If you count next year’s budget, the president will be actually selling himself short. But his other superlatives are not justified.

With a two-year budget deal the Pentagon is getting what it wanted: budget certainty. But that certainty comes at a cost.

If Congress fails to pass the 2020 budget, the Navy will have to delay necessary repairs on two nuclear-powered carriers, further stretching the fleet at a critical time.

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 →

Two top Democrats blasted the proposal, calling it a “blatant attempt to make a mockery of the federal budget process.”

Republicans Sen. James Inhofe and Rep. Mac Thornberry say to the White House and to the congressional budget hawks: Yes, budget deficits matter, but defense matters more — because of the degradation in readiness and lack of modernization the armed forces have suffered for more than a decade.

The stakes are high for President Trump’s nascent Space Force because a poorly integrated service is a price America cannot afford to pay. This means a careful, thoughtful, conditions-based approach must be followed to assess if and when an autonomous military space organization will provide the best path forward. All four services will contribute to… Keep reading →

Given the two-year break from sequestration, the Pentagon is hurrying up to hire civilians to push the modernization of the force to head off advances by China and Russia, a new DoD strategy document says.

The Navy is moving ahead with its Ohio replacement submarines, and is using a little-noticed budgetary gimmick to pay for some of it.

“You fix your roof when it’s sunny out, and right now it appears to be sunny for the next couple of years,” Esper said. “We have to do our best now to find those dollars so we can, again, apply them back to our priorities.”