May 16, 2013 at 09:27 AM in Military, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
May 09, 2013 at 12:12 PM in Military, International Law / Law of War / Human Rights, Middle East / Northern Africa, Military Spending / Budget Issues, Syria | Permalink
April 27, 2013 at 12:36 PM in Europe / Eurasia, Developing Technologies, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
April 11, 2013 at 08:38 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
April 09, 2013 at 01:43 PM in Military, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
April 04, 2013 at 07:23 AM in Military, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
04/01/13: The New York Times has a piece discussing the arduous task facing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in managing the US military budget. As President Obama – who has placed some of the military’s long-favored weapons programs in his sights – continues to negotiate with Congress over a spending and revenue deal, the Pentagon is bracing for a protracted period in which they may have to manage even larger budget reductions than anticipated. “There will be changes, some significant changes,” Secretary Hagel warned at a news conference last week, and he is expected to begin outlining those changes in a major speech this week. Already, Hagel has directed General Martin E. Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter to conduct a sweeping “Strategic Choices and Management Review” due by the end of May. Their challenge is to trim the Pentagon while also assuring that the military continues to attract high-quality personnel and can maintain American and allied security around the world.
April 01, 2013 at 09:25 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Politics, Analysis, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
March 05, 2013 at 11:33 AM in Military, Asia, China, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
03/03/13: The blog Space War reports new Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said Friday that new budget cuts will endanger the US military’s ability to conduct its missions. His comments came hours before President Obama authorized automatic “sequestered” cuts in domestic and defense spending, following the failure of efforts to clinch a deal with Republicans on cutting the deficit. Hagel, whose budget at the Pentagon is set to be slashed by roughly $46 billion, said, “Let me make it clear that this uncertainty puts at risk our ability to effectively fulfill all of our missions.” In contrast with his predecessor Leon Panetta, who branded the cuts a “doomsday mechanism” and “fiscal castration,” Hagel was more measured, but he made his thoughts on the military consequences of the sequestration clear nevertheless.
March 03, 2013 at 11:29 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Politics, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
March 02, 2013 at 12:40 PM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
February 23, 2013 at 09:27 AM in Military, Developing Technologies, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
February 22, 2013 at 02:46 PM in Congress, Military, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
February 21, 2013 at 11:53 AM in Congress, Military, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
February 11, 2013 at 09:04 AM in Congress, Military, Politics, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
February 07, 2013 at 09:20 AM in Military, Diplomacy / Foreign Assistance, Middle East / Northern Africa, Iran, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
February 07, 2013 at 09:06 AM in Congress, Military, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
02/04/13: CNN reports outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Sunday his “biggest concern” is the uncertainty over budget issues on Capitol Hill. “If the sequester is allowed to go into effect, I think it could seriously impact … the readiness [of] the United States,” he said. The US military could face the start of $500 billion in budget cuts in about a month if Congress fails to come up with a budget plan that avoids the so-called sequester, a series of automatic, spending cuts spread out over the next decade. Panetta in January ordered the military to begin implementing cost-cutting measures aimed at mitigating the effects of significant budget cuts that would occur if Congress fails to reach a deal in coming months to avert or soften them.
February 04, 2013 at 07:57 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Politics, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
02/02/13: Wired's Danger Room reports the US isn’t just shoveling cash to stem the tide of narcotics in Mexico and Colombia. Quietly, it’s built up its drug war in Central America, too — spending nearly $100 million over four years on advanced gear for local forces. Not that Washington has any idea what it’s gotten for its money. A new report from the Government Accountability Office provides a rare glimpse into the Central American war on drugs. Between 2008 and 2011, the report finds, the government spent $97 million for gear and training for its Central American partners. On the plus side, it’s laughably low compared to the more than $640 billion (and rising) the US has spent on the war in Afghanistan. Most of the drug war money is spent on equipment such as vehicles — like aircraft and patrol boats — night-vision goggles, body armor, radios and weapons, and X-ray equipment for scanning cargo containers.
