By Victor Davis Hanson, Tribune Media Services, Victor Davis Hanson Posted 03/28/2012 at 09:30 am EST The world was reinvented in the 1970s by soaring oil prices and massive transfers of national wealth. It could be again if the price of petroleum crashes -- a real possibility given the amazing estimates about the new gas …
Why Can’t The Air Force Build An Affordable Plane?
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 …
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Boeing KC-46 Tanker May Be Delayed: GAO Report
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 …
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Budget Gridlock Imperils National Defense By Rowan Scarborough
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 …
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A Middle Course On Iran: Between preemption and containment of the nuclear threat
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 …
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A Path To Security By Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly
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 …
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Britain’s £10,000,000,000 Fiasco
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 …
Future Of American Power By David Ignatius
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 …
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Lawmakers: U.S. Air Force Numbers Lack Credibility
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 …
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A Festival of Lies by Thomas L. Friedman
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 …
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