Federal spending caps for fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025 forced the House Armed Services Committee to agree to retire aging ships and aircraft they may have otherwise fought to keep a little while longer, Rep Rob Wittman told Defense News.

But, he warned, “there’s probably going to be some gap” between when old platforms like the Air Force’s A-10s and the Navy’s cruisers retire, and when the services can fully rebuild their inventory.

“I think it really calls to the forefront the issue of using other smaller, less expensive, attritable platforms as the gap-filler,” Wittman, R-Va., said in a June 14 interview in his Capitol Hill office.

“Those things can be very, very capable, and these are platforms that are already out there that could go to production tomorrow. So unmanned surface vessels, unmanned underwater vessels — the Navy really has to push the gas pedal on this and say: ‘OK, how do we get these platforms integrated?’ ” added Wittman, who chairs the committee’s tactical air and land forces panel and also sits on its sea power and projection forces subcommittee.

Though Congress has questioned some of the Navy’s experimentation and acquisition efforts following expensive mistakes with the Littoral Combat Ship program, among others, Wittman said now is an appropriate time to take more risk in pursuing unmanned surface and subsurface vessels at a quicker pace.

The Navy has largely eyed programs of record based on the size of the platform: it’s aiming to award a contract for the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel’s design and construction in FY25, and a Medium USV would likely follow a few years behind. The Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle program is running several years behind in the construction and testing of five prototype vehicles, but the Navy expects to see a version operating overseas by FY26.

Wittman said the Navy could potentially move faster if it focused on mission rather than size, which is more in line with the experimentation happening in the Middle East under Task Force 59.

“They need to go out there and say, ‘Listen, we believe this platform will do a great job as an addition to a carrier strike group, or as an addition to an [amphibious ready group], or destroyer squadron, or Virginia-class [attack submarine], or Ohio-class [ballistic missile submarine],’ and then buy a relative number that you can test very vigorously” for 12-18 months, and then either modify them or move into serial production, he said.

“The good news is, these things are at a price point where you can afford to take some risks. You can afford to have platforms that you look at and go: ‘Gosh, looked like it was going to work out, but it just didn’t,’ ” he added.

He’d also prefer the Navy have unmanned surface vehicles that can only perform surveillance missions, others solely meant for electronic warfare and more that only shoot weapons, he said, versus spent too much money and too much time trying to pursue a platform that can do it all.

“I just want the Navy to look at those things, and I think they can do that speed of relevance. That’s going to be the gap-filler because our exquisite platforms — aircraft carriers, our surface ships, our submarines — all great platforms, but it takes years and years and years to get them in the inventory. So even with the best of intentions, we’re not going to have that capability” in time for when China might attack Taiwan.

What about the Air Force?

The Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee included language in its section of the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act setting cost limits for collaborative combat aircraft plans, which would see a drone serve as a wingman for crewed jets, such as the future Next Generation Air Dominance fighter.

Wittman said this is a preemptive measure, and not because he has concerns about collaborative combat aircraft. In fact, he explained, he is “very comfortable” with what he’s seen, including several vendors with many options that come in at a good cost point.

He also said he’s optimistic about the way the competition is looking at this early stage, but wants to avoid requirements and therefore cost ballooning.

“We’ve seen that too many times with programs where we’re chasing requirements, we’re chasing technology, and you never catch it. And then all of the sudden we see platforms that started out as [an] X-million-dollar platform [that] are now three or four times the cost,” he noted.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall wants the collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA, to be cheap enough that, in some cases, the service can afford to lose some in combat. A drone wingman that could be sacrificed might not need as many protective subsystems, which could help keep down costs, Kendall said at the September 2022 Defense News conference.

The service considers CCAs a way to deliver combat capability at a lower price point and to move away from recent spiraling costs of fighters and bombers.

For his part, Wittman considers these drones important in light of the retirements of legacy Air Force planes and a dip in inventory in the short term. He connected CCA efforts to another program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, for which the NDAA proposes creating a formal “major subprogram” to focus on the continuous development and delivery of new F-35 capabilities, and designating six aircraft as permanent test assets for this work.

Wittman said the focus of these efforts is to address ongoing software issues as well as engine power and cooling challenges today, and prepare to quickly address challenges in the coming decades.

“Along with partners, there’s going to be 3,300 of these aircraft out there. What we don’t want is all of a sudden for somebody to come back in 10 years and go: ‘Oh, sorry, the whole fleet’s antiquated,’ ” he said. “So let’s do some rigorous testing and evaluation, figure out how do we make sure this platform gets maximum utility. And I think there are a lot of ways that they can do that — and especially if you combine this platform with combat collaborative aircraft, and you combine it with E-7s, which has to happen — all of a sudden this aircraft is a pretty significant gap-filler until you get to endgame.”

