Author Archives: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D
Joint Strike Fighter: An “Opportunity” to be Avoided Issue BriefIf you want to understand why defense stocks often trade at a discount to other equities, take a look at the Joint Strike Fighter. The $220 billion program is supposed to replace Air Force F-16’s, Navy F/A-18’s and [Read More...]
Submarines and Intelligence (3): Bock Buy Saves Money Issue BriefThe Lexington Institute has published several essays on the seldom-discussed subject of submarines and intelligence. The Navy’s nuclear-powered attack subs have a rapidly growing role in the collection of both tactical and strategic intelligence. Because this growth was [Read More...]
Submarines and Intelligence (2): Time to Rebuild Issue BriefOver the past ten years, the strategic intelligence taskings for the Navy’s nuclear-powered attack submarines have doubled. During the same period, the number of attack subs in the active fleet declined nearly 40% – from 91 in 1990 [Read More...]
Defense Industry’s Real Problem: Capricious Pentagon Article Published in the Aviation Week and Space TechnologyThe Pentagon is sponsoring a study by the Defense Science Board (DSB) to figure out what has gone wrong with the defense industry. In the two years since senior policymakers blocked [Read More...]
Submarines and Intelligence: The Missing Link Issue BriefThe Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has completed a comprehensive study of attack-submarine requirements in the years 2015 and 2025. The study is a follow-up to the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, which recommended the Navy reduce [Read More...]
Plan for Defense Spending Article Published in The Washington PostBy Loren Thompson, Ph.D. David Ignatius really hit the nail on the head in his February 13 analysis of the defense industry’s decline. The industry’s problems can be succinctly summarized as depressed demand, uneven [Read More...]
New Century, Old Question: Can Europe Keep Up? Article Published in the Sea Power MagazineIn 1968, French journalist J.J. Servan-Schreiber published a hugely influential book called The American Challenge that argued Europe was falling behind. It wasn’t the Soviet Union that worried him so much as the [Read More...]
Army XXI Aviation: Time for V-22 Article Published in the Army MagazineWhen the Army and the Air Force became separate services after World War Two, one of the most contentious issues was defining a clear postwar identity for Army aviation. Although the institutional separation was [Read More...]
Give Airborne Laser Fair Shot At Missile Defense Article Published in the Defense NewsPrussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said war is a continuation of politics by other means. Sometimes politics seems like a continuation of war. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the long-running debate [Read More...]
Military Supremacy and How We Keep It Article Published in the Policy ReviewIn February of 1776, only months before the American Declaration of Independence was proclaimed, British historian Edward Gibbon published the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It was almost [Read More...]