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Robert Gates
All the pundits are certain that the dominant issue in the upcoming 2012 election will be the state of the economy. No doubt this will be a key determinant of winners and losers. But a sleeper issue that may come to the fore is the role of the United States in the world and our willingness to maintain
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Date:
5/25/2011
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has shown himself to be the most thoughtful leader of the Department of Defense in at least a generation. He challenged each of the military services to rethink the value of their most sacred totems -- aircraft carriers, stealth fighters, main battle tanks and
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Date:
5/23/2011
Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter warned an audience at the Heritage Foundation last week that more cancellations of big weapons programs are likely to occur in the years ahead. The Obama Administration has already killed over $330 billion in planned weapons expenditures, from the Air Force's
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Date:
4/26/2011
As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates prepares to depart the government, his public pronouncements on national security seem increasingly philosophical. However, even the random musings of a U.S. defense secretary have practical implications for overseas friends and enemies, so he might want to
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Date:
3/9/2011
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has proposed canceling production of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, an amphibious system the Marine Corps has been developing to move troops from ship to shore in forcible entry operations. The main complaint Gates has with the program is that it costs too
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Date:
1/25/2011
If you're wondering why the Air Force was a big winner in recent budget shifts proposed by defense secretary Robert Gates, it might have something to do with the Pentagon's growing concern about Chinese military breakthroughs. Over the last few years, Beijing has tested its first anti-satellite
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Date:
1/24/2011
Many recent commentaries on Bob Woodward’s new book about the strategic review the Obama Administration undertook before deciding on its current strategy for Afghanistan have remarked about the resistance from his military advisors to his efforts to find alternatives to an open-ended commitment
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Date:
10/8/2010
In seeking to change the way the Department of Defense works, Secretary Robert Gates has had to make a lot of promises to a lot of people. To the President he promised to provide the Administration the credibility on national security affairs that it appeared to lack. In addition he promised to
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Date:
8/30/2010
The only absolute rule we observe at the Lexington Institute is not to observe the rules we make. Hence, despite the earlier posting that we were taking a break from blogging for the week, events dictate a change in plans. So consider this a non-blog blog.
The event that triggered my decision
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Date:
8/16/2010
This week Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced a series of decisions intended to begin the process of reining in the explosion of overhead costs in the Department of Defense. Among other decisions, Gates said that he was taking the unprecedented step of actually eliminating one of ten unified
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Date:
8/11/2010
Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates held a news conference to lay out his much anticipated plans to wring costs out of the Defense Department’s overhead activities as part of an effort to find $100 billion of savings to be applied to investments in future capabilities. He is freezing senior
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Date:
8/10/2010
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
Defense secretary Robert Gates issued a friendly but firm warning to the leaders of the defense industry in a private meeting last week: either get with the program on becoming more efficient, or live with the possibility of more draconian measures coming from outside the Pentagon. The Thursday
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Date:
8/2/2010
The two chief beneficiaries of the collapse of the Bush presidency were Barack Obama and Robert Gates. Both have emerged as the Big Time Operators of our day, with Obama successfully engineering a broad social, tax and fiscal revolution, while Gates engineered the impossible comeback in Iraq, and
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Date:
6/28/2010
Pentagon insiders say that defense secretary Robert Gates has seriously considered departing his present position on two previous occasions, and now is contemplating closing out his public career shortly after this year's midterm elections. God knows Gates and his staff deserve a rest, and there
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Date:
5/26/2010
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates set off a whirlwind of discussion and blogging with his May 3 speech to the Navy League. In his speech, the Secretary appeared to fire a broadside at the Navy and Marine Corps. He criticized the Marine Corps vision of amphibious warfare as well as its investments
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Date:
5/24/2010
There are all kinds of stories told about the Pentagon. But until now it has never been said that the building was haunted. It has been three and a half years since Robert Gates became Secretary of Defense. Last week, something amazing happened. He became his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. This is
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Date:
5/11/2010
Robert Gates has now been serving as Secretary of Defense for well over three years, and to say the job has been stressful is something of an understatement. Gates and his staff need a rest. Having accomplished the most important goal of his tenure -- averting U.S. defeat in Iraq -- Secretary Gates
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Date:
5/7/2010
This past Monday Secretary of Defense Robert Gates took on the U.S. Navy. In a speech to the Navy League he basically said that virtually the entire structure of today’s Navy was irrelevant to the threats of the future and too expensive to continue to build. Secretary Gates repeated his mantra that
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Date:
5/5/2010
If you want to understand why President Obama's job-approval level has fallen to 38% among independents in Ohio -- the most important "swing state" in the electoral system -- then take a look at what our Republican-holdover defense secretary is saying about weapons systems. Having already wiped
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Date:
2/24/2010