“But you don’t have its full potential unless you rigorously test what the challenges are with the aircraft. And that’s on every element of the platform, from the avionics to the software to the engine systems to the power and cooling,” he added, noting the designation of the major subprogram would signal the seriousness of this effort to the Pentagon and congressional appropriators.

Even with budget caps in place, Wittman said the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee is trying to make these adjustments.

“We are making smart investments in the FY24 NDAA by reprioritizing and reallocating funding requested for Air Force and Navy NGAD programs,” he said, noting his subcommittee is making investments in CCA refueling technology maturation and risk reduction within the Air Force’s research and development budget, in the Adaptive Engine Transition Program that would replace the current F-35 engine, and in F-15 procurement and E-7 advance procurement.

But the DoD can’t do this alone. Development of an innovative workforce requires a combined effort of the entire national security ecosystem — government, industry and academia — to achieve the flow of new ideas and collaborative mindset necessary to outpace near-peer adversaries. To ensure the success of budding workforce initiatives, we must avoid burdening them with well-intentioned but overreaching bureaucracy.

Last week, the DoD released the 2023 National Defense Science and Technology Strategy, which emphasized a commitment to sharpening its competitive edge by cultivating the current workforce and developing the workforce of the future. In particular, the strategy recognized the importance of rotation and exchange assignments between industry, think tanks, and academia, and it acknowledged that without a creative and knowledgeable workforce, the United States will be unable to execute the 2022 National Defense Strategy and create enduring advantages over U.S. competitors.

This is consistent with the finding of a recent report by the Atlantic Council’s Commission on Defense Innovation Adoption, which found that U.S. service members are equipped with technology that lags behind adversaries and commercial peers alike, and identified as a significant challenge to innovation adoption the “hamstrung workforce [for whom c]reative problem-solving and measured risk-taking are not often rewarded, and too few individuals with an industry background agree to take senior leadership roles at the DoD.”

There is interest in post-governmental employment legislative restrictions working its way through the national defense authorization process, threatening to set back efforts to make more robust use of industry exchange programs under the specter of conflicts of interest. Contorting legitimate concerns over post-government employment conflicts to such lengths diminishes workforce improvement efforts. The proposal would add layers of bureaucracy to an already complex ethics system and reinforce anxiety and hesitance among employees seeking developmental assignments.

This is exactly the culture of fear and risk-aversion that must be replaced with one of bold creativity and teamwork.

A 2021 Government Accountability Office report on the DoD’s post-government employment restrictions recognized the DoD already has measures in place to guard against conflicts of interest and ensure public trust in the integrity of decision-making processes. GAO made no recommendations for additional rules, noting that “both DOD and defense contractors benefit from the contractors’ employment of former government officials. For example, contractors benefit from the knowledge and skills that former DOD officials developed at DOD. DOD benefits from improved communication.”

The Partnership for Public Service has observed that talent exchanges are particularly attractive to Generation Z — which values opportunities for collaboration and career development — and urged Congress to enable wide use of the authority as a retention tool.

The Acquisition Innovation Research Center, an academic consortium dedicated to enabling DoD innovation through applied policy, has an opportunity to design a deliberative approach to talent exchange programs, carefully tailored to avoid conflicts of interest. By engaging ethics experts across government, academia and industry to build a set of best practices, AIRC can host candid discussions about the limitations of ethics letters (which cover only joint ethics regulations) and develop firewall best practices that can be implemented as effectively by large corporations as smaller, emerging tech firms.

The AIRC can go even further, using the Defense Civilian Training Corps pilot, which will offer DoD internships and an experiential learning-based curriculum on college campuses, to engage students in real-life national security problem-solving while adhering to the values of public service and integrity.

This commitment to integrity in early professional development can increase public confidence in government and help recruit students to the national security workforce. A more educated public, inculcated with the positive values of national and public service is itself a public good and helps tap into the aspirations of future generations.

The effort to become more adaptive and innovative amounts to nothing short of culture change, demanding both top-down leadership support and bottom-up involvement by the workforce. Most importantly, the workforce must feel a responsibility to change. In this sense, culture change is the greatest demonstration of integrity and commitment to uphold public trust. For junior members of the acquisition workforce, talent exchange programs between the DoD and industry partners are an opportunity to build trust and cohesion across the national security ecosystem.

We should invite Gen Z to join us in turning the “revolving door” narrative on its head and create in its place a portal to building trust across government, industry and academia. If we are to succeed, it will take all of us.

Karen DaPonte Thornton is a professorial lecturer in law at George Washington University. She previously served as a professional staff member with the House Armed Services Committee.

The request Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa follows an Associated Press investigation finding that a federal watchdog is investigating whether strict federal rules on no-bid contracting and hiring may have been violated to channel DEA work to Milgram’s associates.

“These are serious allegations, and DEA must respond to them and clear the air,” Grassley wrote in a letter sent to Milgram’s office, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.

The scrutiny by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General comes as the DEA is struggling with repeated revelations of agent misconduct and a fentanyl crisis claiming more than 100,000 overdose deaths a year that Milgram has called the “deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced.”

