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To avoid those mistakes, the Trump team at the Pentagon must focus on bringing in “capable manpower,” not just swelling the ranks of the armed forces with fresh recruits, said David Johnson, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “The issue will be how fast the [military] expansion will be” under Mr. Trump and Mr. Mattis, Mr. Johnson said. “The biggest challenge is we are not just looking for efficiency in the military, we are also looking for effectiveness in the military and the two are not necessary mutually exclusive.” One option to ensure that balance is struck is to slow down the schedule for retirements of more experienced service members, Mr. Johnson said, noting that retaining those officers and senior enlisted members would ease the pressure on fresh recruits.

The Navy should try and maintain OFRP to get carriers to a consistent maintenance schedule, while also mitigating carrier gaps by exploring other options, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent, nonprofit institute focused on national security strategy. “As we saw with Bush, the Navy’s carriers are suffering from the effects of repeated, prolonged deployments without adequate maintenance,” Clark said. He said the Navy could use Joint Strike Fighters on large-deck amphibious assault ships, allowing about 20 strike fighters to support operations against the Islamic State during gaps in carrier presence. OFRP can still work, even with longer maintenance periods, but that means ships will have less time in the sustainment phase after a deployment, Clark said.

The Obama administration is leaving incoming President Donald Trump with no formal national security strategy, according to research by a non-partisan think tank that puts forth a defense strategy for the U.S. military in Europe and Asia. The report, released by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments one day before Trump’s inauguration, assesses that China is the greatest long-term threat to U.S. interests, with Russia and Iran as secondary challenges. It recommended the incoming administration bolster American forces in the Western Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East.

Wealth, population and thin-skinned nationalism make China the number one threat to the US-led world order, not Russia or Islamic terrorism, writes leading military strategist Andrew Krepinevich. That means the US must build up forward-deployed forces in the Western Pacific, he writes, if necessary at the expense of defending Europe. Russia’s oil-dependent economy and withering demographics relegate it to the second-place threat in the near term, he argues, and in the long term — say, by the 2030s — Russia may become less dangerous than Iran, which Krepinevich’s forthcoming study from the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments ranks currently at No. 3.

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments says the technology is 'one of the most critical operational domains in modern warfare.' However, it concluded 'unfortunately, 'failed to keep pace' is an appropriate description of the Department of Defense's (DoD) investments in EMS warfare capabilities over the last generation.' The report, 'Winning the Airwaves: Regaining America's Dominance in the Electromagnetic Spectrum', added the technology will become as revolutionary as smartphones. 'In the same way that smartphones and the Internet are redefining how the world shares, shops, learns, and works, the development and fielding of advanced sensors and networking technologies will enable militaries to gain significant new advantages over competitors that fail to keep pace,' it says.

The $640 billion plan, which McCain outlined in a white paper Monday, would be $90 billion more than the fiscal 2017 funding level, $55 billion more than what President Obama requested for fiscal 2018 in last year's budget and $7 billion more than the last pre-sequestration budget produced under Defense Secretary Robert Gates predicted for fiscal 2018, according to Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.