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defense budget
Governments, like individuals, can suffer from the effects of too much of a good thing. This is the case when it comes to the degree and intensity of competition for Pentagon contracts. The current leadership of the Department of Defense sees increased competition as a way of reducing costs. Unfortunately,
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Date:
4/22/2013
The fiscal 2014 proposed defense budget puts the Obama Administration’s money where its strategy is. The Air Force and the Navy are the clear beneficiaries in the new budget with virtually all their major programs emerging intact. The Navy will get funding for both the Gerald Ford (CVN-78) and the
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Date:
4/11/2013
As defense budgets trend downward, retired Marine Major General Arnold Punaro has emerged as a key player in the military reform debate. The former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Georgetown University professor has launched a one-man campaign to change how the Pentagon
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Date:
3/26/2013
The British Defense Staff, led by General Sir David Richards, is in Washington, DC for strategic discussions with their counterpart, the Joint Chiefs of Staff including its chairman, General Martin Dempsey. The U.S. and the UK consult on defense issues all the time. This is a reflection of the so-called
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Date:
3/25/2013
Whether by sequestration or some other mechanism, defense spending is headed down. If we make cuts wisely, we will still have the best trained and best equipped force in the world. If we don't, we will squander a decade of investment and become more vulnerable. Having cancelled and delayed weapons
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Date:
3/22/2013
Army planners are rethinking how their service will acquire 700 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters over the next 14 years in light of declining procurement budgets. InsideDefense.com reported on March 6 that the Army's fiscal 2014 budget request will defer any new production of the service's airborne
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Date:
3/14/2013
It is generally agreed that the additional cuts to the defense budget required by sequestration will do more than just hurt the military; they will require significant force posture changes and, according to senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials, a new defense strategy. This should come as
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Date:
3/8/2013
Beggars can't be choosers. When a government accumulates trillion-dollar deficits year after year, eventually there is a day of reckoning. For the U.S. military, that day is now.
Although the Pentagon continues to see a global landscape brimming with security challenges, it appears the political
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Date:
3/4/2013
A friend of mine who is, shall we say, not of the progressive persuasion fears Obamacare will eventually cost so much that the U.S. will no longer be able to afford a world-class military force. He points out that the United Kingdom nationalized its healthcare system right after World War Two,
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Date:
2/5/2013
How would you absorb a ten percent cut in your annual take home pay -- that is the money you have after paying withholding and taxes? There are two common ways of dealing with this situation. The first is to trim your expenses where you can, cutting back on eating out, going to movies, delaying
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Date:
1/25/2013
Whether we get budget sequestration or some alternative in the new year, it's pretty clear that military spending will continue drifting downward as our divided political system grapples with deficit reduction. Maybe that wouldn't be so obvious if the nation were facing urgent threats, but the
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Date:
11/16/2012
The Program for Public Consultation, the Center for Public Integrity and the Stimson Center recently published a report on the attitudes of Americans towards defense spending. Never mind that the most interesting information was about the growing willingness of Americans of all persuasions to cut
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Date:
7/17/2012
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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Date:
6/14/2012
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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Date:
6/6/2012
If there was any doubt that the Democratic Party views government workers as a core constituency it should be dispelled by a recent letter by 24 Democrat senators to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Even as the military is set to cut more than 100,000 uniform personnel and private sector defense
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Date:
5/7/2012
Facing severe budget cuts over the next decade, the U.S. Air Force faced some extremely difficult choices. More than the other services, the Air Force needs to modernize. The average age of its tanker fleet is 45 years, the strategic bomber force is 35 years and the tactical fighter fleet is around
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Date:
4/18/2012
On April 2, the 1st Sustainment Command, CENTCOM, Port of Ash Shuaiba, Kuwait announced with some pride that the last vehicle to leave Iraq, an MRAP, had been loaded aboard a ship bound for the United States. Built in 2008 by BAE Systems, this Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle is not
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Date:
4/6/2012
After being in denial for most of last year about the meaning of the Budget Control Act, Pentagon policymakers are beginning to realize that sequestration is probably going to happen. Under the law, that would result in the Pentagon's base budget being cut another $55 billion below the present