The DEA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter. Milgram’s boosters inside and outside the agency have defended her actions as part of an ongoing effort to clean house, recruit talented individuals and pursue innovative ways to protect national security and the health of the American people.

Much of Grassley’s five-page letter focuses on a $1.4 million no-bid contract to a Washington law firm for a recent review of the DEA’s scandal-plagued foreign operations that he criticized for giving short shrift to agent misconduct and how to prevent it. That review was co-authored by Boyd Johnson, former right-hand man to one of Milgram’s closest friends, Preet Bharara, when he was U.S. Attorney in Manhattan. Bharara himself landed at the firm, WilmerHale, even as the review was being conducted.

“The report by all measures fell well short of the mark, spending most of its scant 49 pages citing publicly-available sources or the DEA’s operations manuals,” Grassley wrote, demanding that Milgram provide any correspondence with WilmerHale where DEA issued instructions or suggested edits of the report. “Rather than answering the questions we had, this only raises new ones.”

Grassley, who is also co-chair of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control. said his office had received “multiple credible allegations” from whistleblowers of irregular hiring that point to possible waste of federal resources as well as conflicts of interests among DEA leadership.

Among them, he cites a nearly $400,000 no-bid award for data analytics to Jose Cordero, a former law enforcement official who worked closely with Milgram when she served as New Jersey attorney general more than a decade ago. DEA awarded The Cordero Group a contract within three weeks of Milgram being confirmed by the Senate to head the agency on the basis of Cordero’s record designing public safety strategies with rigorous crime data analysis.

“These do not appear to be skills that are possessed by only one company, which demands explanation of why the contract was awarded outside the normal bidding process required by law,” Grassley wrote.

The Iowa Republican is also looking at whether Milgram or anyone else from the DEA directed contractors to specifically hire specific subcontractors, including a New York City publicist and a former Democratic congressional staffer who Milgram knew from a public safety project she helped run in Indianapolis while teaching at New York University’s law school.

The quintessential ship programs are stable — the aircraft carriers, the submarines, the destroyers, the frigates, the oilers — but all other existing production lines would end or slow down under the Navy’s recently released fiscal 2024 budget plan. This may lead to what one shipbuilding industry source called a “knife fight” among shipyards over a handful of smaller, less complex ship programs laid out in government’s five-year forecast in a effort to keep the workforce busy.

The Navy insists it’s investing in industry and providing the necessary stability, but the naval sector feels off-kilter from last year’s long-range shipbuilding plan, which included three different approaches. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said last week the FY24 long-range shipbuilding plan, due out “soon,” would likely include three options again.

For industry, “you want to have the stability to say: ‘This is the plan, and this is where we’re going,’ ” said Matt Paxton, the president of the Shipbuilders Council of America. Instead, vendors are feeling “some fluctuation,” he added.

Here’s what the Navy laid out in its five-year Future Years Defense Program for shipbuilding, and what it means for the prime shipyards and their suppliers.

A sparse workload

The Navy asked for $32.8 billion in FY24 for nine ships: one Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, two Virginia-class attack submarines, two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, two Constellation-class frigates, one John Lewis-class oiler and one submarine tender.

That’s one more than last year, but fewer than the 11 ships Congress ultimately chose to authorize and fund in FY23. (Navy budget documents show a request of nine ships in FY23, including one vessel already partially purchased in a previous year, which cannot by law be counted again.)

For FY25, the Navy plans to buy seven: two subs, two destroyers, a frigate, its first ocean surveillance ship, and its first Landing Ship Medium. That final vessel is smaller than any ship the Navy fields but larger than an amphibious connector.

Over the five-year Future Years Defense Program, a few new programs begin: The service will buy six Medium Landing Ships over the FYDP; three Next-Generation Logistics Ships, which are smaller than typical logistics vessels and will resupply dispersed ships or Marine units ashore; two submarine tenders; and four surveillance ships.

The shipbuilding industry source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, said these tier-two programs will likely spark a fight among multiple shipyards who need to keep their labor force and supplier base in tact.

Several major shipbuilders have begun filling their production lines with other work, as Navy programs have either ended or are getting strung along unpredictably through congressional adds rather than Navy long-term planning.

Austal USA in Alabama took on work as a supplier, building and outfitting submarine modules for General Dynamics Electric Boat, and it fabricated aluminum aircraft elevators for HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding. And in June 2022, Austal won the Coast Guard’s Offshore Patrol Cutter contract. Meanwhile, its littoral combat ship work will end soon, and the Navy is trying to end the Expeditionary Fast Transport line, on which Austal works. Though Congress did add two ships into the FY23 budget last year.

HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi took on modernization work, having won a contract to integrate the Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic weapon system onto Zumwalt-class destroyers. But Ingalls’ work on the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter program is nearing an end, plus the Navy has proposed a “strategic pause” in its San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock line. And the service is stretching out the America-class amphibious assault ship program longer than the ideal four-year build cycles, leading to uncertainty about the yard’s upcoming workload.

