For AIA, ‘America First’ Means First In Capabilities & Sales
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PARIS AIR SHOW: As much as I tried to give David Melcher slack to say the powerful Aerospace Industries Association he leads was finding it more difficult to do business under the chaotic and oft-bewildering Trump administration, he kept saying things were pretty well in hand. “The first year of an administration is certainly more… Keep reading →
Trump’s 2018 DoD Budget Stresses RDTE, Rebuilding
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President Trump’s just-released 2018 budget proposal meets the goals set by Secretary Jim Mattis when he came into office, the Pentagon insists, even though the budget does not deliver the impressive defense growth the president promised. Instead, it will, the administration says, be enough to patch up a “depleted” military that needs to be brought back to health after… Keep reading →
Trump’s Promised Big Boost To DoD Evaporates In 2018 Budget
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Campaign promises of a larger, more ready and fully modernized military have slammed into budget realities as the Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget for the Pentagon shows only modest growth above what the Obama administration had projected. Funding at those levels will support a 305-ship Navy, not the 350 ships that candidate Trump proposed back in… Keep reading →
Afghans Want More US Troops? Show Us Results
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It looks as if the Trump administration will soon send 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan, the theater of America’s longest war. The mission — training and advising (and bolstering) the Afghan national security forces — will remain the same even though we’ve seen this play out more than once: the verdict… Keep reading →
Trump Taps HASC Staffers For Intel & Europe Jobs
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WASHINGTON: While reports that he may have violated the law swirl around disgraced former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn today, the White House moved to fill a few more of the very large number of empty offices of senior Pentagon officials. For our readers, the key appointment is of Kari Bingen, who apparently was nominated to… Keep reading →
Continuing Resolution Fears? OCO’s Ugly But It Might Work
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Two weeks from today America will either be a laughingstock or Congress will have done the responsible thing, the necessary thing, and passed some kind of useful spending bills. Or, as Mark Cancian, a former senior official at the Office of Management and Budget, suggests, there may be a sort of defense spending bandage to strap… Keep reading →
SecDef Presses ‘Acting’ Pentagon Leaders To Act, CSAF GoldFein Says
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WASHINGTON: Until the Trump Administration, one of the standard limits on bureaucratic power was the circumscribed reach of anyone serving in an acting capacity. Unless or until a person was confirmed by the Senate for a senior position in the Pentagon, the argument went, they didn’t possess the political or public authority to make new policy… Keep reading →
Aircraft Carrier: The Nation’s Trump Card Reborn
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The usefulness of the aircraft carrier, long the centerpiece of American naval power in the world, was in serious question, even by me, one year ago. Chronic underfunding, poor strategic assumptions and bad acquisition decisions had left the carrier defensively unprotected and offensively underpowered as its airwing both shrank in size and striking range. President Trump’s election and… Keep reading →
McCain, Thornberry Decry Trump Pentagon Budget Boost
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WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump is pledging “an historic increase in defense spending” of $54 billion to $603 billion for the fiscal 2018 budget, but neither Congressional Republicans nor defense budgets experts were very impressed at first glance. “Such a budget request would represent an increase of $18.5 billion above the level proposed by President Obama for fiscal… Keep reading →
Dunford: Bash Daesh To Point Where Local Forces Can Contain
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WASHINGTON: While Gen. “Fighting Joe” Dunford didn’t discuss the new anti-Daesh strategy in detail today, he laid out the goal during a discussion today at the Brookings Institution: “working in combination with local forces and coalition forces, drive the threat down to the level where local law enforcement, security forces can deal with that threat and therefore,… Keep reading →