CSBA in the News

While China conducts, and celebrates, the first jet takeoffs and landings on its new aircraft carrier Liaoning, the U.S. Navy is aiming to do even better. In a parallel series of tests this week, the sailing branch has taken huge steps towards deploying the first carrier-based robotic warplane.

The Marine version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, already more than a decade in the making, was facing a crucial question: Could the jet, which can soar well past the speed of sound, land at sea like a helicopter?/…/With a record price tag — potentially in the hundreds of billions of dollars — the jet is likely to become a target for budget cutters. Reining in military spending is on the table as President Obama and Republican leaders in Congress look for ways to avert a fiscal crisis. But no matter what kind of deal is reached in the next few weeks, military analysts expect the Pentagon budget to decline in the next decade as the war in Afghanistan ends and the military is required to do its part to reduce the federal debt.

The success cited by Israel for its Iron Dome antimissile system in its confrontation with Hamas has re-energized American missile defense advocates and generated new interest in the global arms bazaar from nations like South Korea that face short-range rocket threats from hostile neighbors.

The Defense Department will likely face significant budget cuts over the next decade, regardless of the sequestration, and should adjust its budget process to first fund future priorities and then find areas to cut, even possibly at the expense of some current readiness, says the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The defense-budget wonks over at the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments have apparently had it with costume and paste jewelry.

A consensus is emerging in Washington that even if Congress finds a way to cancel the automatic budget cuts of sequestration, the Defense Department is in for more spending reductions over the next decade. A new exercise by one think tank shows the department has a lot of different ways to handle those cuts — some more thoughtful than others.