CSBA in the News

“If you look across these technology efforts, it looks like within the next four to five years, there will actually be prototypes,” said Mark Gunzinger, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense research institute.

Here are seven programs at the Pentagon facing disruption by the use of continuing resolutions, based on a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments study by Blakeley and Maureen Smolskis

These historical examples may provide a blueprint for how a Trump Pentagon can continue with the Third Offset, first announced in November 2014 by then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and detailed in a report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. In each of the two previous offsets, technological advances were better leveraged because of statutory reform, organizational transformation, and the changes in military personnel.

“I think one of the reasons you see such enthusiasm for Gen. Mattis is because people hope that will be the case,” said Eric Edelman, who held a senior Defense Department post in President George W. Bush’s administration.

“How it will really work, what kind of advice Trump will take, are all propositions that remain to be proven,” Edelman said.

It’s too early to tell how the Trump administration might view the plans. But Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said advancements in undersea warfare should continue to be a priority for the Navy.

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, one of the three participants, last week unveiled one piece of that future fleet in a report called “Amphibious Operations in an Era of Precision Weapons.”