No one has done a better job of predicting the final outcomes of deals on the defense budget since sequestration was made law than Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute. So we asked her to predict what this election will mean to the 2018 defense budget. With the election tomorrow, we couldn’t think of a… Keep reading →

Throughout this presidential campaign, the candidates have barely discussed the most important elements of national security, the United States’ armed forces. We’ve tried to flesh things out, with the excellent force structure and budget analyses done by Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Analyses. But Mark had to work with very few… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Can the Pentagon afford its Third Offset Strategy? From anti-ship missiles to artificial intelligence, the military is experimenting with a host of high-tech systems  to counter increasingly sophisticated Russian and Chinese forces. That effort is essential, said the Defense Department’s procurement chief, but there’s one problem: If we want to go beyond experiments and… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Today, we got a very clear look at the biggest problem with sequestration for the military. If the Budget Control Act goes into full effect, the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines told the Senate Armed Services Committee today, they will not be able to protect the United States as they are… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is sitting on ticking fiscal time bombs: a slew of high-priority programs that are at especially high risk for cost overruns. Some particularly big-ticket programs, like the B-21 bomber and the Ohio Replacement submarine, are in the early stages of technical development, where cost growth is more likely than it is later on in… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Whoever wins the White House in November will still be hobbled by the spending limits in the Budget Control Act, warned fiscal expert Todd Harrison. Whether BCA goes away, he said, depends much less on whether Trump or Clinton wins, and much more on who controls Congress — above all on whether Reagan defense… 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: The battle lines were drawn today between Republicans and Democrats over the $18 billion Sen. John McCain wants to add to the defense budget in an amendment to the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. You want it? Then add a matching $18 billion to domestic spending, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, the powerhouse appropriator countered today… Keep reading →

UPDATED with SecDef, HASC, & SASC comments WASHINGTON: Last night, the White House issued a veto threat against the draft defense bill that just went to the House floor, which takes an $18 billion bite out of the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. This afternoon, Defense Secretary Ash Carter blasted both the House draft of the National Defense Authorization Act… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Ash Carter made many reporters’ day this morning when he pithily put the case for the Pentagon to continue buying Russian RD-180 rocket engines until the United States has two tested and reliable launch providers capable of replacing the highly reliable and relatively cheap Atlas V built and operated by the United Launch Alliance. “We… Keep reading →