If you were hoping, after a bitterly contentious presidential campaign, that at least we’d have consensus on national defense spending — tough luck. Instead, teams from five leading thinktanks, all using the same budget simulator, came up with a more than $2 trillion spread of options.

Five of the nation’s top national security think tanks presented widely varying ideas Oct. 18 on the strategy, the military force structure and funding needed to meet the global security environment 10 years in the future.

Less than three decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States is once again confronted with great power competition in the Pacific, Europe, and beyond

Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the alternative defense strategy recommendations from Washington’s top think tanks — CSIS, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Center for a New American Security, the American Enterprise Institute and the CATO Institute — during an interview on Oct. 18 with Defense & Aerospace Report Editor Vago Muradian.

The U.S. military is at an inflection point. Unable to remove itself completely from two protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has been forced to respond to a resurgent Russia and a rising China, while remaining ready to combat myriad terrorist threats around the world.

So far, so good. The U.S. military has a long history of absorbing new technology, but struggles to adapt its organizational constructs for the best application of that technology. One of the areas Deputy Secretary Work discussed at the Air Force Association was the military’s lack of focus on electromagnetic warfare.