WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department has cleared Chile to purchase modernization upgrades for its F-16 fleet, with a potential $634 million price tag.

Chile currently operates 44 F-16s. That includes 10 Block 50 models purchased in the early 2000s, as well as 36 older models bought second-hand from the Netherlands. Reports that Chile would look to upgrade their existing F-16 fleet first emerged in 2017, but final details had not been made public. Analysts have also speculated that Chile may look to buy a small number of new F-16s to supplement its fleet.

The upgrades included in this potential sale include 19 Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing Systems (JHMCS); six inert MK-82 (500LB) general purpose bomb bodies; two MXU-650KB Air Foil Groups (AFG); 44 LN-260 Embedded GPS/INS (EGI) and 49 Multifunctional Information Distribution System Joint Tactical Radios (MIDS JTRS).

Also included are avionics equipment and software upgrades, new radios, upgraded IFF transponders, secure communications equipment and other parts. The upgrades are expected to go across the 44 plane fleet.

“The proposed sale will improve Chile’s capability to meet current and future threats by modernizing its F-16 fleet, which will allow Chile to maintain sovereignty and homeland defense, increase interoperability with the United States and other partners, and deter potential adversaries,” per a statement on the website of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

Lockheed Martin, which produces the F-16, will be the prime contractor on the deal, should it go through. All DSCA announcements must be cleared by Congress. At that point negotiations begin. Quantities and dollar values often change in the final agreement.

Although this is the first FMS case approved for Chile since the start of fiscal 2017, the F-16 has proven to be a reliable sales vehicle for Lockheed abroad, with 14 F-16 related FMS requests cleared by DSCA during this time period.

The outcome was a loss for the White House, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other opponents who claim a new “Space Corps” equals more bureaucracy, but it was a win for lawmakers who warn the Air Force must be reorganized to catch up with China and Russia’s militarization of space. Space has become critical for the U.S. military with satellites used for navigation, protected communications, missile warning, surveillance and intelligence collection.

Plans for the new Space Corps were spearheaded by House Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., with the support of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. The HASC voted 60-1 last month to approve the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which contains the Space Corps legislative language.

House Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, had waged a public push and lobbying effort to replace the Space Corps language with orders for a study on whether a new branch is necessary. Mattis and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson had each written letters backing him, and the White House listed it among two dozen NDAA provisions it opposes.

Congressional aides said late Wednesday the House Rules Committee, led by Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, did not deem the amendment in order, and it did not receive an individual up-or-down vote. After Turner, Rogers and Cooper each pleaded their cases in a public hearing, the decision appears to have been made quietly.

“At a time when we are trying to integrate the Department’s joint warfighting functions, I do not wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations vice an integrated one we’re constructing under our current approach,” Mattis wrote.

Rogers and Cooper testified together before the House Rules Committee on Wednesday to emphasize their proposal’s bipartisan support and the dire need to prioritize space as its own domain.

Rogers argued the path ahead would actually be fairly deliberative. The Air Force would have six months after the bill’s passage to create its own plan, teeing up further congressional action to move forward or reverse as necessary. Even sooner, there would be a series of classified and open hearings on the next steps, he said.

“We encourage you to come, particularly to the classified hearings to see our capabilities and our adversaries’ — it is shocking what’s happened,” Rogers told the House Rules Committee. “Both China and Russia have already reorganized space.”

Although Turner acknowledged the military has faced difficulties in executing space programs, he argued that House lawmakers have not adequately laid out the organization and functions of the Space Corps, or even how much forming it would cost. 

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein has also cautioned against forming a Space Corps. In May, he told lawmakers that the Air Force needs to focus on integrating the space enterprise with other war-fighting functions and domains. Creating a stovepiped space organization outside that of the major services could take the military further from that goal.

“Anything that separates space and makes it unique and different, relative to all of the war-fighting missions that we perform that are reliant on space, I don’t think believe that will move us in the right direction at this time,” Goldfein said.

Email:  jgould@defensenews.com                     

Twitter:  @reporterjoe

Raytheon was first selected as the provider for 3DELRR in October 2014, but Northrop and Lockheed quickly lodged protests over the decision with the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Days before the protest window was to run out, the Air Force voluntarily announced it would re-evaluate the contract award, a move seen as a sign that the service expected the GAO to side with one of the protesting companies.

