For more than two decades, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has provided consistent, high-quality, and innovative research on defense strategy, budgets, and the security environment. CSBA’s mission today is to promote innovative thinking and debate about national security strategy, defense planning, and military investments, as well as to provide timely, impartial, and insightful analyses to senior members of the executive and legislative branches, the media, and the broader national security establishment to make informed decisions regarding strategy, security policy, and resource allocation.
Under the leadership of Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken since 2016, CSBA remains instrumental in guiding the nation’s most critical defense policy debates as a small but powerful group comprising experts with extensive experience in the field of national security—many of them military veterans and former senior level policy makers from the Department of Defense, State Department, and the National Security Council—supported by a dedicated staff of accomplished executives and scholars.
With notable alumni including Michael Vickers, Robert Work, and Todd Harrison, CSBA experts have worked to analyze U.S. defense strategy, force structure and planning, and defense budgets in the effort to reconcile these interrelated subjects, contributing extensively to the Revolution in Military Affairs debate, the development of an AirSea battle concept, and discussions on the strategic choices necessary for the transformation and modernization of the U.S. military in the face of sequestration.