CSBA in the News

2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and elsewhere. Specifically, The Rand Corporation has submitted a study on the future of aircraft carriers, and three separate organizations (The Mitre Corporation, the Navy Staff (N81), and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA)) have submitted views of appropriate future fleet architectures. 

Harriers are flying longer than they were initially expected to, said Jesse Sloman, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The fleet was supposed to be retired in 2012.

“Ready for what?” said Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the nonprofit Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Factors in readiness can include depot maintenance, hours of use of aircraft and Army full-spectrum training.

Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said Congress might abandon efforts to pass an annual budget this year and instead opt for a stopgap measure that maintains current spending levels for some part of 2017 until some other solution can be found.

That’s because they have realized that even the best surface vessels and warplanes are vulnerable to anti-ship or anti-aircraft missiles, says Bryan Clark of Washington’s Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent think-tank.

The Turkish impact is “definitely mixed,” said Peter Haynes, a retired Navy captain now with the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. “It is a blessing in the short term, as far as moving ground troops into Syria to root out ISIS. But in the middle term, at least, it is far more mixed.”