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Senate Armed Services Bill Directs Navy to Start a Preliminary Design Effort for a Light Carrier, Pluses Up Shipbuilding Totals Over Trump Budget
The most likely scenario would be a modified version of the America-class big-deck amphib that would add two catapults to launch aircraft, similar to World War II-era straight-deck escort carriers.
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How America’s Aircraft Carriers Could Become Obsolete
The newest Ford-class vessels have a service life of 50 years, but the Pentagon may find itself confronted more forcefully by China and Russia by the 2030s, according to a January 2017 report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a nonprofit think tank that advocates for a Navy reconfiguration.
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The Trump Budget: Defense
Congress has been generous in raising the budget caps each year since they were enacted in 2011 — but not as generous as Trump wants them to be in fiscal 2018. Trump wants to nearly triple the average annual raise in the defense caps of $18.5 billion, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
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Why America’s Mighty Military Doesn’t Always Dominate the Battlefield
By the time of the 1991 Gulf War, newer version of the AIM-7 achieved a 51 percent hit rate while the AIM-9 achieved a 67 percent hit rate—according to data compiled by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis.
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Pentagon Welcomes Greater Freedom Under Trump but Is Wary of Blame
The president’s penchant “to delegate blame when things go wrong” is the negative flip side of the Pentagon’s freedom, said Hal Brands, a defense official in the Obama administration and now a senior analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
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House Armed Services moving ahead with $640B top line
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments research fellow Katherine Blakeley noted that Congress has little time left to iron out a federal spending plan, with nominations and an ambitious GOP agenda that includes tax reform and a health care overhaul eating up the legislative calendar. “They’re trying to move with alacrity, but they’re facing down the clock,” she said. The GOP strategy to pass spending measures is a big, open question, Blakeley said. For defense, it’s unclear whether Congress will hew to the Mattis budget request’s emphasis on research and development as well as and operations and maintenance — or upend it by seeking more procurement funding. “Will they shift more money into O&M or will they try to grow the force — which Mattis says the Pentagon is not ready to do, and that they want to prepare to grow in fiscal '19,” Blakeley said. “How fast can the Army responsibly grow?”