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Date:
3/16/2012
How much should the U.S. military cost? Obviously there are a number of factors that go into such an assessment such as wages and benefits, sophistication of equipment, activity rates, etc. But the size of the military tends to be the single most important determinant of cost. So, once you decide
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Date:
3/15/2012
Defense strategy is always a balancing act between requirements and resources. Sometimes the scales are tipped in favor of requirements, as has been the case since September 11, and other times it tips in the direction of resource constraints as in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War and, it
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Date:
3/13/2012
Yesterday, the Obama Administration submitted its Fiscal Year 2013 federal budget that proposes spending $525 billion for the Pentagon plus another $88 billion on war costs. Overall, defense spending will decline by six percent relative to last year. More significantly, the FY 2013 budget marks
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Date:
2/14/2012
This is the week the Obama Administration releases its fiscal 2013 budget request. It's real big. In fact, it took the defense department 140 pages just to summarize its portion of the request -- which it is happy to do, since Pentagon policymakers have been highlighting the shift to new spending
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Date:
2/13/2012
Defense department officials and the chiefs of the military services have been reassuring anyone who will listen that the Pentagon has its act together when it comes to implementing the new defense strategy and creating a “leaner and more flexible” force structure. There will be cuts that are painful,
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Date:
2/10/2012
Among the world's major-league military players, there isn't much doubt which team dominates. It's Team America. But that doesn't mean everyone fares equally well when the team's budget request is released each February. This year, the Obama Administration will crown the U.S. Navy as most valuable
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Date:
2/9/2012
Like my colleague Dan Goure, I believe that the military cuts proposed last week by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta are a reasonable reconciliation of competing security and budgetary objectives. I'm not sure I see the logic of killing the long-range Global Hawk unmanned aircraft and delaying submarines
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Date:
1/30/2012
At the time Leon Panetta was nominated to replace the extremely powerful and public Robert Gates as the 23rd Secretary of Defense, there were many observers who worried about the fate of the Department of Defense (DoD). Given his extensive experience on budget matters in Congress and the executive branch,
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Date:
1/26/2012
According to The New York Times, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is poised to reveal the Pentagon’s new leaner but not meaner defense strategy. As expected,
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Date:
1/3/2012
Former senator, governor, chairman of Goldman Sachs and self-proclaimed smartest man in the room, John Corzine, appeared today before a Congressional panel to answer questions about the events surrounding the bankruptcy of his brokerage firm, MF Global. To use a colloquial expression, the company
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Date:
12/8/2011
You don't need to look at big-ticket weapon systems like aircraft carriers and fighters to see what budget sequestration might mean for America's military capabilities. In fact, you don't need to look at Pentagon programs at all. Consider the Coast Guard, the modestly-funded maritime force located
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Date:
12/2/2011
The mantra of the day around Washington is that the Pentagon will have to make hard choices when it comes to allocating increasingly scarce defense dollars. In truth, the Defense Department has made a lot of hard choices over the years, some willingly and others under the pressure of changes in
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Date:
12/2/2011
The consensus around Washington is that the failure of the super committee to reach agreement on $1.2 billion in deficit reduction over ten years was a setback for just about everybody involved. Congress showed that it could not achieve a compromise. President Obama demonstrated he has no power
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Date:
11/30/2011
There is a mistaken notion floating around Washington that even if the super committee fails to arrive at a deficit reduction agreement this is no big deal because the reductions do not go into effect until January 2013. The theory goes that Congress will have plenty of time to undo the law or protect
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Date:
11/21/2011
Robert Ewers of Height Analytics put out a note on November 16 suggesting that full-scale sequestration of defense funds under the Budget Control Act is unlikely to occur given the devastating consequences. Among the consequences he cites are a ten-percent year-over-year decline in fiscal 2013
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Date:
11/17/2011
If you need evidence that the Joint Chiefs of Staff weren't exaggerating when they told Congress that budget cuts threaten military modernization, just look at what's happening inside the Air Force. The service is proposing to kill a next-generation weather satellite, which would leave U.S. warfighters
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Date:
11/15/2011
Although you would not know it from the current political debate in Washington on federal spending, the government does try to save money. One way of reducing costs is by adopting commercial practices and standards. Another way is by buying commercial products and systems.
