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Policy Blog
- The Trump Administration Must Revitalize NATO’s Nuclear Deterrent (From RealClearDefense)
Russia is a military power primarily because of its large arsenal of nuclear weapons. So central are these weapons to Moscow’s foreign and defense policies that it was even willing to deploy a new long-range, land-based cruise missile in violation of the long-standing Intermediate-Range Nuclear Weapons Treaty to bolster Russian theater nuclear force capabilities. NATO and the U.S. must accept [ Read More…]
- Stephen Blank, Ph.D.
- Moscow’s Competitive Strategy
Executive Summary Click here to read the full report as a .pdf Since at least 2005, Russia’s leadership has believed itself to be at war with the West. This war is not primarily one of kinetic combat though recent moves suggest that Moscow believes such a war is increasingly conceivable. Rather it should be described as a new form of [ Read More…]
- Daniel Gouré, Ph.D.
- The F-35 Is Too Good To Fail (From RealClearDefense)
The West is in danger of losing the fight to operate effectively in contested airspace. Russia and China have developed and continue to improve their Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS) that can engage hostile air threats at all altitudes and ranges out to 400 kilometers. There is only one near-term answer to the growing IADS threat. It is the F-35 [ Read More…]
- Congress Must Reform Military Sustainment As It Did Acquisition (From RealClearDefense)
The U.S. military’s Achilles heel in future conflicts will not be inferior technology. Rather, it will be an antiquated, industrial-age sustainment model. The way the Pentagon is organized to conduct maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) work gives rise to endless parts shortages, large numbers of so-called “hanger queens” and fleets of aircraft, ships and vehicles with availability rates well below the minimum levels needed to meet global mission requirements. Congress needs to pay as much attention to reforming the military [ Read More…]
- How The Air Force Could Become The Biggest Threat To The F-35 Fighter’s Success (From Forbes)
The tri-service F-35 fighter is turning into a great success, not just for America’s military but for nearly a dozen allies. What could go wrong? The biggest danger is that the U.S. Air Force will be distracted just as two decades worth of investment starts generating operational benefits. The Air Force is 72% of the planned domestic buy in the program of record, so if the Air Force gets too absorbed in the world of tomorrow, it may miss out [ Read More…]
- How Electric Vehicles Reduce the Cost of Doing Business (From InsideSources)
According to the Department of Energy, charging an electric car costs about half as much as fueling a gasoline-powered car. The U.S. average per gallon of gasoline is $2.50 while it would cost $1.10 per eGallon to charge an electric car. As a result, electric cars, buses and trucks save money on fuel and maintenance. I have written a commentary for InsideSources about this topic here.
- Putting Interceptors On Trucks Is The Fastest Way Trump Can Bolster Missile Defense Of America (From Forbes)
The Trump administration wants to bolster defenses of the U.S. homeland against ballistic missile attack. The only program the Pentagon has capable of intercepting intercontinental ballistic missile warheads headed for America is the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD. GMD has been successful in five of its last six tests, but it has two problems: it lacks enough interceptors to cope with a large-scale attack, and the interceptors it has are concentrated at two fixed cites. Prime contractor Boeing has [ Read More…]
- Congress Must Not Retreat On Acquisition Reform Over JEDI Cloud Contract
For the past five or six years, Congress has led the fight to reform the Pentagon’s slow, risk averse and costly acquisition system. Led by visionaries such as Senator John McCain and Representative Mac Thornberry, both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees (SASC and HASC) have restructured the acquisition bureaucracy, lightened the regulatory and contracting burdens on programs, expanded access to alternative contracting mechanisms, encouraged experimentation and prototyping and supported greater reliance by the Department of Defense (DoD) on [ Read More…]
- Raytheon’s Pathfinder Program For Next-Gen GPS Has Become A Breakthrough Success (From Forbes)
The Global Positioning System is one of the signature technological successes of this generation. Google Maps, Uber and your smart phone couldn’t work without it. But GPS satellites don’t operate on autopilot. They must be monitored and managed continuously by Air Force personnel on the ground. In 2010, the Air Force awarded Raytheon the contract to develop the ground control segment for GPS III, a new generation of navigation satellites that would have greater accuracy, availability and resilience. The OCX [ Read More…]
- The Nuclear Reactor Renaissance: Space Exploration and National Security (From RealClearEnergy)
The nuclear power sector is seeing a resurgence in innovation, supported by new policies and emerging technologies. BWXT is at the forefront of this nuclear renaissance and is paving a path forward in two of the U.S. government’s top priorities: space exploration and national security. BWXT is currently building a compact nuclear reactor for space shuttles to put an astronaut on Mars and possibly even explore Jupiter’s moons by 2024. Revolutions in nuclear reactors come at the optimal time as the [ Read More…]
- The U.S. Military Can’t Wait For The Politics Of Cloud Contracting To Be Resolved (From RealClearDefense)
Cloud computing offers ways of making defense network operations faster, more agile, more responsive to emerging challenges and more effective. Until recently, the Department of Defense was moving forward with plans to migrate much of the military’s IT infrastructure to the cloud. Unfortunately, Washington politics has created roadblocks to the Pentagon’s efforts to leverage the richness of cloud computing for the military. Critics within the IT industry and on Capitol Hill generated a miasma of misinformation targeting one pending cloud [ Read More…]
- A Quick Fix For U.S. Navy Surveillance Gaps In Asia (From Forbes)
The U.S. Navy has difficulty identifying remote threats in the Indo-Pacific region, whether they be distant warships or military units operating under jungle canopies. It appears the Air Force has a solution: a multi-spectral infrared sensor designated MS-177A that flies on both the U-2 spy plane and the Global Hawk drone. Adapting the Air Force sensor for use on Navy patrol planes and drones could eliminate capability gaps identified by both the Fifth Fleet and the Seventh Fleet. But first [ Read More…]
- Lexington Summer Intern: Marley Smith-Peters
Hello, My name is Marley Smith-Peters and I am entering into my senior year of college at California State University, Chico. I have a major in Political Science with a focus in Legal Studies, as well as a minor in International Relations. In my spare time, I love to keep myself busy. I am an avid reader and I enjoy keeping up with the news, especially global affairs and events on an international scale. I am an animal lover and [ Read More…]