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However, Mark Gunzinger, senior fellow at the Center for Budgetary and Strategic Analysis and a former Air Force colonel, disputed the idea that Welsh and Goldfein’s comments represented a veiled attempt to retire the jet. Instead, they should be seen as a “huge signal” that the service remains committed to the close air support mission, he said. If the Air Force does press on with a new program, the service will have to establish what capabilities will be needed to perform the CAS mission in a more highly contested environment. Potential adversaries in the Asia-Pacific and Europe already maintain capable air defenses, but Middle Eastern and African state and nonstate actors also are gaining access to more sophisticated weaponry capable of bringing down a slow, low-flying aircraft like the A-10, Gunzinger said. With that in mind, an A-10 replacement should look a lot like an F-35, Gunzinger said: stealthy, capable of data fusion with other aircraft, and with the ability to fire off a variety of precision-guided munitions, including joint direct attack munitions and small diameter bombs. Couldn’t the F-35 just be used for close air support missions, as was the Air Force’s original plan? “The Marine Corps thinks so,” Gunzinger said, but added that another option is to develop an A-10 replacement with lower operating costs than the F-35, perhaps with less stealth and a larger payload…Gunzinger was more supportive of buying a purpose-built A-10 replacement, but the service should not rush procurement of a new aircraft during the near term, when so many acquisition programs are in their beginning stages. Until those programs mature, “fly the wings off the A-10,” he said

The defeat before the tribunal is “on the order of a 10 or 15-yard penalty,” no more, said Peter Haynes of the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. “In a more strategic sense, I think they’re just going to keep moving on the direction they’re moving (with) grey zone tactics, salami slicing….This is just one front of many.”

As Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments senior fellow Mark Gunzinger attests, "the technology is ready" for the deployment of laser cannons on AC-130s. Further out, the Air Force is working to continually shrink the size and weight of its laser prototypes to a point where, at "5 kilograms per kilowatt," these weapons could be installed on a whole host of smaller aircraft as well, both manned and unmanned…

Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told Millitary.com other positive signs for the F-35 program included a decrease in developmental problems, indicating that the platform is maturing, and a decrease in unit cost, as predicted by the Joint Program Office. Gunzinger said he had spoken with test pilots and trainees who raved about the aircraft after having the chance to familiarize themselves with it. "It's well known the F-35 really does have a magic cockpit and the ability to take multiple sources of information,: Gunzinger said. "Its situational awareness is unparalleled."..

But Kate Blakeley, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told Inside Defense that the current OCO budget has enough built-in "slack" to accommodate Obama's new troop policy. "The additional marginal costs of about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan would be quite small compared to the $41.7 billion requested for Operation Freedom's Sentinel in Afghanistan in FY-17," she said. "The FY-17 OCO budget request already is largely a continuation of FY-16 OCO funding levels for Afghanistan."..

Kate Blakeley, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the CBO study demonstrates that the Pentagon's O&M budget lacks transparency. "The growth of O&M costs is one of the more vexing budget problems that DOD faces," she said. "With half of O&M costs effectively a black box, DOD needs to get a handle on its escalating O&M costs, which are crowding out procurement and other spending.