CSBA in the News

Robert Martinage, then an analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, wrote in a 2008 report that only “select units” of the Pentagon Joint Special Operations Command “are equipped and trained in the requisite tactics, techniques and procedures” for conducting “render safe” missions.

This number would be right for the war in Iraq, according to numbers from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. $685,000, that’s by the way, over 10 times more than the cost of a soldier deployed in World War II. So these wars are getting more expensive all the time.

Infiltration is always a concern when training indigenous forces to combat an insurgency, said Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and an expert in counterinsurgency. Insurgents will attempt to join security forces if only to gain intelligence, he said.

The projections represent real growth of 2.6 percent annually, said Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst with the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

“There is a $23 bln. funding gap that secretary Gates was talking about, and it is making it difficult for the Department of Defense to manage its own finances,” said Todd Harrison

The Defense Department “is a little bit more than half the discretionary budget,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “That, combined with two wars that have been going on for years now—I’d say it’s a politically challenging environment for defense spending.”