Directed-energy proponent Mark Gunzinger, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says the government needs to do a better job transitioning successful experiments into operational weapons systems. 

That’s the bottom line of a study I produced along with several colleagues as part of “Developing Alternative Defense Strategies 2016,” an exercise organized by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, where groups from five think tanks used CSBA’s “Strategic Choices” software to reimagine the U.S. military budget.

It’s a wasted opportunity to think of unmanned systems as simply substituting for manned ones, agreed Mark Gunzinger, a retired Air Force colonel now with the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. “Yes, the size of many of the DoD’s forces, such as its combat air forces, have been cut to unacceptable levels,” Gunzinger told me. “(But) it’s not about ‘getting the numbers up,'” he argued. It’s about the synergy between manned and unmanned systems, each doing things the other can’t.

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in effect made this Fashion Week in the military think-tank world by releasing on Monday the recommendations of five organizations that were asked to propose alternative defense postures for the U.S. 

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments recently hosted a Strategic Choices Exercise, where defense analysts from a number of think tanks took turns designing their optimum future force.

The analysts and teams composed of colleagues each built 10-year budgets using a "strategic choices" tool developed by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.