CSBA in the News

Despite President Obama’s mandate that the defense spending be cut by $400 billion during the next 12 years, the Pentagon has proposed its highest budget adjusted for inflation since World War II – further evidence that the Pentagon is facing many of the budget-busting expenses as Congress itself. Just as Congress considers reining in expenses for Medicare, the Pentagon is struggling with rising health-care costs, as well as congressionally enacted pay raises for servicemen and women.

The Pentagon is speeding up life-saving military gear to troops in Afghanistan under a new “fast lane” system run a by a small group of senior Defense officials and put in place by then-Defense secretary Robert Gates.

The U.S. Air Force’s new Long Range Strike (LRS) family of systems will not consist of multiple aircraft types, as widely believed. Instead, the service will most likely develop a single bomber airframe that will be able to conduct a range of missions, says the service’s deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements.

There’s no end in sight to the apocalyptic tenor of Beltway defense news and, if anything, it could keep getting worse. Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments  briefed reporters Monday on his new report on the fiscal 12 defense budget, including DoD’s future prospects, and the outlook for the military-industrial complex is bleak/…/The Pentagon’s long-term problems aren’t insoluble: Harrison outlined what he believes Washington needs to do to weather the buffeting of Austerity America, and included some interesting and innovative concepts along with the now-familiar prescriptions — control requirements, manage well, and follow a strategy. The problems for DoD and America lie in executing what many people agree must be done, but which requires today’s dysfunctional system to work perfectly.

The U.S. military has essentially the same size, force structure and capabilities as it did a decade ago but costs 35 percent more, an independent public policy think tank said on Monday in an analysis of the 2012 defense budget.

If the U.S. debt ceiling is not raised, and choices are made about who gets paid and who doesn’t, contractors could feel the pinch long before government officials do, according to a briefing Monday by Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.