weight of the aircraft improved by that amount via a combination of a reduction in weight and an increase in thrust.

More from Inside the Navy:

Navy Officials Debate Ship Commonality As Budgets Tighten

With budgets tightening and more attention being paid to how money is spent, focus at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium in Arlington, VA, this month centered heavily on commonality among ships' systems: whether they should be the latest and greatest available, or if they should mostly share a common baseline.

That debate came to a head during a panel discussion on Jan. 12 at the symposium. Rear Adm. Ann Phillips, special assistant for surface warfare, said during her opening remarks that commonality was a struggle for the surface warfare community.

"We love to have the next thing, and what that drives us to is a situation where, as you go across a class of ships, you have a number of differences, variances in the systems -- in the combat systems, in the C4I systems, even in the engineering systems -- that lead to additional costs in testing, in maintenance and in training," she told the crowd of surface warfare officers and industry representatives. "That drives costs. One of our challenges now should be, as we move forward, how do we go toward commonality?"

DOD To Buy, Modify Two High-Speed Ferries For Transfer Of Marines

The Navy will spend $70 million to transfer and modify two high-speed ferries to support moving 880 Marines from Okinawa, Japan, because Joint High Speed Vessels wouldn't be able to do the job, according to a legislative proposal penned by the Defense Department and sent to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The proposal sought to authorize the transfer of $35 million in funds to the Transportation Department's Maritime Administration, which owns the high-speed ferries M/V Huakai and M/V Alakai. According to the Dec. 1 Senate floor log, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) offered an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would authorize the transfer. The amendment passed and the bill also passed the Senate shortly after.

The previously unreported proposal, dated Nov. 17 and signed by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King, states the move would cost a total of $70 million for the transfer of the vessels and the modifications they would require. The Navy would get the money from National Defense Sealift Fund appropriations "to fund the transfer of the vessels and the aforementioned modifications," according to the document.

And on the Navy writ large:

Navy Officials: Health Of Industrial Base A Top Priority Going Forward

The health of the industrial base is a top concern for the Navy as the service approaches a period of cutbacks and budget uncertainty, Navy officials said last week.

With the Defense Department poised to slash $489 billion from its budget in the coming years -- and potentially much more should sequestration hit -- Navy officials at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium in Arlington, VA, earlier this month reassured industry representatives by saying the service has made maintaining the industrial base a top priority.

"I'm comfortable with the situation we have, but we have to look at [the industrial base situation] carefully," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert said Jan. 10. "A lot of people say a lot of [it is] shipbuilding, and it is shipbuilding, but it's also weapons and it's also sensors. [People need to] understand that some of the key areas, like nuclear components, that many, many . . . of our nuclear components are sole-source, and they need a volume to keep them going, and if we lose some of those, we lose something that is very, very difficult to reconstitute."

JIEDDO steps up again:

JIEDDO Kicks Off Effort To Combat Fertilizer Bombs In Afghanistan

The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization released a broad agency announcement on Jan. 17 calling for proposals that could help curb the spread of the kinds of homemade explosives widely used in IEDs in Afghanistan.

The problem of precursor materials for homemade bombs used against U.S. forces in Afghanistan revolves almost exclusively around fertilizer production in neighboring Pakistan. Two calcium ammonium nitrate plants there are the sources for the majority of explosives used in IED attacks, defense officials have said.

It is uncertain what level of contribution these companies will make in the form of a response to the announcement posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website, JIEDDO spokeswoman Air Force Col. Stephanie Holcombe wrote in a Jan. 18 email statement to Inside the Army. "There is no way to know if Pakistan will participate in this BAA and submit a plan," she wrote.

What's new:

Boeing Firms Up KC-46A Design; Air Force Set For Design Review In March

Boeing has finalized plans for configuring the KC-46A tanker aircraft, a milestone that allows the Air Force to move ahead with plans for a preliminary design review of the new aircraft in March.

Jerry Drelling, a Boeing spokesman, said in response to a question from InsideDefense.com that the company in December conducted a firm configuration review of what will be a militarized variant of the commercial 767 airframe, which the Air Force last year selected for its $51.7 billion plan to recapitalize its aging aerial refueling fleet.

"Building on the 767-2C Commercial Freighter Firm Configuration Review conducted in July 2011, the KC-46 Firm Configuration Review, conducted December 8, 2011, focused on military requirements and the maturation of the configuration leading up to [the] Air Force's Preliminary Design Review in March 2012," Drelling said.

Preliminary design reviews are assessments in which government officials typically take a first in-depth look at a new weapon system's hardware and software plans.

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