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Foreign Military Sales
Maintaining the world’s best all-volunteer military is a very expensive proposition. People costs continue to rise as do the costs for military hardware. Each generation of equipment costs significantly more than the one that preceded it. This is not because of a broken acquisition system, although
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Date:
2/28/2012
Retired Lockheed Martin Senior Vice President Robert H. Trice was so incensed by the errors he saw in recent accounts of the global arms trade that he wrote this rebuttal, describing the real situation. Trice spent much of his career at Lockheed Martin and other defense companies marketing U.S.
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Date:
1/23/2012
It seems as if the only thing a majority in the U.S. Senate can agree on is that they do not like any of the proposed budget plans. That is, until the subject of the sale of F-16s to Taiwan came up. In a rare demonstration of bipartisanship, and good sense, the co-chairs of the Senate Taiwan Caucus
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Date:
5/31/2011
A key aspect of U.S. foreign and security policy is to build the capacity of partner nations to undertake their own defense. The importance of pursuing this goal is clearly demonstrated by the air campaign in Libya. Of the 15 nations other than the United States participating in the Libyan operation,
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Date:
4/4/2011
The Obama Administration has acquired an unfortunate reputation for neglecting U.S. allies and not standing up to troublemakers. This year the administration will have a number of chances to improve its image and at the same time enhance U.S. relations with friends and allies. How, you ask? The
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Date:
2/18/2011
As defense budgets decline, it appears increasingly likely that the U.S. military will be required to cut force structure and capabilities. As a result the U.S. will need to emphasize all the instruments of security policy in order to minimize the risk of regional instability and even direct attacks
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Date:
8/9/2010
As U.S. defense spending begins to decline the Obama Administration needs to give greater attention to foreign military sales of U.S. weapons systems. Foreign military sales help the U.S. balance of payments and retains high paying, mostly union jobs. In addition, such sales reduce the price for
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Date:
6/14/2010