And General Dynamics’ NASSCO yard in San Diego, California, is partnering with Spanish shipbuilder Navantia to try to enter the offshore wind market, the San Diego Union-Tribute reported this month. NASSCO builds the oiler, which continues through the FYDP, and the Expeditionary Sea Base, which does not appear in future Navy spending plans.

Paula Zorensky, the vice president of the Shipbuilders Council of America, told Defense News in a March 16 interview that the Navy’s smaller ship programs in the FYDP will draw “strong competition,” but that this alternate work strengthens the yards and the industrial base.

“There are other government programs, too, that our folks will compete for, and that ultimately benefits the Navy as a customer — whether it’s Coast Guard, or the Army’s got to recapitalize some of their vessels, [the Maritime Administration], [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], Missile Defense Agency, and then there’s a burgeoning offshore wind market,” she said.

“There’s a lot of people cutting their teeth, and in a really competitive market that just benefits the Navy,” she added.

Shipbuilder challenges

From the Navy’s perspective, its FY24 request represents two years in a row of consistency and support for the industrial base.

“In this budget request [are] two consecutive years of consistent ship funding, two consecutive years of industrial-base funding. We’re giving industry what they’ve asked for — invest in them, give them headlights,” Rear Adm. John Gumbleton, the Navy’s budget officer, told reporters March 13. “So now we’re going to watch for that return on investment.”

Zorensky said investments in the shipbuilding industry proved helpful, and the Shipbuilders Council of America has regularly held conversations with the Navy’s Shipbuilding Industrial Base Task Force about investment opportunities as well as successes that stemmed from putting Navy funding toward “workforce and potentially some capital investments, machinery, etc., and other training opportunities. And so we’re seeing that funding definitely work its way through the system.”

However, companies need to make their own investments, she noted, which is difficult when their projected workload is constantly shifting. For example, a prime contractor needs to buy paint or valves in bulk from a supplier, or a supplier must invest in the rigorous accounting and cybersecurity systems that go along with government contracts.

To that end, industry has lingering concerns with the Navy’s FY24 budget request. One of them is volatility in the ship decommissioning plans.

Paxton told Defense News that the council represents both shipbuilders and ship repair companies, and that many suppliers do business on both sides of the Navy portfolio.

The service is accelerating the retirement of several ship classes in recent years — cruisers, amphibious dock landing ships, littoral combat ships and expeditionary sea bases — that it says either became too burdensome on the maintenance system or don’t pack a big enough offensive punch to justify continued investments.

The constant back-and-forth between the Navy and Congress on these decommissioning plans represents turmoil for half of the shipbuilding and ship repair portfolio, “where we want to see all of it have stability and predictability,” Paxton said.

Another issue is that instability in the tier-two programs may bleed into the larger, more stable ones. Many suppliers provide parts for multiple ship programs, and so their overall workload — and therefore the cost and availability of their parts — ends up in flux as some ship production lines are stopped.

“When you halt a program, that doesn’t just affect that product line; it has a ripple effect across our facilities in our supply chain. There has been consistency in some shipbuilding programs, and that’s great. We would like to see some of that consistency across all of U.S. Navy shipbuilding,” Paxton said.

Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the deputy commandant of the Marine Corps for combat development and integration, told Defense News in a statement that the truncation of the San Antonio-class amphibious line, for example, could cause the amphibious warship industrial base to begin reducing its workforce in FY27.

Ingalls Shipbuilding did not confirm a timeline for this impact, but spokeswoman Kimberly Aguillard said in a March 17 statement that “any delay or pause could have significant impacts on the ability to maintain an efficient and affordable LPD line.”

The yard and its suppliers need a consistent demand signal from the Navy, she said, and “continuing the LPD program allows the Navy and Ingalls to take advantage of a mature design, an experienced workforce and provides stability for our partner supplier network.”

Another lingering concern is the multiple-choice approach to the shipbuilding plan. Although Del Toro said the three-option scheme provided stability in the first five years of the plan and left options for later years, Paxton said that method doesn’t help industry as it considers workforce levels and capital investments.

Paxton noted that industry appreciates the large sums the Navy spent on shipbuilding in recent years. But “to say that there has been a clear signal and a consistent signal over the last many years, I think industry would argue there’s been some chaos and a little bit of frustration in the shifting numbers, and where we see a new shipbuilding plan every year,” he said, referring to a continual string of force structure assessments that since 2020 have left companies unable to have confidence in any unveiled plan, since the next assessment is already underway.

“We know in the FYDP we’re supposed to have some level of fidelity in that five-year plan. I think shipyards would say: ‘If we can have that level of comfort over 10 years, that’s enough runway where we can really plan what we need to do,’ ” he said, whereas the three-pronged long-range shipbuilding plan creates uncertainty beginning in Year Six.