As a result, Raytheon lodged a suit against the service, one which was ultimately rejected by a U.S. court. The Air Force then relaunched the competition. The 3DELRR program will replace the service’s aging TPS-75 expeditionary radar system, which officials have warned will not be able to track future capabilities being designed by potential foes. The new systems are scheduled to be active in 2028.

At stake with the contract was not just the right to produce systems for the Air Force, but a potential stranglehold on the broader ground-based radar market. The U.S. Marine Corps has also explored the option of using the 3DELRR winner to replace its AN/TPS-59 system.

A Raytheon spokesman said the company was “pleased” and “eager to move forward” on the contract.

Although Lockheed did not win, they appear to have a fan of their offering — in 2014, a Chinese radar bearing heavy similarity to the Lockheed design appeared at a trade show. The company was famously hacked in 2009, with consensus that the Chinese government was behind it.

“What this layer is giving us, this unmanned team with a manned system, is really just giving us expendability. We have not had that in our platforms, maybe ever,” Roper said.

“All the things we build are expensive and if they take off, it’s our expectation they come home and land. That hasn’t been an issue until now, but if you think about highly competitive peer-on-peer war, how you have that system come back and land is a huge constraint,” he continued. “You have to protect it, you have to refuel it, you have to get them and maintain it and sustain it.”

The end goal, in Roper’s mind, is to limit the danger to individual operators. Rather than send in a wave of manned planes for the first day of combat, the SCO head said, send in wave after wave of cheap, disposable systems that come with no risk of losing a U.S. servicemember.

Michael Blades, an analyst with Frost and Sullivan, says the pieces for making the loyal wingman concept work are all available – but getting them to talk together is the tricky part.

“The technology is there but it all has to work together, and it has to work almost flawlessly,” Blades said. “We can’t even get a fighter jet to work for all the requirements of the different services, and we can’t decide what capabilities the MQ-25 should have, so do we really think we are ready for AI-controlled loyal wingmen?”

The big hurdles, Blades said, will be with datalinks and cybersecurity, something Roper acknowledged could be a challenge that needs to be worked out.

Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official now with the University of Pennsylvania who has studied drone issues, says that another challenge is the uncertainty around how technology will develop.

“Even within the AI research world, there is disagreement about how quickly various advances will occur,” Horowitz said. “Given that AI has utility far beyond the military context, commercial and academic research alone will likely push the realm of the possible in autonomous systems forward.”

Cultural Pushback?

To Roper, the future of drone swarm warfare will occur across all the services. But he is concerned that the Air Force may not be as willing to take part as other services, in part because they have no faced the same kind of fundamental challenges the other services have.

“The worst thing is to be in a position where the need to change is, yes, the most important thing, but it never the most important thing today,” Roper said. “We have to keep urgency in the need to change, because when we’re goanna need those changes, [when] the country says I now have a need for a next generation Air Force, it’s too late.”

Ironically, two of the most prominent AI/swarming programs from SCO are tied to the Air Force.  One, known as Avatar, is focused on the loyal wingman theory, taking a manned jet and having several unmanned systems tied together under its command. (There is also a ground-based equivalent being worked for the Army, Rpoer said.)

And perhaps the most attention-getting program from the office has been the Perdix system, a series of small drones designed with off-the-shelf technology. Perdix can be launched from the flare dispensers on an F-16 or F/A-18, and then can automatically link up and form a self-driving swarm of small ISR devices. A test in October successfully showed that the system could link 103 of the drones together.

Roper expressed surprise at the attention Perdix has gotten, saying he expected more interest in the work the office had done on other programs.  But the lessons learned from testing the system, including the software that powers the autonomous swarming capabilities, could be applied towards future swarming programs, he noted.

Horowitz notes that it is a “challenge” for any service to incorporate “emerging technologies that could threaten established ways of doing business,” which leads to a prediction that AI will make its way into existing operational concepts before we see anything revolutionary.

Adds Blades, “It’s a lot to execute in the implied short time, but with the rapid advancement of many technologies I think we could see things like AI and loyal wingmen integrated into normal ops, piecemeal, starting in 10-15 years.”

Among the big changes:

Changing the undersecretary of acquisition, logistics and

technology:

McCain first took aim at changing AT&L in the 2016 NDAA, a move that caught observes by surprise, and he continued that push with the 2017 NDAA.

