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Contributors
Legislators are fighting over every single dollar in this year’s defense budget, although saving billions could be as simple as changing a few words in a contracting statute. And believe it — or not — the Pentagon is the good guy in this battle. The Defense Department is circulating a proposal on Capitol Hill that [...]
The House has approved a $643 billion defense-spending bill for 2013 that’s $3.7 billion more than the Obama Administration, and its Pentagon, is seeking. That’s just about the same amount the Congressional Budget Office estimates the House bill’s push for an East Coast missile shield will cost over the next five years. It’s amazing that [...]
Stop the presses! The Pentagon’s just-issued annual report on China says its military is expanding into “new historic missions” beyond its traditional role of self-defense. The press is already highlighting that alarming phrase. Some are sure to see these as “new hysteric missions” and contend they require increased U.S. defense spending to blunt their impact. [...]
…if you’re interested in a calm and reasoned assessment of the threats facing the U.S. by Foreign Affairs’ Micah Zenko. But if you prefer threat inflation, switch over to C-Span to watch the House debate the 2013 defense budget. Turn it up real loud.
Marine General John Allen, commander of forces in Afghanistan, is planning for the end – the withdrawal of U.S. forces, expecting to leave behind a small training force, but saddling the U.S. taxpayers with at least $2 billion a year to pay for the Afghan security force. Better deal than we have now, at roughly [...]
Having been away for the past week, it’s nice to come back and see nothing on the looming defense-budget battle front has gotten any better, despite the iceberg of sequestration looming ahead of the USS Pentagon. In fact, it has gotten worse: – House Armed Services Committee chairman Howard McKeon sent a letter to Defense [...]
– General Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, explaining Tuesday what he is telling Congress when lawmakers want to keep more aircraft flying than the proposed 2013 Pentagon budget supports.
We began Battleland’s countdown to sequestration a month ago. As of Wednesday, we’re 11% closer to the end of the Pentagon as we know it. That’s slated to happen, according to this provision of the so-called Budget Control Act:
Americans will celebrate Memorial Day next month, and honor those who’ve died while serving to protect the rest of us. But some concerned members of Congress are going to skip their hometown barbeques so they can hit the road: they’ll be warning of a looming half-trillion-dollar cut in defense spending over the next decade (atop [...]
