DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: Asia's Military Spending To Surpass Europe's For First Time

Defense War News Updates: DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: Asia's Military Spending To Surpass Europe's For First Time
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Yifei Zhang - IBT
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - May 26, 2012: 2012 will be a historic moment in the shift of global power from the West to the East. According to expert estimates and figures on military spending, in 2012 Asia's spending on defense will eclipse Europe's for the first time in the modern era.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a UK-based think tank focusing on global military and political research and analysis, released its influential "Military Balance 2012" report back in early March.

The report claims that since 2008, financial crises in the West have led to major reductions in defense spending in Europe. Drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq will likely contribute to decreasing numbers in the future. Meanwhile, Asia's continued economic growth, and efforts to modernize and build military forces there, have reinforced higher spending. In the IISS calculations, Europe does not include Russia, and Asia does not include the Middle East, but does include Australasia.

While per capita spending in Europe is still higher, press releases form the institute say that "Asian defense spending is likely to exceed that of Europe, in nominal terms, during 2012." The U.S. accounted for nearly half of all worldwide military spending in 2011, a figure which may be in slight decline over the following years due to defense cutbacks.

IISS says that in real terms, declines in defense spending by 16 out of 28 member states of NATO exceeded 10 percent between 2008 and 2010. Asian spending increased almost 3.2 percent in real terms between 2010 to 2011.

Planned spending on defense, from different countries worldwide, 2011. Graphs from IISS.

Five countries -- China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Australia -- accounted for more than four-fifths of all regional defense spending. A major focus of spending in Asia is geared towards building newer, bigger fleets of warships and aircraft. Further geographic distances, greater territorial distributions of water, and the predominance of air and naval forces in modern warfare are the main factors driving Asian funding for air forces and navies.

Nations such as China and India are developing new and more powerful ballistic and cruise missiles as well as aircraft carriers. All of the five countries above, save Australia, have active space programs aimed at deploying greater systems of satellites for surveillance and communications, as well as plans for building next-generation stealthy super-jets, like the U.S. F-22 Raptor.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Yifei Zhang - IBT
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DTN News - CANADA DEFENSE NEWS: Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay Goes Defensive Account F-35 Costs

Defense War News Updates: DTN News - CANADA DEFENSE NEWS: Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay Goes Defensive Account F-35 Costs
*Defence minister goes on the defensive 
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Kristy Kirkup ,Parliamentary Bureau
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - April 8, 2012: Defence Minister Peter MacKay stood up for himself and his department Sunday, insisting the F-35 fiscal flub outlined in a recent auditor general's report was a miscommunication matter.

Auditor general Michael Ferguson published his debut report last week, indicated the stealth fighter jets would cost $25 billion -- not $15 billion as indicated by the federal government.

But in an interview with CTV's Question Period, MacKay blamed accounting issues for a $10 billion gap between the government's account of F-35 costs and the auditor general's projections.

"The $10 billion is money we are paying right now," MacKay said. "That is the money that goes to pay the pilots of the F-18 program and fuel, oil, upkeep of the existing fleet."

MacKay said he knew the full estimated cost of the jets in 2010 but insists Canadians were not misled.

"We have included that figure in estimates and information provided to the auditor general and that information goes back to 2010. Those figures are there for all to see," he said. "I don't agree that there was a manipulation of information."

Opposition parties disagree.

"We're talking about mismanagement here as well as dishonesty," NDP defence critic Jack Harris said on the same Sunday broadcast.

MacKay said the government and the auditor general worked from different timelines, causing the confusion.

The auditor general and a parliamentary budget officer used a 36-year model for their evaluations of the fighter jet program, but the Department of National Defence used a 20-year period.

The F-35s are expected to have a 36-year lifespan.

The government hasn't signed a contract with F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin, but it has penned a memorandum of understanding (MOU). If the government decided to change course, penalties would be attached.

"There are obligations under the MOU and by that I mean there would be consequences for withdrawing from it," MacKay said.

The minister indicated the government has accepted the auditor general's conclusions but he doesn't plan to offer his resignation over the controversy.