At the time of the announcement, the language would have split AT&L into two offices: a new undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, or USD(R&E), and the renamed undersecretary of management and support, or USD(M&S).

However, the final language somewhat tweaks that, instead creating an undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment (AT&S), and create a new undersecretary for research and engineering (R&E), essentially a chief technology officer. Those new offices meet the goal of SASC staffers in creating a more focused position for developing new technology that is not, as they see it, bogged down in the day-to-day acquisition requirements that are currently balanced by AT&L head Frank Kendall.

Kendall has opposed such a splitting of his role, citing success in cost reductions during his tenure. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has also opposed such a move, opposition that Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said Tuesday still exists.

Andrew Hunter, a former acquisition official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the House staffers should be happy with how they tweaked the initial SASC suggestion.

“I would say whereas the Senate had focused on putting ‘acquisition’ and ‘technology’ together and shifting the ‘logistics’ to the undersecretary for management, it was the House that pushed to say: ‘Let’s push the “T” out and have the “A” and “L” together,’ ” Hunter said. “It’s a bit of a win-win but would say the House folks feel really good about the final answer.”

He notes that the new setup means the R&E role is now the chief focus for innovation in the department — something that could line up with Carter’s call for a chief innovation officer at the Pentagon.

Like the SASC, Punaro believes the role of AT&L had become too cluttered and gotten away from the vision of the Packard Commission in the late 1980s. He said he was “extremely positive and enthusiastic” about the changes, However, he expressed hope that the management and support role wold not be fully abandoned, given the wide portfolio, including energy and installations, that the current AT&L role controls.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, a senate staffer said what the two sides “continue to look at and consider for future legislation would be a role for management of the defense agencies and whether there is a possible third position — and how that would take shape, and whether the defense business enterprise would be better run now. That’s something we’ve asked the department for its input on, to really work with us on that. That would be a future project.”

Implementation of the new offices are ordered for February 2018, though the Department of Defense isn’t precluded from implementing it sooner — a move that Hunter notes leaves time for tweaks and changes to continue to happen.

“Notable is that it doesn’t go into effect for another year,” Hunter said. “I’m concerned there will be a struggle for power between these two secretaries that could be unproductive, so it is possible it could get tweaked once again with the new administration coming in to take on a character that appeals to the next secretary.

Capping general officer levels:

According to a Congressional Research Servicereport, in February of 2016 there were 411 one-stars, 299 two-stars, 138 three-stars and 37 four-stars spread across the Pentagon — 885 total general officers. The original SASC language sought to chop that down by 25 percent, or roughly 221 spots.

However, the compromise language reduces those cuts to only 110 spots — about an eighth of the total, still a significant chop — by Dec. 31, 2022. It specifically reduces the four-star total by five and requires that the grade of an officer serving as commander of a service or functional component command be capped at the three-star level.

The language also comes with the threat of further officer reductions down the line, with the language saying an additional 10 percent reduction may be appropriate after the 110-strong reduction occurs. And yes, Congress is aware the Pentagon may look to throw a wrench into these reduction plans.

“In the context of the Department of Defense’s continued requests to reduce military end strength, especially in the Army and the Marine Corps, reductions that Congress has cautiously considered and authorized, the time has come for the Department to rigorously evaluate and validate every general and flag officer position,” the report reads.

“The conferees expect that the Department of Defense and the military departments will improve efficiency by eliminating bloated headquarters and staffs while preserving the necessary number and grades of positions for general and flag officers who are responsible to train and lead our Nation’s forces in battle and to bring them safely home again. The conferees expect that the leadership of the Department of Defense and the military departments will approach this effort with the seriousness of conviction that our that our men and women in uniform, and the American people deserve.”

Extending the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of

Staff:

Currently, both the chairman and vice chairman operate under two-year terms, with the president required to reup those positions for a second two-year term if it is desired. However, the NDAA language now sets those jobs to four-year terms and specifies that the appointments should be staggered to avoid situations, as often occur, where both positions are rotating out at the same time.

Punaro, who helped draft the language that created the two-term system, believes it is time for those jobs to become four-year appointments.

“We made a mistake in ’86 when we shortened the term,” he said. “It hurt the independence of the chairman because they are having to look over their shoulder a little bit … so as one of the people at the staff level recommending that, I now recommend we go back to the four-year terms and acknowledge that we’ve had unintended consequences of what we thought was a good idea at the time.”

