Through months of hand-wringing over automatic budget cuts facing the federal government, the Defense Department has insisted that most of its 800,000 civilian employees will feel the same pain if the department decides to furlough its workers.
What homemade roadside bombs could do to Army and Marine ground vehicles was the ugly surprise of the last decade. What sophisticated long-range missiles could do to Navy aircraft carriers could be the ugly surprise of the next. “I think it would almost follow like the night to the day,” Rep. Randy Forbes told me in a recent interview. “The last decade… we asked a disproportionate sacrifice from the Army and Marine Corps,” he went on. “The next decade’s going to be the decade of seapower and projection forces, [and] some of those ugly surprises we see bits and pieces of already.”
The Army is conducting a complete review of its missile defense portfolio to see how the service can meet requirements in the Asia Pacific region and around the world, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno said.
On April 28, CSBA Vice President Jim Thomas joined an expert panel on This Week in Defense to discuss future strategic threats facing the United States,Washington’s renewed focus on Asia, how to deal with nations that have weapons of mass destruction, and learning the right lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan.
China is pushing the U.S. and India closer. Are they focusing on the wrong set of challenges?
/…/Defense procurement reached its height in 2008 at nearly $400 billion for the year, and it has fallen steadily since. Last year, contract awards dropped 15 percent below the peak, after adjusting for inflation.
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