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June 2012
Even as the Transportation Security Administration improves its techniques for patting down airline passengers and ferreting out blue-haired, little old lady terrorists the danger to the United States, its citizens and its international commerce as a result of unscreened cargo containers grows.
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6/29/2012
The U.S. Air Force has long been the global leader in airborne surveillance and reconnaissance. However, its fleet of 73 electronic aircraft has become quite aged. The AWACS early-warning planes average 35 years of age, JSTARS ground-trackers average 45 years, and Rivet Joint eavesdropping aircraft
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6/28/2012
For the past three and a half years I have been trying to figure out why the Department of Defense has exhibited an increasingly hostile attitude towards the private sector. What President Eisenhower had once referred to as the "military-industrial complex" has rapidly become the Hatfields and
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6/28/2012
A statistical analysis of how defense sequestration would impact employment in each of the 50 states finds that several "swing" states crucial to President Obama's reelection prospects would be hit especially hard. Specifically, four of the ten states losing the most defense jobs if sequestration
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6/26/2012
A central feature of the Pentagon’s strategic pivot to Asia is a rebalancing of the military’s global force posture. The Navy, for example, is planning to deploy some 60 per cent of its ships to this region, including forward basing a number of its new Littoral Combat Ships. The naval and air base
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6/26/2012
The Syrian civil war now threatens to spread to its neighbors. Last Thursday, a Syrian pilot flew his fighter to Jordon. On Friday, Syrian air defenses shot down a Turkish fighter on a training mission over the eastern Mediterranean. Regardless of whether or not the plane had strayed into Syrian
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6/25/2012
Supporters of President Obama's reelection apparently have decided that when it comes to discussing his record as commander in chief, Exhibit A has to be the takedown of Al Qaeda kingpin Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan last year. A coterie of current and former Pentagon officials has been making the
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6/25/2012
Over the past twenty years the U.S. Army has achieved a record of successfully implementing major acquisition programs virtually unblemished by success. The list of failures is quite long: Crusader, Future Combat System, Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter, Aerial Common Sensor, etc. The most successful
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6/22/2012
With U.S. forces out of Iraq and NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan proceeding apace, the effort to identify lessons learned from these conflicts is intensifying. This may sound like just an academic exercise but it will have real consequences in terms of future force structure, procurement, R&D
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6/21/2012
Senior executives of major defense companies rarely seek publicity. They also seldom openly criticize their customer, the Department of Defense, or the organization that provides that customer with funds, the U.S. Congress. So it is noteworthy when Robert Stevens, the outgoing CEO of Lockheed Martin
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6/20/2012
A widely-read defense blog recently opined that the Lexington Institute is dreaming of a Romney election victory. Well, guess again: I voted for Obama in 2008 and probably will again if Republicans can't learn to do honest arithmetic about the government's fiscal options. However, I confess that
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6/20/2012
Is anyone surprised that the Obama Administration will seek even deeper reductions in U.S. strategic nuclear forces? According to reports circulating in Washington, the administration’s most recent Nuclear Posture Review will propose a strategic nuclear force of 1,000 warheads. This is a one-third
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6/19/2012
Cybersecurity is an infant industry. It barely existed before the Worldwide Web was invented in the 1990s, and it hasn't really stabilized since then. As in other infant industries, customer needs keep changing, new suppliers keep appearing, and there is little agreement on standards. Unlike
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6/19/2012
When is it a good idea to use private contractors to perform tasks that are or could be done by government employees or personnel in uniform? Under the Clinton and Bush Administrations there was a push to outsource a broad range of activities and services supporting both the Department of Defense
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6/15/2012
America's defense establishment has an awful track record when it comes to predicting future threats. From Pearl Harbor to North Korea's invasion of the South to Sputnik to the Bay of Pigs to the Tet Offensive to Russia's invasion of Afghanistan to 9-11, military leaders almost never see what's
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6/15/2012
In the ten months since Congress passed the Budget Control Act last August, a stereotype has taken hold about the different ways in which Republicans and Democrats view the prospect of automatic cuts to the federal budget. Republicans, it is said, are mainly concerned about cuts in military spending
