The Pentagon’s civilian workforce is too big and has been virtually untouched since defense budgets started falling four years ago. It’s grown so much, in fact, that the Air Force’s civilian workforce is just 1,400 people shy of matching the entire Air Force National Guard and Reserve combined. It’s time to shrink the Defense Department’s […]
After two weeks of covering the 2015 defense budget, I can assure you it is confusing. Every budget includes fudges, silliness and an enormous amount of information. They are hard to make sense of and often their import doesn’t become clear for a year or two. But this budget may be the most complex one […]
The Sixth Domain is not defined by geography. It’s a new kind of conflict in which autonomy and networked systems allow thousand-dollar consumer electronics to destroy multi-million-dollar conventional weapons systems.
She’s baaack! After having the temerity to give birth to a child and thus deprive us of her insights for several months, Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute has penned an op-ed on the 2015 budget. She casts it in a fairly gloomy light, pointing to the haunting possibility of a hollow force in the […]
When you add up the defense budget shortfalls for the next few years, it quickly becomes clear Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s recent Strategic Choices and Management Review (SCMR) looks to become just what he did not want: actions he will have to implement instead of a menu of options. Pentagon leaders must now consider most if […]
After four months, we still know precious little about how sequestration — or automatic budget cuts in the name of debt reduction — is being implemented or what Pentagon priorities are most affected. But one important detail has become clear after the Pentagon recently released two reports. Leaders are trying to navigate near-term fiscal uncertainty, […]
America likes the idea that we have made a solemn promise to generously compensate our military service members. After all, the argument goes, how can we ever fully repay them for risking their lives for us? Providing benefits like low-cost premium health care, comfortable pensions, housing allowances, grocery discounts, tuition assistance, tax breaks and much […]
As threats rapidly evolve, digital engineering, manufacturing capacity and robust supply chains are critical to meeting challenges.
In a town full of hot air, speeches are a dime a dozen. But money still talks. So let’s compare the new Secretary of Defense’s policy agenda to his first proposed budget. While Leon Panetta, his predecessor, mostly built this budget, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel owns it now and has already spent a considerable amount […]
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 […]
If the election results are pretty clear next week, expect to hear two things: the sounds of snoring from an exhausted Washington political class and the first tentative mentions of the shape of a solution to the dire fiscal cliff our country may fall off of in January. Given the enormity of the repercussions facing […]
A year has passed since Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act-the legislation mandating sequestration. Funding cuts that once seemed politically remote now loom large for leaders increasingly anxious about the impact $1.2 trillion in automatic budget reductions will have upon their respective districts and states. An estimated two million […]
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
[This piece was originally published under the title “CNO Ready To Cut Back On F-35 Joint Strike Fighter,” which was factually incorrect; see our note below.] Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert’s recent article in Proceedings announces in public what many have already known in private: The U.S. Navy is not wholly committed to the […]
Sequestration: it’s a term only Washington could love. Behind the bland euphemism lie dramatic cuts to the U.S. military, shipbuilding and aerospace manufacturing jobs, and in communities across America. Washington politicians insist a half trillion in defense cuts — and the attendant degradation to our national security — is a reasoned belt tightening. In reality, […]
You know it’s bad when the President’s own national security adviser calls the Secretary of Defense over for a meeting at the White House to explain exactly how the administration is “pivoting” to Asia yet shrinking the Navy and the Air Force. But that’s what happened earlier this year. It is no surprise given the […]
If you take the Administration’s word for it, the most recent defense budget represents a sober-minded and far-thinking strategic shift from the Middle East to Asia, creating a smaller, high-tech force oriented increasingly towards inter-state conflict and deterrence. Many are even comparing the Pentagon’s current vision with that of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, […]