Kristy.Kirkup@sunmedia.ca

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Kristy Kirkup - Parliamentary Bureau
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DTN News - CANADA DEFENSE NEWS: Canada May Re-Think Acquisition Of F-35 JSF On Damning Report By Auditor General

Defense War News Updates: DTN News - CANADA DEFENSE NEWS: Canada May Re-Think Acquisition Of F-35 JSF On Damning Report By Auditor General 
*DND's buying power curbed after AG says military kept Parliament in dark on F35
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - April 4, 2012: The Harper government froze spending Tuesday on the multi-billion-dollar plan to buy new jet fighters minutes after the auditor general produced a withering report accusing the Department of National Defence of keeping Parliament in the dark about spiralling problems with the F-35 purchase.

The government also announced it would take away DND's ability to buy new weapons systems and hand it to Public Works — all in an effort to shield itself from the ensuing assault in the House of Commons that followed the release of the report by new Auditor General Michael Ferguson.

The Defence Department faced wide-ranging scorn over its management of the a plan to buy 65 new F-35 radar-evading stealth fighters for what the military initially insisted would cost $9 billion. The cost of the purchase, which is already the largest single purchase of military hardware in Canadian history, will almost certainly be far higher than originally budgeted, Ferguson said.

He added that Public Works should have done a better job of overseeing the purchase, but Ferguson was particularly scathing about DND's failure to come clean on potential problems with buying the F-35.

“Briefing material did not inform senior decision makers, central agencies, and the Minister of the problems and associated risks of relying on the F-35 to replace the CF-18," Ferguson said in his report. "Nor did National Defence provide complete cost information to parliamentarians."

DND pointedly rejected criticism that it did not exercise due diligence in managing the project.

The auditor general's criticism does not mean the government will scrap the F-35 purchase or even consider opening up the sole-source procurement to other competitive bids.

Ferguson's mandate limits his criticism to the conduct of bureaucrats, but his findings could be incendiary for the Harper government. The audit came just one week after Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced $5.2 billion in cuts to public spending in his deficit-fighting budget.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said the report raised ethical questions with its "litany of poor public administration, bad decision making and lack of accountability by Conservative ministers.

"But the key question to the prime minister is: how could he allow Parliament to be intentionally misled on the F-35s? Either he knew, and it's unconscionable, or he didn't know and it's incompetence. Which is it?"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that was a misrepresentation of Ferguson's findings.

"The government has not yet purchased this airplane, and has not yet signed a contract. The auditor general has identified a need for greater independence and supervision over some of the activities of the Department of National Defence. in this regard, the government will put that supervision in place before we proceed."

Harper left the remaining barrage of questions from the NDP and Liberals to two of his ministers, Associate Defence Minister Julian Fantino and Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose. Both ministers stuck closely to the government's earlier talking points — the freezing of funding and the creation of a new secretariat of top bureaucrats to shepherd the jet purchase from now on. Defence Minister Peter MacKay did not respond to any queries on the auditor general's report.

The Conservatives steadfastly defended the F-35 purchase during last year's election campaign that gave them a majority despite a growing body of evidence that suggested the project could never be kept on budget. The program is designed to replace the country's aging fleet of CF-18 jet fighters.

The late NDP leader Jack Layton, as well as ex-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, repeatedly attacked the F-35 purchase during last year's election campaign.

At one campaign event, Harper affirmed his support for the F-35 purchase, and said "latitude" had been built into the government's cost estimates.

"I think it's in a way sad that the new jets have become an issue in this campaign," the prime minister said during an April 8, 2011, stop in British Columbia.

"We've got our men and women in uniform up there flying airplanes that we know at the end of this decade are going to have to be replaced, and the thing we owe to them is to replace those airplanes.''

Ferguson's report vindicates parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page, who became embroiled in a heated public battle with the Defence Department in March 2011 when he released a report that said the cost of the F-35 could reach $30 billion over three decades.

An assistant deputy minister at Defence told an elaborate briefing for journalists that Page made a "mathematical error'' in calculating the unit cost of the planes, and that his estimates on long-term maintenance were erroneous as well.

Ferguson said Tuesday that Defence should have come clean with the real figures at that time. He pegged the projected 20-year cost of the program, including maintenance, at $25 billion.

"As a response to what the Parliamentary Budget Office did, that's when National Defence should have brought forward that full costing," Ferguson said.

Liberal defence critic John McKay accused the government Tuesday of trying to hide the true cost of the program from Canadians.

