CSBA in the News

The U.S. Navy and Air Force are scheduling as many as 100 attack, reconnaissance and support missions daily over Iraq, according to a U.S. military official.

The $5 billion counterterrorism fund that the White House requested in the Pentagon and State Departments’ 2015 budget proposal would likely fund missions like the ones the US military has been conducting in Iraq over the past several months, an expert said.

President Obama says it all the time – no combat troops will return to Iraq.

August is the month of decision for UCLASS, the Navy’s controversial program to build armed drones that fly off aircraft carriers. At stake: whether the “Unmanned Carrier-Launched Surveillance & Strike” aircraft will be primarily a scout (surveillance) or a bomber (strike). The new Deputy Secretary of Defense, Bob Work, delayed the Navy’s release of an official Request For Proposals (RFP)while he studied the question, with a crucial meeting in the new few weeks.

The U.S. military invests more money than any other country to maintain technological superiority, but its expensive high-tech defenses are increasingly countered by the proliferation of relatively cheap but effective weapons like cruise missiles and unmanned aircraft.

In an acknowledgment that the military may be pricing itself out of business, the Air Force on Wednesday called for a shift away from big-ticket weapon systems that take decades to develop and a move toward high-technology armaments that can be quickly adapted to meet a range of emerging threats.