CSBA in the News

Todd Harrison is a Senior Fellow for Budget Studies at the Center of Strategic and Budgetary Assessments which has just released it’s analysis titled “The FY 2012 Defense Budget: What to Expect in an Age of Austerity”.

The defense budget proposal that the Obama administration will send to Congress next week shows signs that the Pentagon is concerned about asserting its dominance in aerial and naval warfare, vis-à-vis a rising China and saber rattling by Iran, said Jim Thomas, vice president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

Still, the weapons request is $7 billion less than the $120.3 billion in base budget procurement the Pentagon had forecast last year for fiscal 2012. The reductions were part of an overall $13 billion in fiscal 2012 cuts the Office of Management and Budget imposed on the Pentagon for deficit reduction.

The F-35 alternative engine raises a question that experts say will be central to the earmarks ban battle: What is an earmark?

A 2008 report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank that studies military technology, said that long-range pilotless aircraft had potential to transform carriers “from a power-projection system with outstanding global mobility but relatively limited tactical reach and persistence into a key component of a global surveillance-strike network.”

Dakota Wood, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the Marine Corps likely hopes to preserve a balanced force while bringing down its total size and supporting efforts to round out Marine Corps Special Forces Command at 2,700 personnel, as well as standing up a promised cyber force.