More Budget Cuts Could Target Mid-sized Contractors

Morning Coffee is a robust blend of links to news around the internet concerning the Naval Air Station Patuxent River economic community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Leader’s owners or staff.

Defense cuts still loom, Bloomberg reports another $25 billion must be cut to arrive at a $498 billion DoD budget. Rep. James Moran of Va., second ranking Democrat on the House defense appropriations subcommittee, said the cuts, not yet made public, look to hit hardest on mid-sized contractors. He proposes limiting further appropriations debates by introducing the omnibus defense bill close to the Jan. 15 deadline for the president’s signature to avoid another government shutdown.

AIN online recaps a breakout of the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act. As it stands prior to public release of the omnibus appropriations bill, the NDAA contains $526.8 billion for DoD programs, $80.7 billion for overseas contingency operations, and $17.6 billion for Department of Energy nuclear weapons programs. The act calls upon Mr. Kendall to form an “independent team” to review the F-35 software development effort and directs $133.6 million toward the Navy’s Uclass system.

Military.com reports, the Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap has undergone significant changes during the past two years to accommodate budget cuts, according to Dyke Weatherington, DoD’s director of unmanned warfare and ISR. The FY14 budget  requests $3.7 billion for unmanned air systems, $13 million for ground systems and $330 million for maritime systems for a $4.1 billion total for all unmanned systems.

The National Journal’s National Security Insiders overwhelmingly call for military pay and benefit cuts, reports Defense One. Escalating compensation projections threaten key defense priorities, say Pentagon officials and a majority of the Journal’s pool of more than 100 defense and foreign policy experts.

Reuters reported the US waived federal laws to allow Northrop Grumman and Honeywell International to use Chinese magnets on F-35 hardware to keep the aircraft program on target during 2012 and 2013. The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Frank Kendall said the waivers averted millions of dollars in retrofit costs and kept the program on schedule for fighter jets to be ready for Marine Corps’ combat by mid-2015.

If you think the F-35 is expensive, The Motley Fool has a year-by-year comparison to what it will take to upgrade and expand the nuclear arsenal, which, according to a report out from the Congressional Budget Office, will be $355 billion over the next 10 years. Compare to $1.1 trillion across a 60-year service life, The Motley Fool’s Rich Smith calculates the difference as: “Nukes — $35.5 billion per year. F-35s — closer to $18.3 billion.”

Southern Maryland Online reports the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership, a winner of one of the FAA designations to test commercial unmanned aviation systems,  holds a Memorandum of Understanding with the University System of Maryland which  includes collaboration and partnership opportunities in the NAS:Pax River region. “Maryland is home to the world’s leading center of UAS activity – the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division at Naval Air Station: Patuxent River – and an array of other assets. At both the university level and among federal facilities, Maryland has been performing testing and development of UAS for more than two decades,” said Governor Martin O’Malley.

CNN Security reports, the Cape Ray, destined for Syria with a chemical weapons disposal systems aboard, still awaits orders to sail from Norfolk, Va. The time in dock allowed the 648-foot cargo ship to display the disposal systems based on technology “used for about 10 years now to destroy our own chemical materials,” DoD’s acquisition chief Frank Kendall, said.

Writing in DefenseOne about anarchy in Sudan, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright describes the  “responsibility to protect,” an international principle holding governments responsible for protecting their own people from mass atrocities and war crimes and when governments fail the world has a duty to assist endangered populations. The US authorized $100 million to assist the African and French peacekeepers, help to transport troops, and will ultimately contribute $83 million in humanitarian aid. US agencies are also preparing to advance reconciliation, investigation of human rights crimes, and reaching out to the victims of gender-based violence.