Paxton noted the importance of hot production lines and multiyear contracts for shipbuilding, which creates the cost-savings the Navy wants.

“When those things are truncated or halted, that’s where you lose workforce, you lose certain suppliers, and that’s where I think the difficulty comes in.”

The Army seeks to spend $38 million on research, development, testing and experimentation and another $293 million to procure the Next Generation Squad Weapon in fiscal 2024, the service announced Monday.

That will end up buying 17,122 rifles, 1,419 automatic rifles, 14,932 fire control optics and 21 million rounds of 6.8mm ammunition, said Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo.

The service bought more than 18,000 weapons last year, according to budget documents.

Those rifles, light machines, optics and rounds are set to reach the first unit equipped by early 2024, officials said. The weapon, which will also include a suppressor, is primarily for special operations forces, infantry, scouts and combat engineers attached to infantry or other close combat units.

The new combo gives soldiers a uniform round for fighting at the squad level, as they had with the weapons’ predecessors the M4/M16 and the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Those older systems, still in use by the force and likely to remain for non-close combat forces for decades to come, fired the 5.56mm round.

The intermediate cartridge of 6.8mm relies on an Army-designed projectile but is an entirely new round not used by U.S. forces before. It falls between 5.56mm and 7.62mm, both NATO rounds in use for more than half a century.

But the 6.8mm retains the accuracy needed at farther ranges than the smaller round while delivering energy on target that equals or exceeds 7.62mm in some instances, officials said.

Sig Sauer won the contract last year to supply the weapon and some of the ammunition to the Army. This came after the company won the contract to replace the previous M9 Beretta 9mm sidearm with the M17 handgun made by Sig Sauer, which continues to fire the 9mm round.

With an eye on Russia and China, the Pentagon in fiscal 2024 would spend $30.6 billion for missiles and munitions ― 12% more than last year and 50% more than five years ago, when the U.S. was still fighting the Islamic State and Taliban.

The Pentagon budget would also break new ground by using multiyear procurement authorities generally reserved for ships and aircraft to buy munitions and expand production capacity over several years.

At Monday’s budget rollout, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady did not answer directly whether the Pentagon, like the NATO alliance, is raising stockpile targets due to the war in Ukraine. The move was aimed at deterring China and ensuring the health of the U.S. defense industrial base, they said.

“This latest budget expands production capacity even more, and procures the maximum amount of munitions that are most relevant for deterring and, if necessary, prevailing over aggression in the Indo-Pacific,” said Hicks, adding that one-third of the munitions budget request is for long-range fires.

Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord said the munitions request was “Ukraine informed, even if not Ukraine specific.” To replenish U.S. stockpiles depleted by the war in Ukraine, Pentagon officials said they will rely on supplemental appropriations from Congress, which granted the Pentagon $35.7 billion for FY23.

“These are not the kind of missiles that are key to the Ukraine fight, they are key to Indo-Pacific deterrence,” McCord said. “What [Hicks] has been pushing us to do is to think about lessons we’re learning today and apply them to future scenarios, think about what would I have done four years ago if I had a crystal ball, to think about things that might be coming.”

The Pentagon’s $170 billion procurement budget request ― touted as the largest ever ― would use a new “large lot procurement pilot” strategy to maximize production capacity for several munitions used across the services: Lockheed Martin’s Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER) and Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) ― and the Raytheon Technologies-made RIM-174 Standard Missile (SM-6), AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AAMRAM).

Though not in the pilot program, the Pentagon is also using multiyear contracting to buy roughly 103 Naval Strike Missiles at $250 million. The Marine Corps’ new, low-signature Marine Littoral Regiments and their Navy/Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System are slated for 90 of the ground-based missiles, which Raytheon manufactures.

Of the $30.6 billion for munitions, more than half ― $17.1 billion ― is for tactical missiles, while $7.3 billion is for strategic missiles, $5.6 billion for conventional ammunition and $600 million for technology development. The plans separately call for $15.1 billion more spread across the next five years to cover upfront costs for long-lead item procurements.

Another $1 billion would allow industry to procure long-lead items for the weapons, and otherwise “put that money up front to send the demand signal to our industry partners,” according to Maj. Gen. Michael Greiner, the Air Force’s deputy assistant secretary for budget.

To further spur defense firms to expand production capacity, defense officials said they will seek congressional approval for future multiyear buys of the Raytheon-made Patriot surface-to-air guided missile system and the Lockheed-made Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, a surface-to-surface medium-range rocket fired from the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. The U.S. has given all three systems to Ukraine.

U.S. Army officials have said their 2024 budget will request authority to buy more munitions in bulk over multiple years as the U.S. and its allies work to refill their inventories and help Ukraine’s forces defend themselves.

“In these ramp-ups, the reason we’re taking a really maximalist foot on the floor all the way down approach is that we don’t know how long the conflict will last, we don’t know how low our stocks will be, we don’t know the full amount we will have to help replenish,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush said earlier this month.

