Campaign promises of a larger, more ready and fully modernized military have slammed into budget realities as the Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget for the Pentagon shows only modest growth above what the Obama administration had projected. Funding at those levels will support a 305-ship Navy, not the 350 ships that candidate Trump proposed back in… Keep reading →

Ever since the day of its creation, critics have slammed the Office of Director of National Intelligence as an expensive and unnecessary bureaucracy, a threat to the longtime primacy of the Director of Central Intelligence and a toothless tiger. Much of that changed during the joint tenures of DNI Mike McConnell and SecDef Bob Gates… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL:  Less than two hours after President Trump tweeted that a government shutdown might be a good thing, the conservative Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said, no. either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good "shutdown" in September to fix… Keep reading →

Two weeks from today America will either be a laughingstock or Congress will have done the responsible thing, the necessary thing, and passed some kind of useful spending bills. Or, as Mark Cancian, a former senior official at the Office of Management and Budget, suggests, there may be a sort of defense spending bandage to strap… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: “Trust, but verify.” On Gus Hargett’s last day at the National Guard Association of the United States, that’s the advice the long-time NGAUS president gave his successor, Roy Robinson, on dealing with regular active-duty leaders. “I think these guys want to do the right thing,” said Hargett, particularly praising the Army Chief of Staff,… Keep reading →

“There is no enemy on the planet than can do more damage to the United States Air Force than us not getting a budget,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told a defense conference on February 23. “Lack of 2017 appropriations and no supplemental increase in funding…will increase risk to the nation and ultimately… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The White House has dropped plans for a 14 percent cut to the Coast Guard, instead promising a budget that “sustains current funding levels.” The bad news is that “current funding levels” are already too low. The Coast Guard has to give almost 600 drug shipments a pass each year because they don’t have the ships or planes to catch… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: In their desperation to convince Congress that budget gridlock hurts military readiness, Navy officials made public some information that they shouldn’t have, Acting Secretary Sean Stackley told reporters here today. It’s this oversharing of readiness data, along with too much detailed talk about future capabilities that prompted the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: More and more House members oppose another Continuing Resolution, which should compel the passage of proper defense spending bills, the House seapower chairman said here this morning. It’s a rare case where the deep divisions in the Republican party between defense hawks and budget hawks could actually smooth the workings of government instead… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: As Defense Secretary Jim Mattis prepared to appear before the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee to defend President Trump’s first defense budget, GOP stalwarts Sen. John McCain and Rep. Mac Thornberry were telling reporters it was dead on arrival. “We’ve got planes that can’t fly, ships that can’t sail and Army units that can’t train,” McCain,… Keep reading →