America’s military is witnessing yet another attempt to recast the negative impact of massive defense cuts, this time in a report by the Council on Foreign Relations that attempts to illustrate the effect that slashed spending will have on U.S. forces and security. Unfortunately, the report uses some of the same ill-founded assumptions that the Obama Administration has made to justify cutting defense spending, thereby failing to paint an adequate picture of how U.S. military readiness will suffer under these new constraints. The council divides the military into “winners” and … More
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America’s military is witnessing yet another attempt to recast the negative impact of massive defense cuts, this time in a report by the Council on Foreign Relations that attempts to illustrate the effect that slashed spending will have on U.S. forces and security. Unfortunately, the report uses some of the same ill-founded assumptions that the Obama Administration has made to justify cutting defense spending, thereby failing to paint an adequate picture of how U.S. military readiness will suffer under these new constraints. The council divides the military into “winners” and … More
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In a recent comment George Will threw down the gauntlet to conservatives to explain how the White House hasn’t stolen their traditional claim championing a strong national defense. His challenge was no more stark than in rehashing the president’s line on counterterrorism. Will wrote, “Osama bin Laden and many other “high-value targets” are dead, the drone war is being waged more vigorously than ever, and Guantanamo is still open, so Republicans can hardly say that Obama has implemented dramatic and dangerous discontinuities regarding counterterrorism.” This pronouncement comes on the heels of a Washington Post–ABC … More
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The recently released Congressional Research Service (CRS) report “A Historical Perspective on ‘Hollow Forces’” misses two important points in its analysis of the defense budget, impacts of the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011, and the usage of the term “hollow force.” First, the report does not even attempt to analyze impacts of the sequestration process under the BCA. Second, the report fails to address structural deficiencies within the Department of Defense’s budget itself. While the BCA imposes about $600 billion in cuts to a broadly defined defense category of … More
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The future is not bright for the U.S. military. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave America a glimpse of the half-trillion dollars in defense spending cuts requested by the Obama Administration and detailed how the U.S. military’s capabilities would be affected in practical terms. The result is a slashed and burned military that woefully lacks the forces it needs to meet America’s security challenges on a global scale. On the ground, in the sea, and in the air, American forces will shrink drastically — the Army will shrink by 72,000 … More
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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta today laid out details of a plan to cut a half a trillion dollars from defense spending. That’s in addition to the half-trillion in cuts required under the Budget Control Act. The Wall Street Journal reports that, as part of the plan to cope with funding cuts and reduced troop levels, the U.S. military plans to increase the U.S. fleet of unmanned drones by 30 percent and increasingly rely on special-operations teams based around the globe. Unfortunately, that won’t be sufficient to manage America’s defense needs. … More
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Editor’s note: Earlier this month, the Huffington Post published a “commentary” on the F-35 by four left-leaning defense analysts. Clearly, none of these men are fans of the joint strike fighter. Unfortunately, their commentary focused mostly on sliming James Jay Carafano—one of the nation’s leading national security experts—and insinuating that his employer, The Heritage Foundation, is a shill for Lockheed-Martin. Their charges are as bogus as they are shrill. Dr. Carafano wrote a measured response to this piece, which the Huffington Post has thus far not seen fit to print. It … More
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An increasing number of leaders in the House and the Senate recognize that the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 will impose a disproportionate burden on an already strained defense budget. The latest corrective effort comes from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R–VA). The BCA established caps on spending for national security and discretionary spending over the next 10 years. In addition, the law mandates a sequestration process that will apply $500 billion or more in deficit reduction to the defense account over the nine-year period covering FYs 2013–2021. These … More
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Supporters of Ron Paul have re-launched an old ad promoting the old idea of American isolationism. “We now are a nation known to start war,” Paul is quoted as saying. “We feel compelled because of our insecurity that we have to go over and attack these countries to maintain our empire.” The message here (and repeated elsewhere) is that Paul’s isolationism is aligned with the Founding Fathers and “what is truly American and truly constitutional.” Not only is this refrain a gross misrepresentation of American history but it offers dangerously … More
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President Obama’s new national defense strategy is a budget-driven exercise masquerading as a strategic plan, writes Heritage’s Kim Holmes, former Assistant Secretary of State, in The Washington Times. In trotting out the new strategy, President Obama said the “tide of war is receding.” Accordingly, U.S. forces will “no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations” (read: Iraq). But is the tide of war receding on the world stage? And how does he know that the U.S. will not need to engage in another “stability operation”? The Army shed … More
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