The Department of
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Date:
10/13/2011
The tragic paradox of America's Army is that the only time it truly thrives is when it is dying. When soldiers are under fire in Korea or Indochina or Iraq, political leaders shovel huge amounts of money to the service because the consequences of under-funding warfighters are all too obvious.
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Date:
10/12/2011
Yesterday the Air Force fired the first volley in what is likely to be an extended and intense “food fight” between the military services over their respective shares of future defense budgets. Everyone understands that even under the most optimistic scenario, defense spending will decline significantly
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Date:
9/20/2011
With the usual tools for stimulating a weak economy largely exhausted, the Obama Administration may be belatedly considering how weapons spending by the Pentagon contributes to growth. It appears that weapons outlays have a sizable impact on job creation, export performance, and economic competitiveness.
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Date:
8/22/2011
The Department of Defense is deep into repetitive budget drills, trying to figure out what kind of force structure will remain if the Pentagon has to absorb $600 billion, $800 billion or even $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade. The White House and OSD are trying to be clever by requiring that
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Date:
8/16/2011
I would like to say that the turmoil in Washington is over, that the Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the administration will resolve their differences over the federal budget and deficit reduction allowing the various departments and agencies of the federal government to establish a rational
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Date:
8/11/2011
War is the real mother of invention. The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are notable for, among many things, promoting the development and deployment of a wide range of innovative military weapons systems, products and processes. Some of these are unique to the circumstances of our two current conflicts
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Date:
8/5/2011
The senior leaders of the U.S. military have finally said enough is enough. You cannot wear out the military by requiring that it fights two, even three wars over a decade, conduct countless out-of-area deployments, maintain forward presence around the world, provide humanitarian assistance in dozens
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Date:
7/27/2011
Proposals for deep cuts in military forces are swirling through Washington. Among the ideas being put forward just for the Sea Services are to reduce the number of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers from 11 to 9 and delay the start of the next Ford class aircraft carrier, cancel the next generation
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Date:
7/21/2011
U.S. defense spending has gone through a series of “boom and bust” cycles since the Korean War began in 1950. The typical way that downturns in defense spending are addressed is by reducing procurement, cutting personnel and eliminating or not modernizing infrastructure. Already the knives are out
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Date:
7/20/2011
The U.S. defense budget is in danger of being swamped in a tsunami of debt and deficit reduction plans. Proposals for massive defense cuts are proliferating. There is the Simpson-Bowles Commission, the Paul-Frank proposal and, most recently, the plan put forward by Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn that
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Date:
7/19/2011
Let’s be honest. The current U.S. defense program is underfunded, even at over $500 billion a year in the base budget and another $100 billion plus in contingency expenses. A large, active, modern military is very expensive to maintain. The U.S. military suffers from a number of particular problems
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Date:
7/14/2011
The Department of Defense is struggling to figure out how it will absorb its share of the $400 billion in budget reductions called for by President Obama. DoD has sought refuge in a comprehensive strategic review intended to weed out redundancies and irrelevant activities and find additional efficiencies.
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Date:
5/20/2011
As part of his plan to cut $4 trillion from the federal deficit, President Obama announced his intention of seeking $400 billion in reductions from the defense budget over 12 years. But rather than just blindly cutting, the President announced that the defense cuts would be based on a comprehensive
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Date:
4/25/2011
Loren Thompson is on spring break with his kids, but before he left town he wrote this analysis for forbes.com explaining why the Obama Administration’s $400 billion in proposed
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Date:
4/20/2011
Today’s earthquake in Japan and the resultant tsunami that swept across the Pacific stand as an immediate reminder of how swiftly unexpected events can change the circumstances for individuals, nations and entire regions of the globe. Although earthquakes cannot be predicted, Japan had planned for
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Date:
3/11/2011
In the world of federal contracting, success seldom goes unpunished. Take the Virginia-class attack submarine, currently the U.S. Navy's only undersea-warship construction program. Since the program began in the 1990s, prime contractors General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman have gradually cut
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Date:
3/11/2011
In his effort to squeeze savings from the military budget that can be reinvested in modernization, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has taken on such sacred cows as the low co-payments retirees make for healthcare and the bloated number of general officers. The result of this effort has been some
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Date:
3/8/2011