Capping National Security Council staff at 200:

The initial SASC language from May capped the NSC size at 150, so this appears to be a bit of a compromise. But the NSC under the Obama administration has been a target for supporters of both the State Department and the Pentagon, with complaints about micromanagement abundant.

Loren DeJonge Schulman, a former senior adviser to National Security Advisor Susan Rice now with the Center for a New American Security, warns that simply reducing the staff may not solve the perceived issues.

“A cap of 200 substantive staff, excluding administrative and support personnel, seems very reasonable,” she said. “However, no one should assume that cutting the size of the NSC will do anything to improve its effectiveness or minimize micromanagement. The new administration, starting with the president and the national security adviser, need to have serious discussions with fellow NSC members (Defense, State, Joint Staff, etc.) about their roles, execution of the president’s priorities, transparency and accountability.”

“That sort of clarity up front, and follow through after, is what is necessary to reform the NSC process,” she added. “Without it, a smaller NSC staff will just be an overworked, micromanag[ed] NSC staff.”

And the 200 number may still shrink, following media reports that the Trump administration wants to cap the NSC staff in the 40-60 range. Schulman called that “a nice thought, but a fantasy” that would make it “impossible to execute the coordinating, advocacy and oversight roles of the NSC.”

The language also caps the total number of Senior Executive Service positions at the Pentagon at 1,260, again with a requirement that number be met by the end of 2022.

Joe Gould in Washington contributed to this report.

Those comments seem long ago, with today’s team announcement unlikely to change the belief among investors that the spigot of military dollars is about to reopen.

The transition team, which is expected in the Pentagon Friday morning, is made up of:

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg

, who served as the chief operating officer of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq for about six months in 2003 and 2004, joined Cubic in 2009, handling the companies ground combat systems. He was promoted to vice president of Strategic Initiatives in 2014. A company representative said Kellogg left the company in early 2015.

Mira Ricardel

spent the first two years of the George W. Bush administration as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Eurasia before spending two more years as acting assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. She then left for industry, primarily for a nine-year stint at Boeing, including seven years as vice president of business development for strategic missile and defense systems and two as vice president for international business development related to network and space systems; her Linkedin profile says she left Boeing in 2015 for consulting firm Federal Budget IQ, although the Trump team says she was most recently self employed. Interestingly, the first name listed on the website is that of Ricardel, with Kellogg listed second. On a draft organizational chat obtained by Defense News last Friday, Kellogg was listed above Ricardel. It is unclear if that has shifted or if the list is simply unsorted on the Trump website.

Thomas Carter

held a number of defense-related roles throughout his career in government service, including time as deputy assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs and senior counselor to the Coalition Provisional Authority for legislative affairs, Baghdad, Iraq. He joined Elbit Systems in 2009 as vice president, government relations. A company spokesperson did not immediately return requests for comment on Carter’s employment status, but his last appearance in Elbit lobbying disclosure documents came in the third quarter of 2015.

William Hartzog

, a retired four-star Army general who led United States Army Training and Doctrine Command before retiring in 1998, is the CEO of Burdeshaw Associates, Ltd. Burdeshaw is a government contracting group that does not appear to have lobbied Congress directly since 2005, but a presentation on its website claims Hartzog’s team helped build support for systems such as the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the Stryker land vehicle, and the C-17 transport, among others.

Sergio de la Peña

has led the de la Peña Consulting, LLC, for five years. Before that, he spent two years at one of L3’s branches, according to LinkedIn. He served as a Trump surrogate during the campaign, reaching out to the Latino community.

Other names on the transition team include

Bert Mizusawa

, a retired Army major general and Silver Star recipient who was an early adviser to Trump during the election;

Earl Matthews

, whose most recent occupation is listed as “US Army”; and

Michael Duffey

, an executive with the Republican Party of Wisconsin who has held several jobs in the Pentagon, primarily in the field of systems engineering and analysis.

The sole representative from the think-tank world is

Justin Johnson

, a well-known defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation. Aside from Heritage, the defense think-tank community in DC has found itself on the outside looking in at the Trump administration, due to the large number of individuals who were part of the “never Trump” movement.

Johnson is seen as having a deep understanding of defense budgetary issues, and hours after the election sat down with Defense News to discuss his views on what a Trump administration means for defense spending.