"Now they appear ready to throw bureaucrats and our armed forces under yet another bus, but Canadians won't be fooled. Responsibility for this fiasco lies squarely on the prime minister's desk."

The United States oversees the nine-country Joint Strike Fighter Program. The planes would be built by the U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin, but the rollout of the plane has been plagued by delays, technical problems and a 64-per-cent cost increase. Those problems have been well-documented in reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, an investigative branch of Congress.

Harper and his government were briefed in advance on the criticisms in the auditor general's report, allowing them to prepare their response in advance. Along with a freeze on spending above $9 billion, the government created a new oversight mechanism for the F-35 procurement — an inter-departmental secretariat of deputy ministers to oversee the project.

The Tories received accolades for establishing such a secretariat to administer its recently announced $33-billion National Shipbuilding Program.

The Harper government has said it expects to pay US$75 million dollars for each of the F-35s. But others — including Canada's parliamentary budget officer — have said the actual cost could be close to double that figure.

The government has not signed a contract with the U.S. to buy the F-35s. But it has invested $335 million so far to meet various commitments over the 15-year history of the U.S.-led JSF initiative.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press
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DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: U.S. Looks To NATO For Afghan Funding

Defense War News Updates: DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: U.S. Looks To NATO For Afghan Funding

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Yaroslav Trofimov - WSJ

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada / BRUSSELS, Belgium - December 9, 2011: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday pressed coalition allies to make concrete commitments to funding Afghan security forces over the next decade.

Speaking after a meeting in Brussels of foreign ministers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other coalition members, Mrs. Clinton said she was hopeful that the allies will come to NATO's summit in Chicago in May "prepared to pledge long-term funding" for the Afghan military and police.

"I encouraged our allies to better define NATO's enduring partnership with Afghanistan," Mrs. Clinton said, "including its post-2014 mission to support the Afghan national-security forces, and to provide a strong base on which Afghanistan can build a stable, peaceful future."

Afghan and allied officials in Kabul estimate the cost of maintaining the Afghan security forces—slated to reach 352,000 men by fall of 2012—at between $4 billion and $6 billion a year.

That is far beyond the means of the Afghan government. Without foreign assistance stretching over a decade, many Western and Afghan officials say, the Afghans won't be able to fill the security vacuum left by the planned pullout of most U.S.-led combat troops in 2014.

Many NATO allies have been perplexed by the U.S. drive over the past two years to bulk up the size of the Afghan military and police, voicing concerns that such a large force would be unsustainable—and complaining that they hadn't been consulted. Some of these nations now resent being asked to cough up hundreds of millions of dollars a year to pay for it, especially as European economies are reeling from the euro-zone debt crisis.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday that nations outside the Atlantic alliance, and outside the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan, should help foot the bill. In addition to troops from NATO countries, the coalition in Afghanistan includes sizable forces from countries such as Australia, Georgia, Sweden, South Korea and New Zealand.

"We will finish the job to help create a secure Afghanistan—for our shared security," Mr. Rasmussen said. "But the whole international community has a stake in a stable and secure Afghanistan. And the whole international community must help achieve it."

An international conference uniting the NATO allies with countries including Russia, China, Iran and India, held Monday in the German city of Bonn, has already promised to provide financial aid to Afghanistan in the decade after 2014. Concrete commitments are slated to be made at a pledging conference in Tokyo in July.

In Brussels, at the two-day NATO conference that was attended Thursday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Moscow and the alliance sparred over NATO's missile-defense plans, as well as NATO's role in toppling the Libyan regime.

NATO says its planned missile shield, which includes a new radar system to be deployed in Turkey, aims to protect Europe from Iran and other Middle Eastern threats. Russia, however, is seeking binding guarantees that the planned system wouldn't be used against it.

The two sides agreed to continue negotiations on the matter, even as NATO officials said the deployment of the missile-defense project will go ahead. Russia didn't repeat Thursday an earlier suggestion by its ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, that the missile dispute may be linked to Moscow's cooperation with the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

In his only comments on Afghanistan at the Brussels conference, Mr. Lavrov described the conflict there as "a challenge to our common security."

