CSBA in the News

Come the end of this week, the Federal government might actually—for real this time—shut down for lack of a budget. Congress is debating a measure today that would fund the Feds for another week, and the Pentagon until Sept. 30, provided that billions are cut from other parts of the federal budget. Even if this happens, military leaders and analysts say that the continuing resolutions (CR) have already done damage to their modernization programs—damage that may be permanent/…/

If the West decides to arm Libya’s disorganized rebel forces, they will have to deploy trainers on the ground and not merely deliver crates of weapons, former US officers and officials said/../Just providing equipment without instruction would mean “a lot of money that would be wasted,” said Dakota Wood, a retired Marine officer and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “It isn’t just the weapons that make the force effective, it’s the skill with which the weapons are employed,” Wood said.

The United States ended the Cold War the way a master pilot lands a fighter jet, in a sort of ecstasy of precision and the gradual reduction of force. Today, that same jet is screeching around the runway, as our capacity for messy outcomes (Iraq, Libya, Egypt) expands before our eyes. One place where the potential for unparalleled damage has increased is the US. That is because there are more tools available to terrorists, extremists or just plain kooks now than in 2001. How might a terror attack play out? Dr Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a non-profit research group in Washington, modeled such an attack in his book, 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century. Nuclear explosions are the main feature of his scenario for a terror attack in the US. But he foresees threats as large as nuclear attacks coming from other types of weapons. The point is not for Americans to scare themselves silly. It is to reconsider the antidotes.

U.S. warplanes, Suzanne, ships and missiles have been striking against Libya for more than a week now/…/ While NATO has agreed to take over the mission and take full command, the cost to the U.S. has been estimated at between $300 million to $1 billion so far in Libya/…/ Todd Harrison offers his financial estimate of the cost of the U.S. military action in Libya.

Not since similar no-fly zones were employed in Iraq and the Balkans during the 1990s has the Pentagon committed such expensive resources outside a war zone as it has in Libya. This is very small compared to what we’re spending in Afghanistan right now,” says Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He estimated the initial cost of a no-fly zone at $400 million to $1 billion, with weekly operational costs from $30 million to $300 million.

The United States ended the Cold War the way a master pilot lands a fighter jet, in a sort of ecstasy of precision and the gradual reduction of force. Today, that same jet is screeching around the runway, as our capacity for messy outcomes (Iraq, Libya, Egypt) expands before our eyes. One place where the potential for unparalleled damage has increased is the US. That is because there are more tools available to terrorists, extremists or just plain kooks now than in 2001/…/