New Capabilities, New Constraints Call For New Concepts In 2013

Our 2013 forecast series continues with a call for new strategic thinking from the first man to serve as Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Lt. Gen. (ret.) David Deptula. Whatever happens with sequestration, Pentagon planners are now struggling to fit the services’ myriad programs under a reduced budget topline.…

America’s Superpower Status Goes Over The Fiscal Cliff

As our 2013 forecast series continues, American Enterprise Institute scholar and frequent Breaking Defense contributor MacKenzie Eaglen takes a grim look at the strategic consequences of the fiscal cliff. (Click here for the full series of forecasts so far). The nation is heading over the fiscal cliff, an economic triple threat — tax hikes, spending…

Saving The Defense Industrial Base

In the third of our ongoing series forecasting key defense issues for 2013, Aerospace Industries Association president Marion Blakey, a member of Breaking Defense’s Board of Contributors, talks about what it will take to preserve the critical defense capabilities in a time of falling budgets. If 9/11 brought to an abrupt end Francis Fukuyama’s “End…

2013: Time For US Strategy To Get Real

As the old year dies, Breaking Defense has asked its expert Board of Contributors to look ahead at the next (click here for the whole 2013 forecast series). Today we hear from Col. (retired) Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran of the first Gulf War, prolific author, and a passionate skeptic of conventional strategic wisdom.…

Flexible Forces Plus New Drone, Cyber, & Climate Policies Top 2013 Wish List

As 2013 hurtles towards us, Breaking Defense has asked the experts on our Board of Contributors to forecast the key defense issues of the coming year (click here for the full 2013 forecast series). We kick off the series with this essay from Rachel Kleinfeld, founding president of the aggressively progressive Truman National Security Project.…