Rep. Anthony Brown, a 30-year Army veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that “Wormuth has the experience and knowledge necessary to lead the United States Army through the complex and multifaceted challenges we face today.”
“The proactive, nefarious work coming from China and Russia in particular [will make US policymakers] “realize that we don’t have control over everything that we think we have control over,” Tara Murphy Dougherty, CEO of Govini said
The release of the top budget numbers will set the stage for a months-long battle on Capitol Hill between budget hawks and an emboldened progressive wing of the Democratic Party over spending priorities.
The ability to move vast amounts of data between far-flung units will be critical as the Pentagon continues to disperse ground, air, and sea assets further afield, untethered from large, stationary bases.
The document outlines an evolving effort to stand up a series of small, agile units tasked with air defense, anti-ship and submarine warfare, and seizing, holding and resupplying ad hoc bases to support an island-hopping campaign in the Pacific.
“I can clearly — in my mind — envision a way to say ‘fly a defensive combat spread, shoot on this target,’ and I will squeeze the trigger or I will enable that unmanned platform to shoot the designated target,” Rear Adm. Gregory Harris says.
“If we get into a conflict with China, this is not going to be like a World War II conflict where we have massive elements of the industrial base that can quickly convert to manufacturing the necessities for war…that’s just not going to happen,” Rep. Rob Wittman says.
“The real differentiator here is the acquisition strategy, with a lot of competition — a lot of ‘fly before you buy’ — built in,” CSIS’ Tom Karako says. “The relatively longer NGI development timeline for homeland ballistic missile defense can be mitigated by near-term improvements” in ground missile defense.
“There’s a need in the near-term to defend against all of those [Chinese missile] threats from a 360-degree standpoint, and if the answer is Aegis, I’m ready to support it,” the presumptive head of Indo-PACOM told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“We’ve committed to 48, we’ll buy 48” F-35s, UK Minister for the Armed Forces, James Heappey, said. The original plan was to buy 138 fifth-generation fighters, but British officials in recent months have declined to say that number is still the target.
