Editorial: Strategy, Not Dollars
Each time a US government department faces major challenges, the tendency of its leaders is to launch a strategic review.
- May. 20, 2013
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Each time a US government department faces major challenges, the tendency of its leaders is to launch a strategic review.
The US Navy is poised for an unmanned revolution. Last week, for the first time, it successfully catapulted an unmanned jet from an aircraft carrier.
And so, sequestration has come. Sequestration is a reduction in funding without a reduction in programs, manpower, operational systems or infrastructure.
Lost in the uproar about sequestration impacts on specific programs is that much of what's wrong with the Pentagon's finances is systemic or process related.
Despite massive furloughs looming, reductions in troop strength planned, fleets at anchor and air wings grounded due to severely curtailed operating funds, the Pentagon seems to be finding odd ways to dig itself out of the fiscal mess it is in.
Reading the history of US preparations for World War II is instructive.
While popular attention has focused on North Korea's extravagant and empty rhetoric, a far more dangerous conflict is brewing between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands.
Amid all the media focus on China's maritime territorial disputes with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, the world nearly forgot that China still hosts the world's largest outstanding land border dispute with the world's largest democracy, India.
From my experience as a senior civilian on the Air Force staff in the Pentagon from early 2002-10, including significant responsibilities involving the transfer of US aerospace systems to our foreign partners, I find the current discussion of so-called 'd
Air-Sea Battle (ASB) has become a much-debated Pentagon concept to counter China's anti-access/area-denial challenge. Yet while allies welcomed America's military 'rebalance' toward Asia, they wonder what it means in concrete terms.
The Chinese foreign minister issued a call March 10 for international cooperation on Internet espionage and called accusations of Chinese government involvement in recent hacking incidents an international smear campaign.
Britain has long prided itself as a military innovator in groundbreaking technology and novel business processes.
For two years, the international community has largely avoided involvement in Syria's increasingly bloody civil war.
The latest 'conventional wisdom' in counterterrorism holds that the threat to America posed by al-Qaida and its affiliates is greatly diminished since 9/11. Recent news headlines read: 'With Al Qaida Shattered, US Counter-Terrorism's Future Unclear' and
Throughout the US Department of Defense, military and civilian leaders see uncertainty and change. We need to find new ways to deliver results.
The Boston bombings, a belligerent North Korea and an increasingly assertive China are stark reminders that the world remains a dangerous place.
No one is happy with the Obama administration’s $3.8 trillion fiscal 2014 budget proposal.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has directed Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to conduct a review of military strategy in light of anticipated defense budget cuts extending over the next decade. Concurrently, the congressionally directed Quadrennial Defense Review, which has a similar objective, is underway.
The shadow of North Korea’s latest provocations has obscured Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Another war on the Korean Peninsula would be a disaster for the Korean people, even though the military defeat of the North that is sure to follow would no doubt lead to the end of the Kim ruling dynasty.
Chuck Hagel’s delivery was a bit flat in his first major speech as U.S. defense secretary April 3, but his message was clear: The Obama administration is pushing ahead with its obligation to cut another $500 billion from the long-range defense spending plan over the next decade under sequestration — on top of a similar level of cuts already approved.
In 2001, the U.S. Navy started the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program to replace the aging FFG-7 class scheduled for retirement by 2020. The concept was to use existing commercial ferries, modify them for naval use, customize them selectively with mission packages and buy 55 ships to replace the FFG-7 class and 14 mine countermeasures ships. All of this would be done inexpensively.
French President Francois Hollande will soon pronounce his verdict on the “White Book on Defense and National Security,” the blueprint for future missions, structures and capabilities of the armed forces recommended by a commission of senior officials, military brass and parliamentarians.His promise, in a March 28 interview, that defense spending will be “exactly the same amount in 2014 as in 2013” — 31.4 billion euros ($40.2 billion), or 1.
When the two sides of the world’s most important bilateral security relationship meet, it’s a safe bet they will raise trenchant questions for nations worldwide.
When missile defense was first muted at the height of the Cold War, the world was dominated by the two nuclear superpowers stocking enough nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles to wreak Armageddon on each other (and on the rest of humanity, too).
As the new U.S. secretary of defense turns his attention to the defense industrial base, he should reach out to leaders of companies that provide our armed forces with the equipment required to underwrite national security. A good way could be by breaking bread in a collegial group gathered to consider the future of democracy’s arsenal.
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