Author Archives: Daniel Gouré, Ph.D.
Another Test Failure Cries Out For New Approach To National Missile Defense Yesterday, the Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) failed to destroy an incoming intermediate-range target missile launched from Kwajalein Atoll. This is the third major missile defense test failure in the past two years and the second in which both the target missile [Read More...]
Littoral Combat Ship Miracle Bids Likely To Be Accepted By Congress Recent testimony by senior officials of the Department of the Navy before the Senate Appropriations Committee reveal the source of their new-found enthusiasm for buying both variants of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Apparently both bidders, Lockheed Martin and Austal, [Read More...]
DoD Needs To Ensure Viability Of Industrial Base For Soldier Equipment Today’s soldiers in Afghanistan are the best equipped in the world — the best body armor, the best fire resistant uniform ensembles, the best weapons, night vision goggles, communications systems, mountain boots and helmets. What distinguishes the current wars from [Read More...]
Defending Defense Spending In An Era Of Mounting Budget Deficits Last month, the deficit commission recommended some $100 billion in cuts to the defense budget over the next decade. Since then, the idea that of course defense spending would have to bear some of the burden of eliminating the deficit [Read More...]
New START Treaty Implicitly Limits Missile Defense As the oft-used question goes: Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes? This is the White House’s apparent strategy with respect to ratification of the New START treaty. In response to questions from concerned senators regarding language [Read More...]
Is A New Combat Vehicle What The Army Needs Most? Last week the U.S. Army released its revised request for proposal (RFP) for the new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV). The initial proposal had been criticized as dictating too many key performance parameters which resulted, according to reports, in industry responses [Read More...]
U.S. Must Address The Threat In Declining European Defense Budgets There are reports circulating in European newspapers that a number of major NATO countries including France, Italy and Germany plan to reduce their defense spending sharply in the next few years. The reasons for this are fairly prosaic: a combination [Read More...]
Wikileaks Dilemma: How Does A Nation Fight A Superempowered Person? In his justifiably famous book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, author Thomas Friedman coined the phrase of superempowered individual. Friedman was referring specifically to Osama bin Laden, who was able to use a combination of ideological appeal, mass communications [Read More...]
Defense Spending: Cut Overhead Not Technology There are at least a half dozen proposals floating around Washington for reducing defense spending. From the deficit commission to the sustainable defense task force and now the Brookings Institution all these proposals employ the same old, tired approach to [Read More...]
Incoming HASC Chairman Has It Right: Reform Defense, Don’t Cut It Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-CA, the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), weighed in yesterday on the growing debate fueled by the president’s deficit commission regarding cuts in defense spending. In an editorial in USA Today, [Read More...]