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TheAtlantic.com March 26, 2012 Congress and the Pentagon want to commission stealthy new bombers at $550 million apiece. But it's not clear why we need so many expensive features. By David Axe When the Obama administration dispatched three B-2 bombers from a Missouri air base on March 19 last year to cross the ocean and …
Continue reading "Why Can’t The Air Force Build An Affordable Plane?"
By Andrea Shalal-Esa, Reuters One year into its development, the Air Force's new KC-46 refueling tanker being developed by Boeing Co faces "significant schedule risks" and technical challenges, and is already $900 million over budget, a congressional report found. The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said the Air Force had limited its …
Continue reading "Boeing KC-46 Tanker May Be Delayed: GAO Report"
Washington Times March 26, 2012 Pg. 1 Arms systems cuts look likely Defense analysts and Capitol Hill insiders are anticipating that automatic federal budget cuts will occur Jan. 1 and force the armed forces to scrap plans for new weapons systems. Washington's polarized political landscape shows no signs of a compromise on taxes and spending …
Continue reading "Budget Gridlock Imperils National Defense By Rowan Scarborough"
Washington Post March 25, 2012 Pg. 19 By Michael O'Hanlon and Bruce Riedel To contain Iran, or to preempt? That is, at present, the question. President Obama’s recent dismissal of containment as an option would seem to stack the deck. Unless Iran pauses its uranium enrichment activities, an Israeli or U.S. strike against its nuclear …
Continue reading "A Middle Course On Iran: Between preemption and containment of the nuclear threat"
Weekly Standard April 2, 2012 Rep. Paul Ryan calls his budget plan the “Path to Prosperity,” but it could be termed as well a “Path to Security.” In reclaiming more than $200 billion of the nearly $500 billion in military cuts made in last year’s Budget Control Act (BCA), the House Budget Committee chairman takes …
Continue reading "A Path To Security By Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly"
London Sunday Times March 25, 2012 Pg. 16 Britain has no aircraft carrier and new ones won't be ready for years. Worse, ministers don't even know what type of fighter will fly from them. Tim Ripley investigates. Last Monday morning Britain's Navy — or what is left of it — seemed to have lost its …
Washington Post March 25, 2012 Pg. 19 The inescapable foreign policy issue for U.S. presidential candidates this year is whether American power is declining and, if so, what to do about it. This strategic conundrum lies behind every challenge the United States faces, from Egypt to Afghanistan to China. For your election-year reading table, I …
Continue reading "Future Of American Power By David Ignatius"
By MARCUS WEISGERBER Three years ago, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that he was recommending Congress approve the termination or truncation of 33 programs. With total contract values in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the programs collectively touched just about every state, sending lawmakers on both sides of the aisle into a frenzy …
Continue reading "Lawmakers: U.S. Air Force Numbers Lack Credibility"
THE historian Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote a brutally clear-eyed piece in The National Review, looking back at America's different approaches to Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan and how, sadly, none of them could be said to have worked yet. "Let us review the various American policy options for the Middle East …
TheNewYorker.com March 14, 2012 Daily Comment The sound coming from Afghanistan these days—painfully familiar to those who have travelled there over the past three decades—is of fabric ripping. Periodically, Afghanistan unravels. The country remains very weak after decades of continual violence, emigration, upheaval, return, clandestine war waged by neighbors, and overt war waged by international …
Continue reading "What Is Plan B In Afghanistan? By Steve Coll"
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