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December 2010
Lexington Institute's staff is scattering into the hinterlands for the holidays. Unless something really big happens over the next ten days, you won't be hearing much from Lexington or this web-site until the new year. I'd like to end the old year by thanking Lexington's many supporters for their
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Date:
12/22/2010
Historians will remember the first decade of the new millennium as a cautionary tale about the hubris of great powers. The United States entered the decade at the peak of its influence, convinced (as the Bush Administration's first national security strategy put it) that there was only one true formula
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12/22/2010
The Navy's newest aircraft carrier, the George H.W. Bush, with its motto “Freedom at Work,” will deploy next May carrying an array of technological improvements, but its real assets will be in the people on board who proudly represent the diversity of our country, the advancements of the Navy with
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12/21/2010
The Pentagon has embarked on its latest campaign to improve business practices, with a key focus being the transition from "cost-plus" contracts to fixed-price, incentive-fee contracts. Cost-plus contracts typically cover all the expenses a contractor incurs in performing work and provide an additional
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12/20/2010
If the Navy is able to buy both variants of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) each will come with its own combat system. Some sources have suggested that this could be a problem for the Navy because it will have to manage two supply chains and sets of maintenance networks to support those combat systems.
Why
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Date:
12/20/2010
The rush to cut defense spending is on. The president’s deficit commission proposed a trillion dollars in cuts over a decade. Defense department officials are acknowledging that some portion of the $100 billion Secretary of Defense Robert Gates hoped to save through efficiencies will have to be
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Date:
12/17/2010
The United States economy is ending the first decade of the new millennium in much worse shape than experts expected when the decade began. Back then, the United States was generating a third of global output, the federal budget was in surplus, and American information technology was revolutionizing
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Date:
12/17/2010
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 and interceptor successfully launched
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12/16/2010
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, came in with bids one-third
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Date:
12/15/2010
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 those for which the military
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Date:
12/14/2010
Last month the co-chairmen of the President's bipartisan deficit reduction commission offered a series of recommendations for trimming federal spending, including defense cuts that would total $100 billion annually by 2015. I thought the proposed defense cuts were reasonable. However, the two
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Date:
12/13/2010
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 has become axiomatic in Washington. Even pro-defense conservatives
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Date:
12/13/2010
Pentagon policies and priorities are stuck in a state of limbo as stakeholders await word on who will replace departing defense secretary Robert Gates. Gates stated in an interview that he intended to leave public service in 2011, and many observers have assumed that meant in February or March
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12/10/2010
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 in the treaty on missile defenses and repeated requests
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Date:
12/9/2010
Last week witnessed an interesting bit of political theater concerning the Pentagon's biggest weapons program, courtesy of Credit Suisse and Aviation Week. The two organizations hosted their annual aerospace conference in New York, and the audience was treated to surprisingly complementary
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12/8/2010
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 that were deemed technically risky
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Date:
12/8/2010
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 of rising costs for entitlements and the continuing
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Date:
12/7/2010
Senior executives at Boeing have grown pessimistic about their prospects for prevailing in the latest Air Force tanker competition. Their counterparts at competitors EADS -- the parent company of Airbus -- are correspondingly confident. This is surprising, because the Boeing entry in the competition
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Date:
12/7/2010
The Lexington Institute has recently criticized Army plans for modernizing its tracked and wheeled vehicles. Lt. Gen. Michael A. Vane, a key leader in the development of Army plans for the future, sent Lexington the following comments explaining how vehicle modernization plans were developed.
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Date:
12/6/2010
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 and modern technology to
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12/6/2010
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 garnering the majority of their proposed
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12/3/2010
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
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12/2/2010
My 23 year old son David is too young to remember the Soviet Union or have any first-hand experience with what life and international relations were like during the Cold War. It turns out I need not have worried about this major gap in his life experience. Apparently, Russian President Medvedev,
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Date:
12/1/2010
If the bleak findings of the bipartisan deficit reduction commission released today weren't enough to get defense contractors thinking about diversification, then maybe the Army's revised solicitation for a future Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) will do the trick. GCV is all that's left of the family
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Date:
12/1/2010