"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.
While costs are projected to grow over the next decade due to a "bow wave" of nuclear modernization programs, Harrison concludes that the search for savings in nuclear forces continues to be a "hunt for small potatoes."
For over two decades, the U.S. military has enjoyed a near-monopoly in precision-guided munitions and their associated battle networks. Recently, however, the proliferation of these capabilities to other militaries and non-state entities is gathering momentum. How will this emerging precision-strike regime impact the character of maritime warfare? In this backgrounder, Dr. Andrew Krepinevich summarizes and presents findings regarding the likely character of future maritime warfare and options for preserving U.S. freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.
Secretary Hagel recently made waves in Army circles by suggesting that the Army leverage its missile forces to resume the old mission of coastal defense. In this brief, CSBA Research Fellow Eric Lindsey argues that Army missiles forces can do far more than defend coastlines.
With the United States now engaged in military operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), there are many questions regarding the cost, duration, and scope of these operations. This CSBA Backgrounder provides a range of estimates for the cost of military operations against ISIL to date and how much these operations may cost over the coming months.
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.
Since World War II, the Department of Defense (DoD) has been able to count on America's defense industrial base (DIB) always being ready to design and produce the world-class weaponry on which the U.S. military has long relied. But the U.S. DIB is considerably smaller today than it was following the Cold War’s end. Now the Pentagon confronts a period of shrinking defense budgets at the same time the international security environment is posing new military challenges, such as the emergence of anti-access/area-denial capabilities, the growing threat to space-based systems, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Defense Department has never had a coherent, long-term strategy for sustaining the defense industrial base's core competencies. Absent a strategy that proceeds from deciding first what to keep rather than what to cut, the possibility is growing that a day will come when the country's industrial base will no longer possess all the critical design and manufacturing capabilities that the U.S. military needs.
By the time of the 1991 Gulf War, newer version of the AIM-7 achieved a 51 percent hit rate while the AIM-9 achieved a 67 percent hit rate—according to data compiled by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis.
The president’s penchant “to delegate blame when things go wrong” is the negative flip side of the Pentagon’s freedom, said Hal Brands, a defense official in the Obama administration and now a senior analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments research fellow Katherine Blakeley noted that Congress has little time left to iron out a federal spending plan, with nominations and an ambitious GOP agenda that includes tax reform and a health care overhaul eating up the legislative calendar. “They’re trying to move with alacrity, but they’re facing down the clock,” she said. The GOP strategy to pass spending measures is a big, open question, Blakeley said. For defense, it’s unclear whether Congress will hew to the Mattis budget request’s emphasis on research and development as well as and operations and maintenance — or upend it by seeking more procurement funding. “Will they shift more money into O&M or will they try to grow the force — which Mattis says the Pentagon is not ready to do, and that they want to prepare to grow in fiscal '19,” Blakeley said. “How fast can the Army responsibly grow?”
"Once the Ford comes online you can have the East Coast carriers essentially cover the Middle East with short gaps and have the West Coast carriers fill the gaps in the Pacific while [the carrier] Reagan is in its spring maintenance availability," Bryan Clark, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments told Defense News.
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments research fellow Katherine Blakeley noted that Congress has little time left to iron out a federal spending plan, with nominations and an ambitious GOP agenda that includes tax reform and a health care overhaul eating up the legislative calendar.
Retired Navy Capt. Jan van Tol, who commanded the destroyer O’Brien and the amphibious assault ship Essex in the same Japanese waters, said he was “puzzled” by the captain’s absence…“That would normally get a CO to the bridge,” he said…Still, destroyers like the Fitzgerald are “the sports cars of the sea,” van Tol said. “They should be able to get out of the way of anything.”