February 02, 2013 at 01:19 PM in Congress, Terrorism / Counterterrorism, Diplomacy / Foreign Assistance, Latin America, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
January 11, 2013 at 02:24 PM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Politics, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
12/05/12: The Miami Herald reports the Obama Administration is pressing its European allies to follow through on their pledges to Afghanistan’s security after most international troops withdraw in 2014. Speaking at NATO headquarters, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told allies it is “crucial for every nation to follow through on their commitments, and for those who haven’t yet committed any funding to do so.” Donors pledged $4.1 billion a year to support Afghan forces from 2015 to 2017; the money is a key plank of the US strategy to leave behind a secure Afghanistan after battling insurgents for more than a decade. But Europe’s debt crisis has raised fears that some of the pledges won't be fulfilled, and in an era of defense cutbacks, Washington doesn’t want to get stuck with the check.
December 05, 2012 at 07:52 AM in Diplomacy / Foreign Assistance, Afghanistan / Pakistan, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
November 09, 2012 at 10:52 AM in Military, Politics, Europe / Eurasia, Military Spending / Budget Issues, Russia | Permalink
November 02, 2012 at 01:41 PM in Military, Commentary / Opinion, Maritime Security, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
November 01, 2012 at 11:34 AM in Intelligence, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
10/24/12: The Washington Times reports more than 8,500 US Customs and Border Protection officers and Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) personnel face termination in January under the automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect next year in a bid to attack the spiraling fiscal deficit. The job losses, in the wake of massive efforts by the Border Patrol to significantly beef up security along the US-Mexico border, would be the result of a “sequestration” in the federal budget, automatic spending cuts of 9.4 percent in 2013 for discretionary defense appropriations and 8.2 percent in 2013 for discretionary nondefense spending. Representative Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.) noted in a letter earlier this month that the scheduled cuts at the Department of Homeland Security would roll back “significant progress” in securing the nation’s borders.
October 24, 2012 at 09:27 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Homeland Security / Immigration, Politics, Latin America, Border Control, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
October 12, 2012 at 12:30 PM in Military, Politics, Commentary / Opinion, Analysis, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
October 09, 2012 at 10:12 AM in Military, Iraq, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
October 06, 2012 at 09:33 AM in Military, Developing Technologies, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
09/17/12: The Washington Post reports the US nuclear arsenal, the most powerful but indiscriminate class of weapons ever created, is set to undergo the costliest overhaul in its history, even as the military faces spending cuts to its conventional arms programs at a time of fiscal crisis. For two decades, US administrations have confronted the decrepit, neglected state of the aging nuclear weapons complex. Yet officials have repeatedly put off sinking huge sums into projects that receive little public recognition, driving up the costs even further. Now, Congress faces an end-of-year deadline to avoid $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts to the federal budget over ten years, the Obama Administration is overseeing the gargantuan task of modernizing the nuclear arsenal to keep it safe and reliable.
September 17, 2012 at 10:06 AM in Executive Branch, Military, Politics, Military Spending / Budget Issues, Nuclear Weapons | Permalink
08/09/12: The Miami Herald has this piece today giving a basic primer on the steep automatic “sequestered” budget cuts in many areas of government, including national defense, that are scheduled to take effect on January 1 if Congress fails to pass legislation reducing the deficit. It gives succinct answers to significant and frequently asked questions, and is invaluable for those not steeped in congressional politics. Some $110 billion in cuts will kick in, hitting defense and domestic programs equally hard unless Congress figures out over the next five months a way to avoid the reductions. But increasingly bitter partisanship and election-year politics make a solution unlikely before the November elections, leaving the issue to a jam-packed lame-duck session of Congress.
August 09, 2012 at 08:59 AM in Congress, Politics, Analysis, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
07/24/12: The Hill reports Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Tuesday accused President Obama of putting the nation at risk through politically motivated intelligence leaks and defense cuts. Romney’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Reno aimed to paint the President as weak on national security and naïve on foreign policy, two areas where Obama has consistently polled higher than his opponent. The remarks come one day after a top Senate Democrat said some of the leaks came from the White House. “It is not enough to say the matter is being looked into, and leave it at that,” Romney will say. “When the issue is the political use of highly sensitive national security information, it is unacceptable to say, ‘We’ll report our findings after Election Day.’”
