If you take the Administration’s word for it, the most recent defense budget represents a sober-minded and far-thinking strategic shift from the Middle East to Asia, creating a smaller, high-tech force oriented increasingly towards inter-state conflict and deterrence. Many are even comparing the Pentagon’s current vision with that of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,… Keep reading →

The Chinese National People’s Congress has announced its new defense budget, offering the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) yet another double-digit increase, with funding up 11.2 percent this time. Officially, this amounts to a $106 billion defense budget, although most observers believe that China’s real defense budget is probably twice that much, if not more. In… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The Army is in the midst of a service-wide review on how it will shift its mountain of metal from Southwest Asia to the Pacific, according to Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno. Army leaders, working with combat commanders, are studying what options exist to store the Army’s stockpiles of prepositioned equipment in… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has started to caveat its grand strategic mantra of a “pivot to Asia” – i.e. shifting from the land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to preparing for “AirSea Battle” against China. In the Defense Budget Priorities released yesterday and, most critically, in Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s press conference explaining them, the emphasis… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: The United States will police the globe, respond to disasters and shape the international environment much as it has –though our sharpest focus will be on China and the western Pacific — but it will do all that with a significantly smaller land force than it currently has. That was the essential message offered… Keep reading →

With budgets falling and China rising, the U.S. Army wants in on the one theater where President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have promised to keep investing: the Pacific. The world’s largest ocean is not an obvious fit for America’s land forces. So far, it is the Air Force and the Navy that have… Keep reading →

Escalating cyber threats, a struggling economy, the rise of China, and the unpredictable impact of the Arab Spring will dominate the next decade. At least, that’s the best collective guess of a conclave of academic experts, government officials, and military officers from the U.S. and abroad, convened by the United States Army. Their objective: This… Keep reading →