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How Osama bin Laden’s Death Reverberates Through the Defense Sector
The question on the minds of those gathered in Tampa was whether the success of the bin Laden raid means more money for special ops. Todd Harrison, of the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says that while funding for Special Operations Command, which includes Navy SEALs, has increased in recent years, much of the money has gone to "expendables," meaning things such as bullet and bombs. "I think the success of the Bin Laden raid will solidify a lot of support for the increase in funding for special operations equipment and training," he says.
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Analyst: Military bands to cost Pentagon $50B over next 50 years
While trimming the military’s music tab might be an attractive target for Pentagon bean counters, Harrison said there is no shortage of targets within a nearly $700 billion yearly budget, a figure that includes war spending.
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Pentagon’s Phantom Savings
Pentagon leaders love to tout the $330 billion they saved by cutting or killing weapons programs over the past two years, but that's not the whole story. “Even if somehow it does add up to $330 billion in savings that were cut from these programs … it’s not net savings because there’s going to be replacements for a lot these things anyway,” said Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank. “These were hypothetical savings anyway, because there weren’t hard programs.”
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Pakistan’s Nuclear Surge
Even in the best of times, Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program warrants alarm. But these are perilous days. At a moment of unprecedented misgiving between Washington and Islamabad, new evidence suggests that Pakistan’s nuclear program is barreling ahead at a furious clip/.../ Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense in the George W. Bush administration, puts it bluntly: “You’re talking about Pakistan even potentially passing France at some point. That’s extraordinary.”
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US Expert Warns of PRC Economic Trap
A US military expert said China may be trying to take over Taiwan by using a strategy of “economic entanglement.”
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Analysts Chew Over USAF’S OBOGS Groundings
An abundance of caution likely motivated the U.S. Air Force to launch investigations into the oxygen-generation systems found on board a number of fighter and trainer aircraft, analysts said. “When you get to life-support systems, that is something the Air Force and any service tends to take a very hard line with,” said Mark Gunzinger, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington and a former Air Force pilot.“They are very, very cautious and risk-averse because we’re not just dealing with the loss of a major weapon system, but the loss of a human life,” he said/…/“They want to be doubly sure that the problems that they are experiencing with the F-22 OBOGS is not something that could be common to other systems and other aircraft,” Gunzinger said. “It’s something that’s very, very prudent, and a very smart thing to do.”If the Air Force had specific information on a particular problem, the aircraft in question would be grounded, Gunzinger said.