July 16, 2019
The game of musical chairs at the top of the military is moving closer to an end — one that should bring added energy to developing emerging technologies and workforce readiness, according to confirmation testimony from the nominees to be the Pentagon‘s top military and civilian officials.
Both Mark Esper, Trump’s latest nominee for secretary of defense, and Mark Milley, nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified in recent days that modernization will be a top priority under their leadership.
During Esper’s confirmation hearings, he noted that developing artificial intelligence will be his No. 1 modernization priority.
“Different people put different things as number one, for me it is AI,” Esper said. “It will likely change the character of warfare.”
Milley pointed additionally to hypersonics, directed energy and other advanced weapon systems.
The stress for modernization is tied to a sea-change shift in military strategy from focusing on counter-terrorism to great power conflict with key adversaries China and Russia.
“This requires us to modernize our forces and capitalize on rapid technological advancements,” Esper said.
Milley, who is likely to be confirmed as the top military adviser in the Pentagon, stressed modernization of the U.S.’s nuclear weapon systems in addition to broader modernization. The systems, known as the nuclear triad, require both readiness and technological updates to maintain deterrence strong enough to stave off great power war.
“The fundamental character of war is changing rapidly,” Milley said last Thursday, emphasizing that nuclear forces are critical to staying ahead of the curve. Esper added a need for cyber protections to nuclear systems Tuesday.
In addition to modernizing technology and weapons, Esper said he will take aim at reforming the structure of the world’s largest institution.
“We will reform the department, beginning with the Fourth Estate,” Esper said, citing the group of support agencies not directly involved in warfighting, such as the Defense Information Systems Agency and the Defense Logistics Agency. “No reform is too small.”
The military has faced an uphill battle in securing and consolidating its networks in the Fourth Estate. Union injunctions have paused personnel shifts for IT workers, and the networks infrastructure transformation has faced a lack of “proper implementation,” according to inspector general reports.
https://www.fedscoop.com/esper-confi...ation-hearing/
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Mark Esper
Esper was chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, from 1996 to 1998. From 1998 to 2002, Esper served as a senior professional staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. He was also a senior policy advisor and legislative director for U.S. senator Chuck Hagel. He was policy director for the House Armed Services Committee from 2001 to 2002. From 2002 to 2004, Esper served in the George W. Bush administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy, where he was responsible for a broad range of nonproliferation, arms control, and international security issues. He was director for national security affairs for the U.S. Senate under Senate majority leader Bill Frist from 2004 to 2006.
Esper was executive vice president at the Aerospace Industries Association in 2006 and 2007.
From September 2007 to February 2008, Esper served as national policy director to Senator Fred Thompson in his 2008 presidential campaign.
From 2008 to 2010, Esper served as executive vice president of the Global Intellectual Property Center and vice president for Europe and Eurasia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
He was hired as vice president of government relations at defense contractor Raytheon in 2010.
Esper was recognized as a top corporate lobbyist by The Hill in 2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Esper
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"We're draining the swamp," President Trump told his exuberant crowd in Orlando as he launched his reelection campaign Tuesday night, hours after announcing former Raytheon head lobbyist Mark Esper would replace former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan as acting defense secretary.
"Already this week, Raytheon has won multiple government contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars," Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement Tuesday. "While Esper may not have had sway over these types of deals as secretary of the Army, as acting secretary of defense he will have potential influence over such deals, as well as over the controversial proposed merger of Raytheon and UTC to become the second largest defense company in the US. His ethics agreement—and his ability to follow it—will be something we will be watching closely."
Although Esper's current ethics agreement requires him to divest his stock in Raytheon, which he has done, it allows him to continue to receive his deferred compensation from the defense contracting company. That deferred compensation, according to his most recent financial disclosure, is valued between $1 million and $5 million, to be paid out over a 10-year period starting in 2012. His most recent financial disclosure says, however, that he received either none or less than $201 dollars from that deferred compensation in 2018. Esper's most recent ethics agreement from July 2017 says he will not participate "personally and substantially" in any activities related to Raytheon for one year, which has already passed. CBS News has reached out to the Army for comment.
Esper is one of several former lobbyists Mr. Trump has tapped to help lead his administration.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-s...-ex-lobbyists/
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Originally Posted by Anti Globalist
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