Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
6/19/2015
U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) hopes to advance the installation of its replacement for the Milstar satellite constellation, as reliability problems of the nuclear-survivable legacy system have slowed the follow-on’s procurement timeline, and as a Government Accountability Office report released this week revealed “known capability gaps” and deficiencies in the nation’s nuclear command, control and communications system (NC3), according to official sources. The military has sent a fraction of Milstar’s successor—Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF)—satellites into orbit, but integration problems between the two different-era systems have posed challenges for AEHF launches, STRATCOM Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. James Kowalski said during a Tuesday Peter Huessy Breakfast Series event.
Delay on Terminal Deployment
“A couple of the satellites are in orbit,” he said. “There are more ready to go into orbit. What we have fallen behind on is getting terminals in place and operating while the AEHF constellation augments the older Milstar constellation, we continue to struggle with the Milstar constellation—its reliability, its problems and trying to focus on keeping that constellation up. So it’s important that we finish the AEHF constellation and then employ out those terminals that allow that secure, survivable and assured communications out there.”
Air Force spokeswoman Tina Greer said June 10 in an email to sister publication Defense Daily that AEHF is scheduled to reach initial operational capability (IOC) this summer. AEHF is developed by Lockheed Martin. Leaders of the Nuclear Enterprise have vowed to modernize nuclear command, control and communications (NC3) as the system housing components dating back to the 1960s continues to age.
Presidential Voice Comms STRATCOM’s Top NC3 Priority
STRATCOM’s top NC3 priority is updating the Presidential National Voice Conferencing (PNVC) system, Kowalski said. PNVC allows the President to communicate with top military advisers during crises, including nuclear scenarios. “It is more than just the nuclear command and control we always refer to as the thin line,” Kowalski said. “But it is also national leadership command and control coordination. So any kind of crisis, the president wants to have that kind of access—not only to command centers, but to all his advisers across the government departments.”
GAO Reviewed Seven Programs
The GAO report did not specifically examine Milstar or AEHF, but PNVC was one of seven “key NC3 programs or efforts…among the largest in terms of estimated cost and/or that enable senior leader communications or other critical capabilities,” the largely classified report states. From October to this month, GAO reviewed PNVC, as well as the Mission Planning and Analysis System, the Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals, Phoenix Air-to-Ground Communications Network, Common Very Low Frequency Receiver, Global Aircrew Strategic Network Terminal, and the Minuteman Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network Program Upgrade.
‘Known Capability Gaps or Deficiencies Remain’
“[W]e found that while the programs and efforts have made progress toward developing and fielding systems as well as meeting cost, schedule, or performance goals, known capability gaps or deficiencies remain,” the report states. “For example, development of key satellite communication terminals for strategic bomber aircraft has been deferred by several years. Other programs we reviewed have planned follow-on increments intended to address known capability gaps or deficiencies; however, these increments are not yet funded.” While GAO provided a draft of its report to DoD for comment, the department “responded that it had no formal comments,” the report states.
Piece-by-Piece Modernization
Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work is overseeing a fragmentary recapitalization approach after national attention to the network has dwindled for the past 25 years, Kowalski said. “The roots of this, I believe, are the same that we’ve seen in other parts of the nuclear enterprise where when the Soviet Union went away in December of ’91, a lot of interest in nuclear deterrence, strategic deterrence, sort of went away with that, and people that were motivated by what the priorities of the United States were, were now motivated by different priorities,” he said.
NC3 Modernization Attempts Were ‘Constantly Running Treadmill’
Officials are working to streamline NC3 development after the Defense Department previously delegated responsibility for the architecture to multiple different organizations. DoD has determined it has taken all the NC3 sustainment risks it is going to accept, and is working to fix components, Kowalski said. “[T]here wasn’t a single general officer or admiral that was in charge of our department that was really driving all of it, so over time, and I’ve seen departments struggle with this, in terms of how do we get nuclear command and control focused, and it was this constantly running treadmill: Identifying the same problems, trying different funding, the funding competing with different priorities, and then you’re back in the do-loop of, ‘Well, can we assume some more risk? Do we have sufficient redundancy?’… The department has really stood up to this, and Congress is also very interested in it, so I think we’ve taken all the risk that we’re going to accept, and we’re going to get this fixed now.”