The Air Force budget proposal would double missile spending, from $2.3 billion in 2032 to $4.7 billion in 2024. “The munitions buys are focused on … the targets that we would have to be concerned about in a China scenario of some kind,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters in a March 10 briefing at the Pentagon.

The Air Force would include $161 million to buy 48 Joint Strike Missiles, made by Norwegian firm Kongsberg Defence Aerospace and Raytheon, for the first time. A top Air Force budget official, Maj. Gen. Michael Greiner, said those long-range missiles, which can be fired from the F-35 against land and ship targets, will help bridge the gap as LRASM continues to come online.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies report last month found the U.S. defense-industrial base is unprepared for a notional battle with China over Taiwan, as it would run out of key long-range, precision-guided munitions in less than a week. The report spotlighted U.S. military aid to Ukraine and criticized bureaucratic hurdles for defense contracting and U.S. arms sales overseas.

Other highlights from the budget proposal include:

– $1.8 billion for 550 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range, more than twice the $902 million Congress enacted for FY23.

– $1.2 billion for 830 AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, up from $740 million in FY23.

– $1 billion for 118 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles, up from $550 in FY23.

– $386 million for 1,165 Joint Air-to-Ground Muntions, up from $297 million in FY23.

– $447 million for 1,170 of the Raytheon-made Small Diameter Bomb II, down $555 million for FY23.

– $1.6 billion for 125 of the Navy’s RIM-174 Standard Missile, up from $799 million for FY23.

– $1 billion for 5,064 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, down from $1.3 billion in FY23.

– $934 million for 34 Raytheon-made Tactical Tomahawk Cruise missiles, down from $905 million.

– $206 million for 3,236 Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions, down from $328 million.

– $30 million for 40 Lockheed-made Hellfire missiles, down from $116 million.

Jen Judson and Megan Eckstein contributed to this report.

That would be the largest increase in nearly four decades for the U.S. government’s 2.1 million civil service employees.

“Federal employees are dedicated and talented professional public servants, often working demanding jobs,” the budget reads. “To continue to deliver for the American people in the 21st Century, the Federal Government must win the competition for highly-skilled talent.”

As is custom, each year the White House unveils the president’s funding requests for agencies and programs, offering a detailed look at priorities for the upcoming year to kick off the budget cycle. Pay raises for federal and military personnel are always highly anticipated, especially this year with inflation widening the double-digit wage gap between the public and private sector, and with agencies still reeling from staffing struggles exacerbated by the pandemic’s increased demand on public programs.

Biden’s proposed raise sets only a baseline, which is likely to change as Congress debates it in coming months. Federal unions and some lawmakers were hoping for more. They said an increase of 8.7%, as called for by the Democrats’ FAIR Act, would go further to make federal salaries competitive, especially for high-demand jobs in cybersecurity, health care and IT.

Last March, the federal budget proposal included an average pay increase of 4.6% for civilian federal workers, matching a planned military pay raise.

Other initiatives

The budget sets intentions to invest in the civilian workforce in other ways. To invite diverse applicants to federal jobs, the White House wants agencies to base hiring practices on skills rather than educational qualifications alone. It also directs agencies to consider beefing up paid internships.

To help with those goals, the budget supports expanding the Office of Personnel Management’s Hiring Experience Office. It provides $464 million, $78 million over the 2023 enacted amount, for OPM’s salaries and expenses account to ensure it can serve the government’s various HR needs.

The budget also provides resources to improve personnel vetting under the Trusted Workforce 2.0 plan, which is a policy framework coupled with technology to better background investigate job candidates and issue security clearances. In 2019, 2.9 million government employees and private sector contractors held a federal security clearance.

The Biden administrative also repeated its opposition against Schedule F and attacks on worker protections and unionization.

Improving customer experience

Improving the way the public interacts with agencies and the way agencies work with each other is another theme of this year’s budget proposal.

The budget requests an additional $200 million for the Technology Modernization Fund, which gives agencies a pool of money and resources to improve crumbling IT systems.

To ensure there are enough employees to deliver public services, the budget also wants to expand customer experience offices at nine high-volume departments, including the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, the Interior, Labor, the Treasury, Veterans Affairs, the Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration.

That includes hiring more than 120 full-time workers with customer experience skills and incorporating public feedback and data in a “Voice of the Customer”program at seven agencies.

Biden also proposes a pilot program at the Transportation Security Agency to embed customer service officials in the traveler screening process to solicit public feedback. Other pitches include self-help passport renewal at the Department of State and online tax services at the IRS. Shared platforms used by multiply agencies are also a way services can be streamlined and workflow and data silos can be consolidated.

With regard to the $600 billion the government spends a year on contracts, the Biden administration wants to steer its procurement dollars toward small disadvantaged businesses. The goal remains for 15% of federal contract dollars to go to these enterprises by 2025.

