CSBA in the News

Requiring open architecture in new defense systems as mandated in an acquisition overhaul bill introduced last week by the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) chairman is a “one size fits all” approach that may slow down the acquisitions process, according to a Democratic committee aide.

“I suspect that it will ramp up slowly,” Jan van Tol, a retired U.S. Navy captain and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, told Air Force Times. “A suddenly much larger U.S. presence, even if just a rotational presence, that can be seen … in Beijing, that this is a ratcheting up of a U.S.-Chinese competition in the South China Sea.”

Defense analyst Katherine Blakeley, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, called the bill a “bold and innovative” attempt to solve major problems in the way the Pentagon plans and buys major weapon systems…

“I suspect that it will ramp up slowly,” said Jan van Tol, a retired U.S. Navy captain and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “A suddenly much larger U.S. presence, even if just a rotational presence, that can be seen, certainty in Beijing, that this is a ratcheting up of a U.S.-Chinese competition in the South China Sea.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said CANES is “designed to consolidate a lot of the little networks that we have out in the fleet today into a smaller number of networks.

Bryan Clark is former Special Assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations and Director of the CNO’s Commander’s Action Group. He’s now Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He and his colleague Mark Gunzinger are writing in Breaking Defense about how to make BBP better; Bryan talked about those ideas on National Defense Week.