Publications

The U.S. Department of Defense is one of the largest organizations in the world, managing global security responsibilities with numerous international allies and partners. What does it take to fund DoD? Where does that money go? How is DoD coping in the current fiscal environment? What gaps exist between the strategy outlined in the Quadrennial Defense Review and the capabilities funded by the latest budget request?

“DoD’s current method for resourcing readiness starts with the wrong metrics, lacks experimental data to isolate causal effects, and does not have a continuous feedback loop to update and refine readiness theories and models.  The military could be significantly overfunding or underfunding readiness without knowing it.” - Todd Harrison, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Fall 2014 issue

On July 17, 2014, Jim Thomas testified before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces on the Future of the INF Treaty. Suspected Russian violations of the INF Treaty come at a time of great strategic uncertainty for the United States globally. While compliance issues must be swiftly addressed, the United States should also widen the aperture for evaluating the INF Treaty to ensure that it serves its broader, global interests and security commitments.

In this testimony delivered before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces on July 16, 2014, Robert Martinage challenges the dominant view on the core mission of UCLASS that drive the system requirements.

In what may prove to be a brief strategic pause following the end of major operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress and DoD have the opportunity to accord priority to developing a next-generation, balanced Combat Air Force(CAF) comprised of aircraft with the range, survivability, and connectivity with other combat systems needed to operate effectively over extended ranges and in contested environments. Sufficient resources must be allocated to support these priorities, rather than continuing to allocate a “fair share” of the defense budget to each of the Military Departments.

This backgrounder discusses the balance the FY15 defense budget attempts to find among compensation, force structure, modernization, and readiness, and compare the choices made in this budget to the Joint Think Tank exercise CSBA hosted with three other think tanks in early February 2014.