CSBA in the News

Thomas Mahnken, the president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, agreed that readiness and modernization have suffered in recent years, but counseled against opening a floodgate of new funds before it was clear how the Pentagon would effectively spend them. “Improving readiness and modernizing the force will require additional resources beyond those permitted by the Budget Control Act, but we need to keep in mind that the Defense Department’s capacity to absorb an infusion of resources is limited,” he said. “The Pentagon today is a lot like a person who has been slowly starving for years; there are limits to how effectively it can spend a large infusion of cash. One byproduct of our neglect of modernization over the past decade and a half is that there are few programs that are ready right now to accept new funds. Rebuilding the American military will take time.”

“The Navy’s idea was much more about, the F-35 has a command and control node that might be part of a strike package that’s mostly F/A-18s rather than F-35s doing a whole strike mission by themselves, which is what the Air Force model might be,” Bryan Clark, naval analyst Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) and former special assistant to past Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, told USNI News on Friday.

“We’re going to use the F-35 more as an enabler and a strike lead and as a command and control platform than as a fighter platform on its own.”

“Bilden has a wide range of experience that could help in the SECNAV position,” said Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “He served in the military, was successful in business, and is knowledgeable of and experienced in Asia’s politics and economics. His efforts on the USNA Foundation and NWC Foundation Boards indicate a commitment to the Navy and should have provided him the opportunity to better understand the challenges and opportunities facing today’s naval forces. He has an impressive academic record at Georgetown and Harvard, which should give him a good foundation in international relations and its implications for business and economics.

How does Bilden’s background compare to the nine men who’ve held the office of Navy Secretary since 1980? “I believe he has as much relevant experience for SECNAV as recent SECNAVs when they came into office.” said Bryan Clark, a retired Navy commander and a former aide to the Chief of Naval Operations. “Ray Mabus was a naval officer for one tour, but didn’t have much to do with the Navy and military after that until he became SECNAV. Donald Winter and Gordon England were engineers and defense business executives before entering office. Bilden’s experience and education in international 

Thomas Mahnken, head of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says both conventional and nuclear forces need to be rebuilt instead of favoring one over the other. The U.S. has historically relied more on strategic nuclear weapons during periods of lower defense spending and spent less on those systems during conventional buildups. But after 15 years of counterinsurgency warfare in the Middle East and recent drawdowns at a time of heightened conflict in Iraq and Syria, both forces need rebuilding, Mahnken says, particularly because Russia and China have gained ground militarily. “We are now in a period characterized by the reality of great‐power competition and the increasing possibility of great‐power conflict,” he says. “The ‘wars of the future’ may no longer lie that far in the future.”