News
Russia’s arms sales weaken China in the Indo-Pacific area
As Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments senior fellow Toshi Yoshihara put it, speaking to Asia Times: “Sino-Russian military drills are mostly about political signaling, even though Chinese naval reach will increase as Beijing maintains a permanent presence in the Indian Ocean.”
A Defense Buildup in the Near Term?
Procedural and political hurdles make it difficult to see how a substantial defense buildup on the order of the $54 billion proposed by the Trump administration, the $621.5 billion agreed to by the House Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee Defense Subcommittee, or the $640 billion proposed by the Senate Armed Services Committee can be realized.
Trump defense hike unlikely to happen anytime soon: Analyst
"The wide gulfs between the political parties and between the defense hawks and the fiscal hawks will not be closed soon," wrote Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
CSBA: Busting defense budget caps could require ‘eye-popping’ OCO increase
Substantially increasing defense spending for fiscal 2018 could require a "eye-popping increase" in funding for Overseas Contingency Operations, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments reported today in a new analysis.
LCS Lives: They Still Count in Age of Frigates
After studying the Navy’s Request for Information (RFI) on industry’s frigate designs, “I wouldn’t say the RFI repudiates the LCS approach, because the idea of having a smaller, less-expensive, shallow-draft, fast ship makes sense,” said retired commander Bryan Clark, now with the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments.
US Congress to Undermine US-Russia INF Treaty and Entire Existing Nuclear Arms Control Architecture
Russia’s alleged violations serve as a pretext for deploying shorter and intermediate range weapons to strike other countries, like North Korea.