USA/UK

By Lin­da D. Kozaryn
Amer­i­can Forces Press Service 

U.S. Deputy Defense Sec­re­tary William J. Lynn III looks over some paper­work while en route to the Unit­ed King­dom, Jan. 24, 2009. Lynn is is slat­ed to address atten­dees at the Euro­pean Secu­ri­ty and Defense Con­fer­ence, as well as mem­bers of Great Britain’s Par­lia­ment. Bildquelle: DoD pho­to by Mas­ter Sgt. Jer­ry Morrison

LONDON, U.S. Deputy Defense Sec­re­tary William J. Lynn III is slat­ed to address atten­dees at the Euro­pean Secu­ri­ty and Defense Con­fer­ence and mem­bers of Great Britain’s Par­lia­ment at the House of Com­mons here tomorrow. 

Lynn’s two-day vis­it will serve as a “renew­al of the spe­cial rela­tion­ship we have with the British,” he told Amer­i­can Forces Press Ser­vice dur­ing a Sun­day morn­ing flight to London . 

“The goal is to bring atten­tion to and rein­force the var­i­ous aspects of defense coop­er­a­tion between the U.S. (and) U.K,” he said. “We want to con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate with the British on all aspects of mil­i­tary and defense indus­tri­al activity.” 

Defense offi­cials trav­el­ing with Lynn said the deputy sec­re­tary will speak about the impor­tance of strength­en­ing defense coop­er­a­tion and enhanc­ing Euro­pean defense insti­tu­tions at the con­fer­ence. About 250 Euro­pean diplo­mats, mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and think-tank researchers will attend. 

Lynn is then sched­uled to address the Unit­ed Kingdom’s All-Par­ty Par­lia­men­tary Group on Transat­lantic and Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty. The group includes more than 70 mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, and invit­ed guests from think tanks, the media and the aca­d­e­m­ic community. 

Defense offi­cials said Lynn will cov­er a broad range of sub­jects, includ­ing threats from extrem­ism, the need for new defense capa­bil­i­ties and a com­mon approach on NATO reform, nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion and energy. 

The deputy secretary’s vis­it comes on the eve of the Lon­don Con­fer­ence aimed at improv­ing coor­di­na­tion among some 68 part­ner nations involved in the civil­ian side of the Afghanistan mis­sion. The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is com­ing togeth­er here Jan. 28 to ful­ly align mil­i­tary and civil­ian resources behind an Afghan-led polit­i­cal strategy. 

Lynn said there are three key lines of defense coop­er­a­tion U.S. and U.K. defense offi­cials can rein­force. First is the Bilat­er­al Defense Acqui­si­tion Com­mit­tee. “It’s a cen­tral forum where we elu­ci­date the var­i­ous coop­er­a­tion issues we have,” he said. “We ask the British to address issues such as the col­lab­o­ra­tion of the Joint Strike Fight­er and oth­er key acqui­si­tion programs.” 

Sec­ond, he said, is the U.S.-U.K. Defense Trade Coop­er­a­tion Treaty that will per­mit the U.S. to trade most defense arti­cles with Great Britain with­out an export license or oth­er writ­ten authorization. 

“We do indeed intend to press the Sen­ate for rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the defense coop­er­a­tion treaty,” Lynn said. “We do that as basi­cal­ly a down pay­ment on export con­trol reform that the pres­i­dent and Sec­re­tary (Robert M.) Gates have been championing.” 

The third line of defense coop­er­a­tion is cyber secu­ri­ty. Speak­ing last week at the Fletch­er Con­fer­ence on Nation­al Secu­ri­ty in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Lynn said the threat of cyber war­fare is a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat that has cap­tured his attention. 

“We’re going to have some meet­ings with the British lead­ers of the British cyber secu­ri­ty effort,” Lynn said today. “We want to make sure that crit­i­cal new threat area that we’re build­ing a foun­da­tion of coop­er­a­tion with our old­est ally as we tack­le the crit­i­cal chal­lenges that cyber secu­ri­ty poses.” 

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant now, he not­ed, because the two nations are rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly in the devel­op­ment of the tools and the struc­tures they have to address the cyber secu­ri­ty threat, he added. 

Lynn is the 30th deputy sec­re­tary of defense. He has had exten­sive pub­lic ser­vice at var­i­ous lev­els with­in the U.S. gov­ern­ment includ­ing eight years ser­vice as the under sec­re­tary of defense (comp­trol­ler) and as the direc­tor of Pro­gram Analy­sis and Eval­u­a­tion in the Office of the Sec­re­tary of Defense. 

He also served eight years at the exec­u­tive lev­el in the pri­vate sec­tor, includ­ing ser­vice as the vice pres­i­dent of Gov­ern­ment Oper­a­tions and Strat­e­gy at Raytheon Com­pa­ny. He spent six years on Capi­tol Hill as the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s liai­son to the Armed Ser­vices Committee. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs)