Author Archives: Daniel Gouré, Ph.D.
Gates Efficiency Push Targets Appetite For Requirements
There is no question that the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, is a smart man. Nor is there a doubt that he means well. His efforts to drive excess costs out of the defense budget and to find ways of [Read More...]
Integrating New Networks Is A Key Challenge In Army Modernization
Not long ago, modernization of the U.S. Army centered on the Future Combat System (FCS), a networked collection of 18 ground and aerial, manned and unmanned platforms tied together by a network. When most of that program was cancelled — [Read More...]
High Road Contracting Is Really A Low Road To Circumventing Congress
Unable to get much of its agenda for reshaping the U.S. economy past even a Congress dominated by Democrats, the Obama Administration is now seeking the same ends by manipulating the government contracting process. The federal government spends some $500 [Read More...]
British Defense Cuts Could Fracture Alliance
The British Government is about to complete its Defense Review 2010. Scheduled under the former Labor government, the review is taking place under the guiding hand of the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and in the midst of the most [Read More...]
Don’t Reform The Acquisition System, Kill It
A major part of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ legacy may be his efforts to reform the weapons acquisition system. The Secretary has repeatedly lashed the acquisition system for being unresponsive to the needs of the warfighter, too slow and [Read More...]
Littoral Combat Ship: It’s The Mission Packages, Stupid
One might argue that the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program has had more than its fair share of challenges. First there was the difficulty of carrying along two very different ship designs, one by a Lockheed Martin-led team (LCS 1 [Read More...]
Future Defense Budget Choices Require Clear Strategic Priorities
The United States cannot afford its national security strategy. Which may be a fortunate thing since it is the wrong strategy. It is the wrong strategy because it assumes that the U.S. is the centerpiece of the strategic universe and, [Read More...]
Government Blast Testing of MRAPs May be Inadequate
Since the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan morphed into a lengthy battle of attrition with insurgents, the majority of U.S. and Coalition casualties have come from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). These have come in every type, shape and size from [Read More...]
Reflections On A Small Victory In Iraq
At this moment we can take pride that the last combat-assigned brigade has left Iraq and that the country itself is at a point where it may be able to rebuild itself economically and politically. Operation Iraqi Freedom has had [Read More...]
Defense Budget Threatened By Stealth Cuts
One of the more remarkable decisions by President Obama has been to maintain the historically high level of defense spending bequeathed to it by the outgoing Bush Administration. For fiscal year 2010, the administration requested some $534 billion for defense [Read More...]