“We need that partnership with customers on the DoD side where they’re willing to take a step forward with us in understanding that neither one of us knows the ultimate answer.”

The Army’s rebuilding to face China and Russia. That may leave programs designed over the past decade for COIN operations in the dust.

The Air Force is too small for what it is being asked to do. Here’s what it needs to do to grow.

In 2006, a relatively obscure book caused a major stir among the U.S. Air Force leadership. Why Air Forces Fail, edited by Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris, lays out the determinants of failure: deficiencies in the industrial base, misguided technology and tactical picks, inattention to logistics and neglect of training. The case studies are broken… Keep reading →

The White House defense budget for 2020 falls short of commitments made and actual requirements to meet the military’s strategy, but it begins to shift priorities and start the long process of investing in long-term competition with China and Russia. Washington still lacks the budget details for another week, but here are some initial reflections… Keep reading →

Fifth gen or fourth gen? F-35A or F-15X. Stealth, sensors and fusion or lots of missiles? Lockheed or Boeing? See what the Mitchell Institute says.

That’s $6 billion more than previously announced — but it all comes at the cost of almost 200 cut, cancelled, or slowed-down programs, each with backers in Congress.

The best way for America to develop a consensus on what our defense and global security commitments should be is for Congress to have a lengthy series of posture hearings that delve deeply into these issues.    They could be jointly held by the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees from the two chambers, patterned… Keep reading →

Shanahan spent much of his first formal (albeit off-camera) Pentagon pressroom briefing as SecDef emphasizing continuity with his ousted predecessor, Gen. Jim Mattis. He made a point of praising Mattis’s National Defense Strategy, America’s allies, and even the press – not exactly favorites of President Donald Trump.

“The Army has aligned itself with Secretary Mattis’s National Defense Strategy, which we will not walk away from,” Gen. Milley told an Association of the US Army breakfast. “It’s a solid strategy, it’s written in history, it’s written in the blood of generations past, and we subscribe to it.” And allies are key to the strategy.