by Rep. Randy Forbes and Rep. Joe Courtney For a host of security and economic reasons, American foreign and defense policy will increasingly focus on the Asia-Pacific region in the decades ahead. With over 60% of all U.S. exports going to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries and 40% of total global trade emanating from Asia-Pacific,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: In a remarkably non-partisan moment amidst the current strife over budget cuts and Chuck Hagel, Ronald Reagan’s Navy Secretary and George W. Bush’s Chief of Naval Operations told a Republican-helmed committee that the Navy’s real problem was not the Obama administration’s budget but decades of creeping bureaucracy that have eaten every budget’s buying power.… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: With the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration set to start taking effect March 1st, we’re going to see a lot of interesting last-minute plays to stop them. It’s almost certain none of them will work. But Rep. Randy Forbes’s bill introduced this morning, H.R. 773, at least offers the virtue of simplicity: At… Keep reading →

[updated Tuesday 1/29 with Rep. Forbes’ recommendations & McKeon selections for QDR independent panel] WASHINGTON: It’s that time again. Though delayed by the still-unsettled strife over sequestration and the continuing resolution, deep inside the Pentagon the ponderous machinery of the Quadrennial Defense Review is gearing up. But this may be the QDR’s last chance. With… Keep reading →

[UPDATED 3:30 pm on 1/8/2013 with revised CSBA estimates] WASHINGTON: The battle of the fiscal cliff is over, but the war to stop sequestration rages on – and President Obama’s decision that his new Secretary of Defense should be former Sen. Chuck Hagel, the Republican other Republicans love to hate, makes it even harder to… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: “I am fully expecting to see sequestration in some form beginning in January,” Rep. Randy Forbes told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview. And those automatic cuts — or even the more targeted cuts likely in any deal to avoid a sequester — would undermine the nation’s new Pacific-focused strategy and the military’s AirSea… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Old combat pilots warn young ones about “target fixation,” when you get so focused on what you want to bomb that you lose track of everything else and fly into the ground. That’s the danger facing US strategy in Asia as the heavily hyped Pacific pivot gets boiled down to “contain China,” warned a… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: “Trust us.” That’s the last thing an irate Congress is ready to hear from the Air Force right now, but it’s the essence of what a three-star general told legislators today in a hearing on the administration’s hugely unpopular proposal to cut the Air National Guard. A Senate-proposed commission on the size and… Keep reading →

Capitol Hill: If you were to boil down a letter from Rep. Randy Forbes to Defense Secretary Leon about AirSea Battle, you might put in three words: Where’s the money? In a very polite Nov. 7 letter, Forbes asks Panetta how he planned to “make Congress part of” the process of implementing AirSea Battle. “More… Keep reading →

Washington: The head of the Navy, Adm. Gary Roughead, has offered a pretty compelling story line in the last few months, arguing that the next decade will belong to his service as the U.S. withdraws from its land wars and is forced to rely on a steady global presence deliverable only by ship. The Navy… Keep reading →