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7 Habits of Highly Effective Austerity Planners
/.../The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a defense think tank, recently submitted its own advice to struggling policymakers, "Strategy in Austerity," which examines two case studies of leading global powers coping with relative decline while facing a rapidly rising competitor. At the turn of the twentieth century, the British Empire was passing its peak just as Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany was rapidly ascending and asserting its strength. And in the 1970s, the United States had to deal with its failure in Southeast Asia and political and economic turmoil at home just as Soviet military power was swelling. The authors extract seven strategies policymakers in these two cases used to cope with the geostrategic challenges they faced.
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CSBA Strategists Explain How a Weapon Can Help You Win Without Ever Being Used
In a new study of strategy in an age of austerity, three CSBA authors, led by Andrew Krepinevich, state that the B-1 bomber imposed disproportionate costs on the Soviet military, forcing it to invest in air defenses "at the expense of offensive capabilities, thereby pushing the superpower competition in a highly favorable direction." Very Sun Tzu-ish!
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Serco to Help Close Bases in Afghanistan
After years of building up the military's presence in Afghanistan, some contractors are now helping the military move out.
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Pentagon Tests New Way Of Estimating Program Costs
The Pentagon is putting its new weapons cost-cutting strategy to its first big test as it negotiates with Lockheed Martin over the price of the next batch of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (JSF).
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Obama Should Copy Nixon: Avoid Foreign Conflicts, Use Allies, Invest in R&D
Nixon, Ford, and Carter aren't anyone's three favorite presidents. But defense policymakers today could learn something from how they handled the hard times of the 1970s: They shifted costly security burdens to foreign partners while pulling US forces out, and they cut defense budgets generally while protecting long-term investments in "seed corn" technologies that would pay off later, like stealth then or robotics now.
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Budget Analysts: ‘Efficiencies’ Won’t Cut it, Could Backfire on Pentagon
The Defense Department in its last two budget requests identified $238 billion in “efficiencies” that could help it spend less through 2017, but it is a mistake to call them savings, analysts from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said.