Finally, the budget also wants contract dollars to promote environmental initiatives in and out agencies. Biden set a goal for carbon pollution free federal electricity by 2030, zero-emission vehicle acquisitions by 2035 and net-zero emissions in federal buildings by 2045.

How pay raises work

By law, federal employees’ salaries are set at a level “equitable and comparable” with similar levels of work in the private sector, unless the president proposes alternative federal pay rates. It’s not clear based on the budget what the breakdown will be between the across-the-board raise and locality pay.

Normally, under the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990, law requires a default adjustment each year if the president takes no action.

The president has authority to circumvent the automatic rate set by the Pay Agent, which includes the directors of the White House Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management, as well as the secretary of labor.

Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush on Friday said the Army is harnessing authorities Congress granted last year to begin multiyear munitions buys and to secure new sources for chemicals used to produce munitions.

“In these ramp-ups, the reason we’re taking a really maximalist foot on the floor all the way down approach is that we don’t know how long the conflict will last, we don’t know how low our stocks will be, we don’t know the full amount we will have to help replenish,” Bush said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Bush noted the Pentagon is expected to raise peacetime munitions stockpile targets.

“I believe our requirements for stockpiles will be higher after these conflicts, after we’ve done the analysis; I think there will be work to do,” Bush said.

The Pentagon doesn’t publicize the levels of its munitions stockpiles, but the U.S. is running low on some high-end weapons systems and ammunition, according to multiple reports. Defense officials say U.S. donations to Ukraine from its own inventories have not compromised readiness.

The volume of deliveries to Ukraine, which is burning through ammunition faster than the U.S. and NATO can produce it, has upended assumptions about how much ammunition gets used to fight wars.

European Union leaders are considering whether, as a bloc, to buy 155mm artillery shells, and Reuters reported last month NATO is expected to increase its targets for munitions stockpiles.

The U.S. Army meanwhile has sped up modernization plans for government-sponsored factories that make conventional munitions and is is investing in private-sector facilities to accelerate production.

“The long-term challenge is how much of that capacity can we sustain over time, post-conflict,” Bush said.

Pentagon officials are mulling the pre-war requirements cognizant that larger stockpiles mitigate production lead times, but stockpiles are expensive to build, maintain and track. The appropriate size of stockpiles for precursor chemicals and other raw materials that go into the munitions is also under discussion.

“All this costs money, but I think how big are our war reserves is a really good policy question that’s being asked and being worked. I know it’s also of interest on [Capitol] Hill,” Bush said.

Still another question is how to strike a balance between industry’s efficiency and affordability ― and its ability to surge in a crisis.

“We of course, expect our defense companies to be efficient and provide their goods at good prices,” Bush said. “If we want them to have excess capacity, we will have to partner with them and work with them to pay for part of that excess capacity that’s not being used.”

Washington must also strike a balance between surging flexible funds and overseeing of taxpayer dollars. Amid a stepped up Congressional oversight push, Bush offered assurances that while Congress has accommodated the Army’s efforts, he and lawmakers take their oversight role seriously.

“It’s a lot of money; there does need to be boundaries on it,” Bush said.

The 14-member Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform ― mandated by Congress and made up of former lawmakers, Pentagon officials and industry executives ― is using the events to solicit an array of views during its 15-month “discovery” phase, planned to end in December. Its interim report is due in August and final report is due in March 2024.

According to a 34-page status update the panel published Thursday, the open sessions are “where subject matter experts can put forth their views in a more informal way with the commissioners and staff.” The meetings have included former and current DoD program managers, program executive officers, comptrollers and financial management officers.

“The commission has gained an extensive understanding of viewpoints on how the current PPBE system operates,” the summary states. “While some of the information gained highlights useful aspects of the current system that should be considered for retention, a majority suggests the system needs significant improvement.”

The 61-year old PPBE process is criticized inside and outside of the Pentagon as too cumbersome and slow. Among other shortcomings, it requires planners to plan for new programs more than two years before receiving funding, often causing major modernization programs and technology development to lag. While there have been calls for PPBE reform since its inception, an urgency to fix the system has grown in recent years, with critics citing it as a leading impediment to moving at the speed of commercial technology.

The commission said it held 27 formal meetings as of last month, including interviews with staff members from congressional defense panels, the Government Accountability Office and participants in the PPBE process. The panel, chaired by former Pentagon comptroller Bob Hale, met with some familiar names to defense watchers, including former Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work and former Defense Innovation Unit Director Michael Brown.

The group has also collected input from representatives of defense firms such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Palantir as well as non-defense firms Ford Motor Co., PepsiCo and Walmart. The panel has called upon federally-funded research centers to include the RAND Corp.; the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Experts point to budgeting flaws

While the panel hasn’t adopted any official recommendations, it shared a summary of the various points of view it has received from nearly two dozen suggestions. For the next phase of the group’s work, it will evaluate the views alongside its own research to validate problems and identify potential fixes.

