WASHINGTON: If you were hoping, after a bitterly contentious presidential campaign, that at least we’d have consensus on national defense spending…tough luck. Instead, teams from five leading thinktanks — spanning the political spectrum but all using the same budget simulator — came up with a more than $2 trillion spread of options. They debated their plans… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Marine Corps aviation is on a “glide slope” to reaching acceptable readiness levels by 2020, the deputy commandant for aviation said Friday. But today the only units fully ready — with enough spare parts, trained maintainers and air crews, and adequate monthly flight hours for pilots — are two squadrons flying brand new Lockheed Martin F-35B… Keep reading →

UPDATED to clarify WASHINGTON: Senate authorizers will probably go along with the House in adding $18 billion to the base defense budget, setting up a veto fight with the White House. After all, it was Senate Armed Services chairman John McCain himself who sponsored the $18 billion plus-up in the Senate, where it was narrowly defeated. Today,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Instead of begging for more money — which won’t come — it’s time to face facts and use the fiscal pressure to force efficiencies and reforms, says a new report from an elite group of officers at the Army War College, the service’s school for future generals. Army leaders “prefer to be prepared for… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Randy Forbes pretty much looks like a hawk. The House seapower subcommittee chairman has fought for a bigger battle fleet with long-range drone bombers, called for China to be kicked out of the international RIMPAC wargames and blasted the Obama administration for its lack of a tough Pacific strategy. But does that mean China… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: In what looks very much like an opening shot in a fundamental fiscal battle between the four armed services and the Office of Secretary of Defense, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus came right out today and said we should preserve fighting forces by cutting Defense Department agencies that are “pure overhead,” His prime candidates? The testers who make sure the services’… Keep reading →

This week, the Republican Congress is expected to unveil its fiscal year 2016 budget resolution just as House defense authorizers start marking up their annual bill. What will that mean for the US military? Bottom line, the Pentagon should realistically expect no more than $569 billion from Congress in the final, enacted 2016 budget between base… Keep reading →

Bill Greenwalt knows acquisition like few people on earth. For more than a decade he wrote acquisition laws — and fought off some — while a staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Then he went to the Pentagon, where he oversaw industrial base issues, which often included acquisition policies. Bill, now a wise man… Keep reading →

After two weeks of covering the 2015 defense budget, I can assure you it is confusing. Every budget includes fudges, silliness and an enormous amount of information. They are hard to make sense of and often their import doesn’t become clear for a year or two. But this budget may be the most complex one… Keep reading →

She’s baaack! After having the temerity to give birth to a child and thus deprive us of her insights for several months, Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute has penned an op-ed on the 2015 budget. She casts it in a fairly gloomy light, pointing to the haunting possibility of a hollow force in the… Keep reading →