Trump’s Claim Of $2.5 Trillion In DoD Dough: Not True
If you count next year’s budget, the president will be actually selling himself short. But his other superlatives are not justified.
Can’t Spend? Won’t Spend? 4 Lessons From NATO’s Bottom Lines
Most NATO nations don’t pay much. Most nations CAN'T pay much. Most spend on the wrong things. But most of them are moving in the right direction.
Modern Tech in Indo-Pacific Operations
Explore how networked warfare, AI, and 3D-printed drones are reshaping US Indo-Pacific strategy.
US Defense Budget Not That Much Bigger Than China, Russia: Gen. Milley
"I've seen comparative numbers of US defense budget versus China, US defense budget versus Russia," Gen. Milley said. "What is not often commented on is the cost of labor. We’re the best paid military in the world by a long shot. The cost of Russian soldiers or Chinese soldiers is a tiny fraction."
AIA’s Melcher Hopes Hill Has ‘Moral Courage’ To Fund DoD & Rest Of Budget
WASHINGTON: The federal government needs to spend more money on civilian agencies like the State Department, NASA, and the FAA, not just defense, the aerospace industry’s top lobbyist said today, but there’s no reasoning with a portion of Congress that wants cuts at any cost. “There’s a part of Congress that’s suspicious of everything,” said […]
Shutdown Looms, North Korean War Closer, UK PM Mocked
CORRECTED: Changed Stealth To Fifth Generation Fighters In Fifth Paragraph. WASHINGTON: Can the Christmas holidays come quickly enough? Republicans, hungry for their first major legislative accomplishment since the 2016 elections, are focused above and beyond all else on changes to tax law, leaving a dangerous vacuum into which a shutdown could fall. Last week, the […]
US Strategy Must Change Coz ‘We Can’t Afford It:’ Rep. Smith
WASHINGTON: When the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee went to talk with the almost mystical Pentagon gang known as the Office of Net Assessment, they told him America can’t afford to execute the strategy we’re pursuing. “I asked them what they were lacking. They didn’t have an answer,” Rep. Adam Smith told […]
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Beacon brings industry into a shared ecosystem to accelerate flight autonomy
Six companies have already signed up for a new flight-test program to mature their autonomy software.
US Forces Won’t Grow Much Despite Hill & Trump Rhetoric
The defense community is abuzz with talk of strategy and force expansion as the Pentagon develops the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy. Talk is nice but, as budgeteers like to say, “If it ain’t funded, it ain’t”. Building the forces the services say they need—with the readiness and modernization to support them— requires large budgets, […]
Clash of Strategies: Capability Or Capacity, Today Or Tomorrow?
As the Pentagon finishes its strategic review, the stage is set for another struggle over whether to ready for a high-end war with Russia or China or just manage the current, much lower intensity battles around the world. In military terms it’s a choice between capability and capacity. The outcome will shape the four services […]
Trump’s 355-Ship Fleet Will Take Til 2050s
ANNAPOLIS: The President, Congress and the Navy now all want the fleet to grow from the current 278 ships to 355, but that will probably take until the 2050s, the Navy’s No. 2 civilian said Wednesday. “To quote the Rolling Stones, you can’t always get what you want,” said Thomas Dee, who has served for […]
Mattis Warns Against US Unpreparedness, Eye On Korea
AUSA: T.R. Fehrenbach’s seminal history, “This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness” was center stage during Defense Secretary Jim Mattis‘ opening speech here this morning. The message to Congress and the American people, as well as the Army, seemed clear: war against North Korea is possible, though we’ll do everything possible short of war […]
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Meeting modern airpower needs with faster R&D cycles for propulsion
As aircraft shrink, threats expand, and technology accelerates, aircraft engines must iterate along with the threats.
Trump’s Promised Big Boost To DoD Evaporates In 2018 Budget
Campaign promises of a larger, more ready and fully modernized military have slammed into budget realities as the Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget for the Pentagon shows only modest growth above what the Obama administration had projected. Funding at those levels will support a 305-ship Navy, not the 350 ships that candidate Trump proposed back in […]
Hill Intel Committees Order DNI, NSA/CyberCom Review
Ever since the day of its creation, critics have slammed the Office of Director of National Intelligence as an expensive and unnecessary bureaucracy, a threat to the longtime primacy of the Director of Central Intelligence and a toothless tiger. Much of that changed during the joint tenures of DNI Mike McConnell and SecDef Bob Gates […]
Thornberry To Trump: Don’t Shut Us Down
CAPITOL HILL: Less than two hours after President Trump tweeted that a government shutdown might be a good thing, the conservative Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said, no. “It would be better for the country if the Pentagon and the military do not shut down at any point, because the threats to […]
Continuing Resolution Fears? OCO’s Ugly But It Might Work
Two weeks from today America will either be a laughingstock or Congress will have done the responsible thing, the necessary thing, and passed some kind of useful spending bills. Or, as Mark Cancian, a former senior official at the Office of Management and Budget, suggests, there may be a sort of defense spending bandage to strap […]