The feedback highlighted in the summary echoes common complaints about the Pentagon’s budgeting process — it isn’t suited for innovative technologies or programs, the “rigid” budget cycle makes it hard for non-traditional companies to work with the department and the process for approving funding is too political and potentially harmful to the Pentagon’s “long-term strategic interests.”

“Some asserted that the PPBE process functions best for acquiring and funding large-scale systems such as aircrafts, tanks, ships, and submarines but is less suitable in supporting new technologies, such as software and artificial intelligence, the optimal development of which is tied directly to advances in the commercial sector,” the summary states. “Others expressed the view that PPBE was not adequate for either type of system.”

Experts interviewed by the panel offered suggestions for improving the current resource allocation system, with some calling for a wholesale rebuilding of the process rather than incremental improvements to the PPBE. Others emphasized the need the need to prioritize software acquisition in any changes to the system, while another recommendation proposed creating a joint budgeting organization to improve collaboration among the services.

The summary notes the recommendations will help shape the panel’s pursuit of “reform in the broadest sense, meaning all options are being considered to enhance our nation’s defense.”

The Navy in its fiscal 2023 budget request last spring truncated the San Antonio-class amphibious ship production line. It asked to buy LPD-32 in FY23 and then would not buy any more LPDs for the foreseeable future, according to its budget documents.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has called this a strategic pause, noting at a defense industry conference last week that the service would “probably” resume buying these medium-sized amphibious ships after a pair of studies: a battle force ship assessment and requirement that considers the quantity of ships, and a capabilities-based assessment that focuses on the ship design and capabilities.

“I think, as we look forward to the future, there’s always going to be a need for amphibious capability in order to take Marines forward,” Del Toro said Feb. 22 at a National Defense Industrial Association conference.

But in making similar remarks earlier in the month at the West naval conference in San Diego, California, Del Toro referred to “a continuing need to build more LPD-like ships well into the future,” once the studies are done.

Asked about the “LPD-like” terminology, Brig. Gen. Marcus Annibale told Defense News that “there is a study being done right now to look at the medium-sized amphib ship cost-saving opportunities, and I would be getting ahead of anybody to say what the outcome would be.”

Annibale serves as the Marine Corps’ director of expeditionary warfare on the chief of naval operations’ staff.

The Navy in 2014 decided to take its San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock design, built at Ingalls Shipbuilding, and use it as the basis for a Flight II ship that replaces the aging Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships. These Flight II vessels are less capable than the original San Antonio ships — and cost about $400 million less apiece — but are significantly more capable than the Whidbey Island ships.

Annibale said this is the trade space the Navy and Marine Corps are eyeing to see if there are additional changes that could be made to lessen the cost of buying Flight II LPDs.

Speaking to Defense News following a panel presentation at the NDIA conference, Annibale noted the first Flight II ship is under construction, meaning the Ingalls production line has been unable to prove how much it can reduce cost ship-over-ship.

Still, he said, “we’re taking a look at other opportunities for cost savings.”

During Annibale’s panel, Capt. Judd Krier, the amphibious warfare branch head in the expeditionary warfare directorate, said: “We are doing a capabilities-based assessment in fiscal year ’23, really looking at the requirements for what the future amphibious force needs for presence, deterrence and crisis response.”

Krier added that the assessment was not designed “necessarily just to design a ship, although that is certainly possible and a potential outcome.” More broadly, though, the assessment would question what the sea service needs for “the future amphibious force to maintain its lethality and survivability and sustainability in support of all the range of operations.”

A key unknown amid the talk of reassessing LPD Flight II capabilities and design is how long the effort will take. The Navy will buy LPD-32 this current fiscal year. To keep the production line at peak efficiency, it would have to buy the next ship in FY25.

An industry source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as the individual was not authorized to talk abut the Navy’s deliberations, said the shipbuilding industry has heard the battle force ship assessment and requirement study might end sooner, but that the capabilities-based assessment could last longer and threaten the service’s ability to resume buying LPDs or LPD-like ships in FY25.

Ingalls Shipbuilding leadership has consistently expressed a need to keep LPDs on two-year intervals, which allows the company to maintain a stable workforce and engaged suppliers.

Ingalls spokeswoman Kimberly Aguillard told Defense News that, with 12 San Antonios delivered and three under construction today, including the first Flight II ship, “this Navy-industry team is performing at maximum efficiency on two-year construction intervals. Continuing this cadence enables the most affordable approach to meet the nation’s minimum 31 amphibious warship requirement.”

Annibale, from his perch as the resource sponsor for the amphibious ships, also told Defense News that “we’re concerned because we want to keep LPD on two-year centers, and we think that’s important to keep doing that.”

The Navy is expected to release its FY24 budget request on March 9, with additional details coming out March 13. However, that budget request may not reveal much about the plans for the LPD program, as FY24 was meant to be an off year for buying the ships on a two-year cadence.