Defense
Defense Industry’s Real Problem: Capricious Pentagon
The 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 the merger of top. . .
Submarines and Intelligence: The Missing Link
The 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 . . .
The “Unplugged” Battlefield: Marine Corps Modernizes Its Tactical Communications
A running joke in the Marine Corps is that the two most common after-action comments following a field exercise are, "We learned a lot," and, "Comm [communications] was fouled up again." With luck, the latter statement . . .
Don’t Turn A Blind Eye To The Need For Subs
When Blind Man's Bluff, the story of the Navy's Cold War submarine fleet, was published in 1999, the Navy distanced itself from the book, citing security concerns and a policy to not discuss submarine . . .
Plan for Defense Spending
By 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 . . .
50 Subs Not Enough For Navy Security Mission
It has been argued that some of the major weapon systems developed during the Cold War have yet to demonstrate they remain relevant and are successfully adapting to the new threats to global security. To . . .
New Century, Old Question: Can Europe Keep Up?
In 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 . . .
Naval Strike: It’s more than planes and ships, but that’s a good place to start
The recent air war in the Balkans amplified two essential truths about today's Navy. The first is that America's naval forces, including the Marine Corps, will be the teeth in U.S. foreign policy during the . . .
Army XXI Aviation: Time for V-22
When 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 . . .
Give Airborne Laser Fair Shot At Missile Defense
Prussian 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. . .