CSBA in the News

Katherine Blakeley, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, said, the three concerns in defense spending still come down to: What are you getting, how much is it going to cost and when are you getting it. But speed of delivery is taking on new importance as threats change.

“It’s kind of like a kid’s Christmas list, in that we want some more manpower in the Army, we want more helicopters, more planes, more this and more that,” said Katherine Blakeley, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “I don’t think that they have a strong idea of how they’re going to get this, given that the BCA is still in effect.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA ) has developed a 130-foot boat that can prowl the seas unmanned. Military officials think it can be effective in detecting submarines. Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, gives Federal Drive with Tom Temin an assessment of whether this is where we're headed.

Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who has followed PACOM's strategy, said he thinks Harris is lobbying for more assertive freedom of navigation patrols that include military operations such as helicopter flights and signals intelligence within 12 miles of Chinese-claimed features. 

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.

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.”