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Pentagon Budget
The Pentagon today unveiled a $527 billion spending request for fiscal 2014 which sticks with the military priorities that President Obama enunciated last year. Surprisingly, it also sticks with the spending levels despite a deficit law that would require military expenditures to be about $50 billion
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Date:
4/10/2013
Among the many crackpot theories that have taken root in popular culture is the belief that defense contractor Lockheed Martin has undue influence over the deliberations of the federal government. I can tell you from watching the Bethesda-based behemoth up close for 20 years that company executives
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Date:
3/19/2012
Over 2,000 years ago, Chinese strategist Sun Tzu cited the five fundamental factors in warfare on the first page of his seminal treatise, The Art of War. They were (1) morale, (2) weather, (3) terrain, (4) command, and (5) doctrine. If you've ever tried to fly a plane in fog or drive a
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Date:
11/3/2011
The Army has just published its long-anticipated Request for Proposal (RFP) for the next phase of its Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) program. The JLTV was intended initially to replace the venerable Humvee while improving on that system’s survivability and performance. At the same time, the
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Date:
10/4/2011
The conventional wisdom in Washington is that defense budgets will have to be slashed. For many, including the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reduced spending is viewed as an important part of the effort to restore U.S. economic strength. To some, particularly in Congress, defense
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Date:
9/28/2011
The National Taxpayer Union (NTU) and the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) are two generally well-regarded advocacy organizations with respectable analytic capabilities. But the NTU's and PIRG’s proposals to reduce defense spending neither further the national discussion on how much to reduce
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Date:
9/16/2011
This week the defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee cut $26 billion from the Obama Administration's fiscal 2012 budget request. The move is intended to align future Pentagon spending with the requirements of the recently enacted Budget Control Act. However, the cuts the subcommittee
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Date:
9/16/2011
Deep reductions in defense spending, however ill-advised, seem all but inevitable given America’s fiscal condition. In order to realize up to $100 billion in annual savings in the worst-case scenario, the Department of Defense will be required to go where the money is, namely people and operations
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Date:
8/29/2011
Way back in the Stone Age -- 1994 -- the well-respected accounting firm Coopers and Lybrand did a study of the impact of government regulations on defense contracts. They found that DoD paid on average a regulatory cost premium of 18 percent of contract value. The regulatory “tax” for advanced technology
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Date:
8/19/2011
White House budget director Jacob Lew released fiscal 2013 guidance to government departments and agencies on August 17 that has reinforced the pessimism of many in the defense sector. The guidance directed federal managers to submit budgets for 2013 that were five percent and ten percent below
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Date:
8/19/2011
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
One of the silliest statements coming out of the various deficit reduction discussions is that “everything is on the table.” This is usually taken to mean political sacred cows such as Social Security, Medicare, defense and tax increases. But there are other items, not easily quantifiable, that
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Date:
8/15/2011
The U.S. economy is currently enduring its slowest recovery since the Great Depression. One reason for the modest rate of recovery is that consumers are deleveraging from the excessively optimistic spending patterns of the past decade. They hardly have a choice, since a weak housing market has
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Date:
8/12/2011
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
There's a high likelihood that when Congress grasps the impact of the deficit agreement it embraced last week, legislators will move to modify the law. With the economy faltering and interest rates at near-record lows, it's a lot easier to borrow more money right now than live with the fallout
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Date:
8/10/2011
Analysts are warning that the bipartisan deficit reduction deal could gut defense and undermine U.S. national security. No one disagrees over the math. Defense has already been tagged with over $800 billion in spending cuts since the Obama Administration took office. These include almost $400 billion
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Date:
8/9/2011
Last week's deficit agreement clearly didn't do much to restore market confidence, but it did send a clear signal about the likely direction of future defense budgets -- down. The agreement put in place a two-step process that in the first installment would cut military outlays by about $350 billion
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Date:
8/9/2011