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Marine Prowlers Deploy to Turkey for Fight Against ISIS
The counterroadside bomb mission is particularly important because as the Islamic State group retreats in Iraq, it leaves mines and other explosive booby traps, said Mark Gunzinger of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment think tank in Washington, D.C. “Those are a real problem for U.S. forces, much less Iraqi troops, so I do think that would be a priority mission,” said Gunzinger, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense.
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Carter Evasive On South China Sea While China Targets Philippines
Some friction between the military commander in theater and civilian policymakers in DC is to be expected, said a former aide to the Chief of Naval Operations. “The back and forth, the friction if you will, is normal,” said Bryan Clark, now with the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. “But what’s been different [is] the lengths that they’ve gone to keep things calm on the military or security side.”
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DoD Is Better Defining What Lowest Price Means in Contracts
DoD now will try to make more clear the worth of delivering a capability above “technically acceptable” or the minimum requirement when awarding contracts. “What that would allow the source selector to do is then say ‘Because the other offer came in that’s more expensive than the lowest price one, but it has this additional capability, I can put a price on that and quantify the value to the government of that additional capability,’” said Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in an interview with Federal News Radio.
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4-Star Admiral Wants to Confront China. White House Says Not So Fast.
The NSC frequently takes top-down control to send a coherent message, said Bryan Clark a former senior aide to Adm. Jon Greenert, the recently retired chief of naval operations. While serving as Greenert’s aide, Clark said the NSC regularly vetted the former CNO’s statements on China and the South China Sea.
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Experts Say Carter’s Cautious Reforms Aren’t Bold Enough
But Bryan Clark of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments also thinks DoD needs to go further in its reforms. One of the biggest critiques of Carter’s agenda was the lack of acquisition reform. Carter said he wants to change the DAB, which provides a senior advisory role on acquisition decisions and he wants to reduce some paperwork requirements. Clark said that overlooks one of the main acquisition issues in defense, which is the development of requirements for new weapons.
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A Firewalled Nuke Fund Is Bad Budgeting and Bad Planning
The military services think they have a dilemma. A tidal wave of costly strategic nuclear modernization programs are bearing down on the defense budget over the next couple of decades, just when the services and members of Congress are anxious to take advantage of a now-rising defense budget to buy additional conventional (or, non-nuclear) military hardware.