Studies
Near-Term U.S. Army Modernization: Buying What Is Available and Buying Time Executive Summary Click here to download the full study as PDF. The U.S. Army is rapidly losing its competitive advantages in high-end combat. The ability to achieve tactical overmatch, that combination of superior systems, intelligence, combined arms ...
Aircraft Carriers: The Unique Value of America’s Most Famous Combat System Aircraft carriers are the preeminent expression of U.S. military power. The United States is the only nation that operates a fleet of large-deck, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. With unlimited range and the capacity to destroy hundreds of surface ta ...
Connecting Microgrids With Public-Private Partnerships To Meet Critical Needs Click here to download the full study at PDF. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Moving forward with plans to address the modernization needs of the nation’s electric grid is a vast undertaking, estimated to require some $2 trillion of investment over the next two deca ...
What Boeing Has Meant For America: A Centennial Assessment Findings In Brief Click here to download the study as PDF. An Enterprise Unlike Any Other. The Boeing Company was founded on July 15, 1916. Over the following century, Boeing became the biggest aerospace enterprise in the world, famous for its jetline ...
Strategies for Improving Charter School Facilities Funding Costs associated with accessing and maintaining viable facilities can present an expensive hurdle for public charter schools. This paper discusses five strategies in use in different jurisdictions to support charter schools by reducing the cost and challenges related to facilities.
The Jones Act And Homeland Security In The 21st Century For nearly a century, the Jones Act has protected the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base and ensured the continuation of an American merchant marine. Since September 11, it has also become an important instrument for the protection of the U.S. homeland ...
Practices of the U.S. Postal Service That Imply Anti-Competitive Behavior: Historical Parallels and Remedies Across Other Regulated Sectors As have previous government monopolies, the U.S. Postal Service has been engaging in a pattern of business practices that appear anti-competitive, leveraging postal law to enable it to gain impermissible advantages over the private sector at the expense of consumers. It is not unusual for government monopolies to utilize their monopoly advantages to compete in services already offered by the private sector. The regulator of the monopoly is normally charged by statute with preventing such abuses. Consumers of the Postal Service’s monopoly products and services have recently been required to pay increased costs, in terms of higher prices and clearly reduced quality of service. Other indicators, including cost coverage and service quality measures, also point to increased costs charged to monopoly consumers compared with consumers of competitive products.
Challenges And Requirements For Tomorrow’s Electrical Power Grid As the United States economy and society have become more reliant on the uninterrupted flow of electricity, the power grid upon which it depends for that supply has experienced deteriorating reliability. The grid loses power 285 percent more often today than in 1984. These power losses impose tens of billions of dollars of losses on American businesses each year. There is broad agreement among experts that significant infrastructure investments will be required to sufficiently repair and enhance the grid. Estimates of the investment required for adequate modernization within the next two decades often amount to $2 trillion or more. While that is a huge sum, if current annual expenditures were to be sustained annually over that same period, it would nearly match that investment level within that projected timeframe. As the grid’s modernization continues, the new design, operating model and core objectives of the U.S. power grid are steeped in uncertainty due to emergent technologies, changes to the climate and associated socially and politically-mandated requirements, and terrorism and other man-made threats. And the coming changes and massive modernization costs likely mean that users of the centralized power grid will have to pay more for the electricity they need.
The Southwest Defense Complex: The New First Line in the Nation’s Defense Executive Summary Click here to download the full report as PDF. It is a core principle of the U.S. military that you must train as you fight. One of the enduring advantages the U.S. military possesses is the quality of its personnel based largely on t ...
Souda Bay: NATO’s Military Gem in the Eastern Mediterranean Click here to download the full study as PDF. Executive Summary The Middle East is afire, Russia is on the march and France, the United Kingdom, the United States and dozens of other countries are at war with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The Ea ...