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President Trump, Republicans Still Face Defense Spending Showdown
The president's fiscal 2018 budget request is $52 billion above the budget-control cap. The request is also three times more than the average amount by which Congress has been able to raise caps in the past. The unreconciled House and Senate budgets are about $90 billion above defense caps, according to Katherine Blakely, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
U.S. Navy Ships in Fatal Collisions Not Properly Certified
But the certification reports suggest that the U.S. Navy may have knowingly sent ships to sea that weren’t fully certified for the missions they were conducting, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
“This appears to be endemic of a systemic problem,” Mr. Clark said. The Seventh Fleet destroyers and cruisers “may not have had sufficient practice to do the difficult transits they were doing,” given the crowded waters they operate in.
US Navy wants bigger and more capable unmanned drone ships for future navy
The Navy could potentially get by with fewer ships if some of the larger, more capable unmanned vehicles could someday reliably do some of the easier missions ships do, but it’s not a one-for-one replacement, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Strains on crews, vessels set the stage for Navy crashes
In the past two decades, the number of Navy ships has decreased about 20 percent, though the time they are deployed has remained the same, according to a 2015 report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington research group funded by the Defense Department. The increased burden has fallen disproportionately on the 7th Fleet.
EMP: North Korea’s Ultimate Weapon Against America?
“It is unclear whether a high atmospheric nuclear explosion would cause a significant EMP effect at lower altitudes and whether North Korea could execute such an attack without also affecting their own capabilities.”
Begging for War: The Latest in the North Korea Crisis
Mattis and the Pentagon may look to request supplemental funding for Afghanistan as part of any CR legislation considered by Congress this month, said Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "If I saw that I could get this [Afghanistan] element funded now, I would want to seize that opportunity," she said.