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6/14/2012
Hopefully, a new Greek government will emerge after the elections on June 17. The first major decision the government must make is whether the country will continue to abide by austerity measures imposed by other members of the European Union, renegotiate them, or refuse to comply. One of these
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6/14/2012
In May, the U.S. Navy released a massive, 1,100 page request for proposals (RFP) for the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) IT program. NGEN will provide secure data and information technology services, such as data storage, email, and video-teleconferencing for around 700,000 users at 2,500
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6/13/2012
The problem with Europe, surprisingly, is that it does not have enough rules. The basis for the Eurozone’s current financial crisis is that establishment of a monetary union was not accompanied by the creation of a fiscal one. The root cause of the current Euro crisis is the unwillingness of the
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6/12/2012
The F-35 Lightning II fighter is the Pentagon's biggest weapons program, and some media coverage makes it sound like it is also the most troubled. But if you scratch the surface on all that negative coverage, what you discover is a program that is progressing steadily. This is the third year in
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6/11/2012
For more than a decade, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) has pioneered in the area of reducing defense costs by increasing its reliance on the private sector. In 2001, rather than trying to sustain an oversized and expensive public sector defense research enterprise, Tony Blair's Labor government
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6/8/2012
Senior executives at major defense companies are warning that the sequestration provisions contained in last year's Budget Control Act could produce chaos if they trigger as planned on January 2. The law requires that $60 billion be cut from defense accounts in fiscal 2013 as part of a ten-year
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6/8/2012
While the world awaits the outcome of Greek parliamentary elections on June 17 -- which will determine whether the country remains in the eurozone -- it is important to understand how a country of 11 million people could accumulate such a colossal debt in the first place. Greece found itself at
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6/7/2012
Everyone likes to save money if they can. That is why many people go to warehouse stores, comparison shop, search on EBay for bargains, visit thrift stores, take advantage of two-for-one sales and get multiple bids from contractors. When it comes to buying commodity items or hiring someone to do
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6/7/2012
Pentagon strategic planners have been focused obsessively on the problem posed by so-called “asymmetric” threats and its semi-legitimate offspring, the “hybrid adversary.” This construct stems from the notion that no military in the world can stand up to ours with military forces symmetrical to
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6/6/2012
Over the last several months, discussion of budget sequestration in defense circles has taken on an increasingly grim tone. As the January 2 date when automatic cuts are scheduled to trigger draws closer with little sign of congressional movement to avert implementation, politicians, policymakers
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6/6/2012
The future of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) leg of the nuclear Triad is again subject to debate. On the one hand, a recent study by Global Zero called for steep reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including elimination of the entire land-based component. Under this plan, the
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6/5/2012
The shift of U.S. military strategy to an Asia-Pacific focus has big implications for the Marine Corps. Unlike in Europe and the Middle East, distances are vast and there are few U.S. bases. But the littoral nations of East Asia have become the industrial heartland of the new global economy, so
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6/5/2012
Defense budgets are almost certain to decline significantly over the next decade no matter who is in the White House. Should sequestration take place, it will be difficult for the Department of Defense (DoD) to structure a coherent defense program. But even without sequestration, DoD will have to
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6/4/2012
For more than four years, the United States, along with some allies, has been at war with Iran. It is not the kind of war we have come to expect in this region. There was no official declaration of hostilities, U.N. resolution or act of Congress. The war doesn’t involve the use of the armed forces
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6/1/2012
A senior civilian in the Army's acquisition organization says that the high cost of new tactical vehicles has less to do with inefficiency than with how long it has been since the service developed truly new systems. For instance, although the Abrams tank has been continuously upgraded and improved
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6/1/2012
For the last two years, Greek citizens have turned out to oppose austerity measures in front of the Hellenic Parliament. The May 2012 parliamentary elections allowed the people an alternative route to voice their views, which resulted in a loss of seats for the two main parties -- Pasok (socialist)
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Date:
6/1/2012