News
Search News
In the News
CBARS Drone Under OSD Review; Can A Tanker Become A Bomber?
All the measures that would allow CBARS to become a bomber, however, would make it less efficient or more expensive as a tanker. That’s why former Navy Undersecretary Bob Martinage, now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, was less optimistic.
In the News
China’s HQ-9 Missile Placement Underlines Pentagon Focus on A2/AD
Robert Martinage, a former undersecretary of the Navy now with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says the weapon placement is not a game-changer in and of itself, but “it could be the canary in the coalmine, a harbinger of what’s to come.” If China expands its deployment of advanced defenses, Martinage said, it would have “significant operational implications” for the US and its allies.
In the News
Few Choices For US As China Militarizes South Pacific
Former Navy Undersecretary Bob Martinage was less concerned — for now. “In isolation, the apparent deployment of an HQ-9 air defense system to Woody Island has marginal operational significance,” he told me. “In the event of a conflict, it would pose a limited threat to air lines of communication in the vicinity, but could be quickly overwhelmed and neutralized. In peacetime, US reconnaissance aircraft” — mainly meaning those P-3s and P-8s — “operating within roughly 100 miles will now do so under constant threat, which may reduce crisis stability.”
In the News
Boeing Loses Bomber Appeal, but Maybe Not Puget Sound Work
Even without a Boeing win, the Puget Sound area still may land some work on the bomber, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow and military expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, in Washington, D.C., in an October interview with Puget Sound Business Journal.
In the News
Army Explores Anti-Ship Howitzers & Anti-Air Strykers
What the Army is not studying, Rossi said, is buying anti-ship cruise missiles, which would be an entirely new weapons system rather than a modification of an existing one. That news will be a disappointment, if hardly unexpected, to legislators like House seapower chairman Randy Forbes and thinktanks like the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which have advocated the US Army get into the shore-based cruise missile business to counter China’s growing navy.
In the News
Pentagon Signals an End to Cuts for Military Pay and Benefits
“Many of these proposals have gone as far as they are going to go,” said Katherine Blakeley, a military budget expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “People are not going to be as vigorous in advancing personnel reforms as they’ve been in previous years, partly because it's an election year and partly because a lot of these things have been tackled in some way already,” she said. Blakeley also noted the Pentagon's recent decision to open all combat jobs to women.