July 24, 2012 at 02:21 PM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Terrorism / Counterterrorism, Politics, Secrecy / Transparency / FOIA, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
07/22/12: The Hill reports the rhetoric on pending cuts to the Pentagon intensified this week, but the chances of a pre-election deal to avert those spending reductions and others appear unlikely. Both parties are digging into their positions on the across-the-board cuts ahead of the November election, as the cuts are poised to play an increasingly visible role in congressional and the presidential campaigns. But all the messaging and campaigning on sequestration is quickly evaporating what little chance may have existed for a deal to avert some of the cuts before the election, something defense-minded lawmakers in both parties have called on Congress to do.
July 22, 2012 at 11:27 AM in Congress, Military, Politics, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
07/11/12: The Hill reports six Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee have signaled they would consider using revenue gained by closing tax loopholes to avert pending cuts to the military. Senator John McCain (Ariz.), the senior Republican on the Armed Services panel, and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are discussing a deal to raise between $40 billion and $50 billion in new revenues. Four other Republican members of the Committee say they would consider supporting such a deal, even though it would likely violate the Taxpayer Protection Pledge championed by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist. McCain and Graham are eyeing tax loopholes and fees identified by Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) during the negotiations of the so-called supercommittee and other deficit-reduction talks last year.
July 11, 2012 at 09:52 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Politics, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
07/11/12: The Washington Times reports the chief of naval operations has penned an opinion column that has military analysts buzzing over whether it signals the Navy may be the first military branch to jettison the costly F-35 stealth fighter jet. Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert’s column in the current issue of Proceedings magazine questions the value of radar-evading technology, or stealth, in flying to a target and bombing it in a world of rapidly improving radars. At the same time, the Navy’s top officer champions the future of unmanned planes and standoff weapons such as ship-fired cruise missiles. Admiral Greenert also mentions the ongoing budget-cutting environment in Washington. To military analysts, all of Greenert’s points indicate that the Navy is having second thoughts about pouring billions of dollars into the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
July 11, 2012 at 08:59 AM in Executive Branch, Military, Analysis, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
07/08/12: The Hill reports the Defense Department has decided to siphon off $1 billion from Pentagon accounts dedicated to building up Afghanistan’s national security forces and shift those dollars to other military priorities. The move was included in a Pentagon request that was sent to Capitol Hill to shift roughly $8 billion across various service and departmental accounts. Congressional lawmakers were sent copies of the so-called reprogramming request on June 30. Significant changes to the training and equipment needs of Afghan forces over the past few years has allowed DOD number crunchers to free up the $1 billion from those accounts, according to the reprogramming notice.
July 08, 2012 at 11:03 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Diplomacy / Foreign Assistance, Afghanistan / Pakistan, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
06/25/12: The Hill reports House Armed Service Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Cal.) said Friday that President Obama’s budget director has refused to commit to testify about the impact of sequestration. McKeon said he was disappointed that Jeffrey Zients, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), wouldn’t appear before Armed Services to discuss the automatic budget cuts that are set to begin in 2013. McKeon called the OMB chief Friday in the midst of a push to have the Obama Administration and the Pentagon explain how the $500 billion in cuts to the Defense Department would be implemented. OMB spokesman Kenneth Baer said the department doesn’t comment on private phone conversations.
June 25, 2012 at 08:30 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Politics, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
06/21/12: The Washington Times reports Congress is poised to deliver a defeat to one of the Obama Administration’s main defense policies in the new budget: base closings. Both the House and Senate Armed Services committees have produced fiscal 2013 spending bills that deny Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s request to set up a base-closing commission next year. Some in defense circles say it is the result of election-year politics and members of Congress will realize next year that they need to heed top Pentagon officials who have testified that they have too much infrastructure and not enough money. Congress also doesn’t usually like base-closing commissions because they remove Congress from the process: it can lobby the commission, but the commission’s closure list must be either accepted or rejected in full.
