"Nobody does defense policy better than CSBA. Their work on strategic and budgetary topics manages to combine first-rate quality and in-depth research with timeliness and accessibility—which is why so many professionals consider their products indispensable." – Gideon Rose, Editor, Foreign Affairs.
The U.S. Department of Defense is one of the largest organizations in the world, managing global security responsibilities with numerous international allies and partners. What does it take to fund DoD? Where does that money go? How is DoD coping in the current fiscal environment? What gaps exist between the strategy outlined in the Quadrennial Defense Review and the capabilities funded by the latest budget request?
“DoD’s current method for resourcing readiness starts with the wrong metrics, lacks experimental data to isolate causal effects, and does not have a continuous feedback loop to update and refine readiness theories and models. The military could be significantly overfunding or underfunding readiness without knowing it.” - Todd Harrison, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Fall 2014 issue
This backgrounder discusses the balance the FY15 defense budget attempts to find among compensation, force structure, modernization, and readiness, and compare the choices made in this budget to the Joint Think Tank exercise CSBA hosted with three other think tanks in early February 2014.
As the government reopened after the October 2013 shutdown, and defense got a three month reprieve before sequestration would go into effect for 2014, Todd Harrison offered his forecast at what's next for the defense budget.
As the Pentagon nears completion of its ongoing Strategic Choices and Management Review, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments conducted an external Strategic Choices Exercise with teams of experts from three other prominent think-tanks—CSIS, AEI and CNAS–to inform public debate.
As attention now turns to the FY 2014 budget and the Administration’s much-delayed budget request, the fundamental issues that led to uncertainty and delays in the FY 2013 budget remain unresolved.
When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives in Ankara on Thursday, he will find Turkey unrecognizable as the ostensibly Muslim democracy and close ally that U.S. officials once held up as a model for the Islamic world. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is poised to complete his long transformation of Turkey from a raucous -- if imperfect democracy -- to an autocracy, one ruled by caprice and fear.
President Trump’s latest quick-fix approach to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program creates an untenable policy dilemma. Because the deal sacrificed significant U.S. leverage upfront, right now there is currently little Congress can accomplish singlehandedly in trying to strengthen it, and much the administration would place at risk in abruptly leaving it.
“If you’re a combat veteran, your chances of getting promoted are greater, (but that) means that you have deep searing personal experiences with a certain type of warfare,” said Thomas Mahnken, head of the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. “That didn’t serve the British and French militaries well” at the start of World War II, he said, when they were so intent on not repeating the horrors of trench warfare that they were blindsided by the new and much more mobile threat of blitzkrieg.
No one can say we didn’t see it coming. Since the end of the Cold War, and even before, it has been obvious that a rapidly rising China could eventually menace America’s position and influence in East Asia—and, perhaps, globally as well.
The U.S. Air Force plans to phase out its B-1B and B-2 bomber fleets as the new B-21 bomber, currently being built in Palmdale by Northrop Grumman Corp., becomes operational in the mid-2020s. Mark Gunzinger, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the move to phase out the B-1Bs and B-2s is likely budget-driven. The Air Force needs to modernize and reinvest in a number of its key assets, including its fighter jets, bomber forces and unmanned systems, and that is a "daunting challenge."
There’s a real danger of a clash between U.S. and Turkish forces. The administration should make clear that it won’t tolerate any more bad behavior—now.