The United States currently generates nearly half of all global military spending. If the U.S. were producing a similar amount of global economic output, it might be feasible to sustain the Pentagon's budget at today's levels indefinitely. But it isn't. Over the last decade, U.S. economic output
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Date:
3/7/2011
Discussions of the defense department fiscal 2012 budget submission have focused on the top line and on the distribution of gain based Gates’ efficiency savings. Most commentators were disappointed by the lack of news given the Secretary’s January press conference. At $553 billion the overall budget
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Date:
2/15/2011
It is always risky to raise the subject of legislation, particularly appropriations bills, in conversation or a blog. There are few people even in Washington who understand the basics of the budget process and how an appropriations bill gets constructed and passed. What is the difference between
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Date:
2/8/2011
Two contradictory trends will dominate U.S. decisionmaking on defense spending over the next several years, perhaps longer. The first is the need to radically reduce the current $1.5 trillion budget deficit. So called deficit hawks have asserted that all parts of the budget, including defense spending,
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Date:
2/4/2011
The big story for the defense industry in the January 6 budget cuts proposed by defense secretary Robert Gates was what didn't happen: after reducing future weapons outlays by $330 billion in previous rounds of budget cutting, this time Gates cut almost nothing. The headline story was termination
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Date:
1/7/2011
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced his long-awaited defense budgets yesterday. Despite the efforts of the media to turn his decisions into a major news story there was not much noteworthy in his announcement. The actual reductions in defense spending were $78 billion over five years or
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Date:
1/7/2011
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
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, as a result, must have a role to play in every political-military
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Date:
9/3/2010
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 or three percent more than the preceding
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Date:
8/31/2010
Last Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other DoD officials held the second in a series of meetings with leading figures from defense industry. The subject was getting more from industry in an era of reduced real defense spending. Secretary Gates told the audience that he expected the
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Date:
8/3/2010
The initial public reaction of senior defense-industry officials to the Pentagon's latest cost-cutting initiative was positive, but behind the scenes executives are confused and worried. They don't doubt the sincerity or logic of what defense acquisition czar Ashton Carter is trying to do in targeting
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Date:
6/29/2010
The Department of Defense today will propose a series of cost-cutting initiatives intended to reduce the budgetary burden of contracting for military goods and services. In meetings with industry executives, acquisition workers and the media, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology
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Date:
6/28/2010
What can you say to a military service that is faced with a shrinking force structure, increased demand for its services, growing threats and declining budgets? How about get ready for a train wreck; or in the case of the U.S. Navy, a shipwreck.
In a speech on June 8 at the Naval War College,
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Date:
6/22/2010
The U.S. Department of Defense plans to spend over $200 billion in fiscal 2011 on operations and maintenance. That's more than any other country spends on its entire military establishment. Some observers think "O&M" is a good place to look for savings as Secretary Gates initiates a multi-year
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Date:
6/9/2010
Faced with essentially flat defense budgets, increasing personnel costs and the need to recapitalize an aging force structure, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has a plan to save $100 billion over five years. Two-thirds of the savings are supposed to come from reducing overhead and one-third from
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Date:
6/9/2010
Ten years ago, I was invited to participate in a RAND Corporation project on the presidential transition. Each of the major presidential candidates sent a senior national-security advisor to brief the RAND panel, laying out their contending views of what the future would require. I can't remember
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Date:
3/8/2010
On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to give testimony on the FY2011 defense budget. In response to a question from Colorado Senator Udall on the likelihood of the Department of Defense having to accept future budget reductions, the Secretary
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Date:
2/4/2010
The federal budget is trapped in a structural deficit that the White House says will average 6% of gross domestic product over the next ten years. Since federal spending only claims about 20% of GDP in a normal year, that means the Obama Administration expects to borrow over a quarter of all government
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Date:
1/25/2010
Tuesday’s level 10 earthquake on the political Richter scale may not bode well for defense, specifically future defense spending. One interpretation of Scott Brown’s surprise victory in Massachusetts was extreme unhappiness with decisions being made in Washington on a host of issues from TARP, to
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Date:
1/22/2010
Public Policy 101 says that whenever the United States faces an economic crisis there must be a guns versus butter debate. The argument always goes the same way. We are told that we can either have guns or butter, meaning national security or domestic security by way of entitlements and non-defense
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Date:
1/14/2010