June 21, 2012 at 08:35 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Politics, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
06/17/12: The Hill reports the White House is challenging Congress to “do its job” and prevent the automatic spending cuts that are looming for the Pentagon. Republican lawmakers have criticized the Obama Administration’s decision to include funding for the war in Afghanistan in the so-called ‘sequestered’ budget cuts that are on tap for 2013. A group of top GOP lawmakers sent President Obama a letter this week demanding an explanation for the policy. The White House fired back at the criticism Friday, arguing the war funding was never off the table for the automatic budget cuts and the law doesn’t grant the President discretion to exempt it. The letter from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) chastised lawmakers, noting that only Congress can stop sequestration from beginning in 2013.
June 17, 2012 at 10:41 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Politics, Afghanistan / Pakistan, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
06/15/12: The New York Times reports the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee called on the Obama Administration on Thursday to seek cuts in nuclear warheads far beyond the requirements of current treaties. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said the administration “should consider going far lower” than the warhead caps set by the New Start agreement with Russia to bring the nation’s arsenal in line with a diminished nuclear threat and tighter military budgets. A grave concern today is that nuclear weapons or their fissile components may fall into the hands of terrorist organizations, Levin said. “The more weapons that exist out there, the less secure we are, rather than the more secure we are,” he added.
June 15, 2012 at 08:50 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Military Spending / Budget Issues, Nuclear Weapons | Permalink
06/14/12: The Washington Post reports Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday that Pakistan’s seven-month-long refusal to allow US and NATO supplies to cross its territory into Afghanistan is costing the United States an additional $100 million a month to fund alternative routes. Panetta’s testimony to a Senate appropriations panel was the first time the Obama Administration has put a dollar figure on the extra amount. Pakistan closed its border to NATO transit in November after a US air assault inadvertently killed twenty-four Pakistani soldiers. Defense Department and Pakistani negotiators have agreed on a new payment structure for the transit, but Pakistan has demanded an apology for the troop deaths. Washington has expressed “regret” and offered condolences, but has said an apology is unnecessary for an incident in which Pentagon investigators found fault on both sides.
06/14/12: The Washington Post reports Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday that Pakistan’s seven-month-long refusal to allow US and NATO supplies to cross its territory into Afghanistan is costing the United States an additional $100 million a month to fund alternative routes. Panetta’s testimony to a Senate appropriations panel was the first time the Obama Administration has put a dollar figure on the extra amount. Pakistan closed its border to NATO transit in November after a US air assault inadvertently killed twenty-four Pakistani soldiers. Defense Department and Pakistani negotiators have agreed on a new payment structure for the transit, but Pakistan has demanded an apology for the troop deaths. Washington has expressed “regret” and offered condolences, but has said an apology is unnecessary for an incident in which Pentagon investigators found fault on both sides.
June 14, 2012 at 08:36 AM in Military, Politics, Diplomacy / Foreign Assistance, Afghanistan / Pakistan, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
06/13/12: The Washington Post reports the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday that the Defense Department could head off far deeper budget reductions by preemptively agreeing to cut $10 billion a year for the next decade. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said “Defense has to contribute” to a compromise to head off the across-the-board, $55-billion-a-year cuts required by the budget compromise that Congress reached last year. The provision, known as sequestration, will be triggered on January 3 if Congress doesn’t come up with a 10-year, $1.2 trillion deficit reduction plan or a compromise to change the law by the end of this year. Levin suggested that some cuts could come from the costs of maintaining and modernizing the nuclear stockpile and funding for family housing for troops stationed in South Korea.
June 13, 2012 at 07:31 AM in Congress, Executive Branch, Military, Politics, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink
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Commentary: Military brain drain
02/14/13: Foreign Policy published an article by David Barno. During any military drawdown, equipment, training, force structure, and end-strength will inevitably be sacrificed. But the "crown jewel" that must be preserved in order to be able to fight and win in the years ahead is human capital. Recruiting and retaining highly talented people remains the best guarantor of success in future conflicts. Senior service leaders must take a harder look at themselves in the mirror when defending a 60-year old personnel system. It is 2013, not the Mad Men era of 1963. And sustaining the military preeminence of the United States starts with a uniquely American ideal -- cultivating the best and brightest, so they can lead the force into a dangerous future. It should be the first priority of today's senior military leaders, not their last.
February 14, 2013 at 01:55 PM in Military, Commentary / Opinion, Military Spending / Budget Issues | Permalink