NATO's so-called Northern Distribution Network, which has greatly expanded over the past year and which runs through Russia and the Central Asian states, provides the coalition with an increasingly important alternative to Pakistani supply routes.

The NDN, which accounts for at least half of coalition supplies, turned into a vital lifeline after Pakistan closed its border to NATO convoys last month, in protest over the killing of 24 Pakistani troops in an errant U.S. airstrike near the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Mrs. Clinton on Thursday hailed the NDN as "a very good example of Russia-U.S. and Russia-NATO cooperation" that is "mutually beneficial to all of us."

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

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By Yaroslav Trofimov - WSJ

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DTN News - U.S. AIR FORCE NEWS: Air Power - Lessons From Libya

Defense War News Updates: DTN News - U.S. AIR FORCE NEWS: Air Power - Lessons From Libya

*With resources thinning and China rising, the U.S. Air Force is all the more vital—yet it's due for major budget cuts.

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources

WSJ By Michael Auslin

(NSI News Source Info) NEW DELHI, India - October 28, 2011: Moammar Gadhafi was killed last week by Libyan rebel forces on the ground, but his regime would never have met its end if not for the Western air power that targeted his troops from the skies. As Washington considers slashing $500 billion from the defense budget over the next decade, the lessons of Libya should give pause to anyone whose plans will reduce the U.S. military's ability to control the air. The United States cannot fight in the future with a hollow Air Force.

Allied air power saved the Libyan revolt from being crushed at least once, if not twice, this past summer. Nearly 8,000 allied strike sorties kept Gadhafi's forces on the defensive, destroyed their command-and-control network, and eliminated much of their supply infrastructure. Much of the direct air-combat activity was borne by the British and French but, as then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted, without U.S. air-refueling tankers, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets, the NATO missions would have been severely hampered and largely ineffective.

Considering the broad range of U.S. interests and commitments around the globe, the capabilities offered by the U.S. Air Force will remain essential national assets. As Mr. Gates argued shortly before leaving office, in the post-Iraq/Afghanistan future, the U.S. is more likely than not to be unable or unwilling to commit large numbers of ground forces to overseas campaigns.

If the Army loses up to 10 brigade combat teams and shrinks by as many as 75,000 troops, and with the Navy at its smallest size since World War I, there will be fewer traditional military options for projecting U.S. power and deterring or defeating adversaries. Any land and naval forces sent into harm's way will be smaller, with fewer reserves to call upon. And all of this will be happening while China develops missiles to target American aircraft carriers and modernizes and expands its air forces, including developing a fifth-generation fighter-bomber. The result will almost certainly be an increased burden on the U.S. Air Force.

Fighting from the air reduces U.S. casualties on the ground. Air power can significantly destroy an adversary's strength, making follow-on operations far easier. The Air Force's unique global airlift and air-support capabilities, and long-range targeting and precision bombing, provide the umbrella under which ground forces and naval forces can act with impunity and assured lethality.

Yet the Air Force is rapidly aging, with 30-year-old fighters and half its bomber force dating back to the 1960s. And the Air Force already receives the lowest percentage of defense resources (around 23%) of any major service.

To shoulder the burden of increased responsibilities, the Air Force will need the resources to improve its capacity to act globally. But funds for procurement, maintenance and operations are already projected in the 2012 budget to decline by over $2 billion, and some inside the Pentagon expect annual cuts of $10 billion or more in a few years, even before any sequestration-imposed cuts.

Even as funds shrink, the Air Force must continue all its air operations, modernize its tactical fighter and tanker fleets, build a new long-range strike bomber, maintain its global airlift tempo, and increase its capabilities in space and cyberspace. If the U.S. intends to remain the world's premier power-projecting nation, then we will have to adequately fund the aerospace force that allows us to reach anywhere on Earth at any time.

Air warfare will not be the answer for every battle we enter, but it may become our most visible means of force projection in an era of smaller Army and Navy units. From the high plateau of national security decision-making, a future president and his top commanders will expect readiness, not excuses, when they order the Armed Forces to destroy the enemy.

Being able to operate in both open and contested skies will ensure that any U.S. land and sea forces we send into combat will remain completely protected from the air, as they have been since the Korean War and as Libya's freedom fighters were this summer.

Mr. Auslin is a resident scholar in Asian and security studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Michael Auslin - WSJ

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