The Department of Defense’s recently released budget is based on a hope that the international environment has structurally changed and that the United States will never again face the obligation of fighting two major wars simultaneously, according to the most recent publication by the Defending Defense Coalition of the American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, and The Heritage Foundation. As a result of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), the military budget will be slashed by at least $487 billion the over the next 10 years. This is a …
One thing every parent knows is that no matter how many toys kids have, they will always end up fighting over one they all want. With children, this problem is usually resolved by adults. But what about when adults fight over a toy? That is the problem House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-NY) and Ranking Member Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS ) confront in their letter to Speaker John Boehner (R–OH), in which they call for consolidation of legislative oversight over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). While …
On August 23, 2011, a 5.8 earthquake centered in Virginia was felt throughout the mid-Atlantic. Minor by the standards of the West Coast, the earthquake, even on the less-prepared East Coast, resulted in no deaths or serious injuries and only minor structural damage. Yet President Obama still declared the earthquake a “Major Disaster” and, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Administration has distributed over $25.2 million in recovery aid as of January 16. This incident is one of the countless examples of the overuse of FEMA aid …
In discussing the Department of Defense’s upcoming budget request, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stated “our approach was to use this as an opportunity to maintain the strongest military in the world, to not hollow out the force.” In reality, America’s enemies will quickly determine that the United States will not be able to cover its responsibilities worldwide. The Secretary’s projections, which account for only preexisting Obama Administration cuts, include a reduction of Army ground forces from 562,000 to 490,000 troops—despite the fact that U.S. military readiness is already in a …
The future is not bright for the U.S. military. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave America a glimpse of the half-trillion dollars in defense spending cuts requested by the Obama Administration and detailed how the U.S. military’s capabilities would be affected in practical terms. The result is a slashed and burned military that woefully lacks the forces it needs to meet America’s security challenges on a global scale. On the ground, in the sea, and in the air, American forces will shrink drastically — the Army will shrink by 72,000 …
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta today laid out details of a plan to cut a half a trillion dollars from defense spending. That’s in addition to the half-trillion in cuts required under the Budget Control Act. The Wall Street Journal reports that, as part of the plan to cope with funding cuts and reduced troop levels, the U.S. military plans to increase the U.S. fleet of unmanned drones by 30 percent and increasingly rely on special-operations teams based around the globe. Unfortunately, that won’t be sufficient to manage America’s defense needs. …
Editor’s note: Earlier this month, the Huffington Post published a “commentary” on the F-35 by four left-leaning defense analysts. Clearly, none of these men are fans of the joint strike fighter. Unfortunately, their commentary focused mostly on sliming James Jay Carafano—one of the nation’s leading national security experts—and insinuating that his employer, The Heritage Foundation, is a shill for Lockheed-Martin. Their charges are as bogus as they are shrill. Dr. Carafano wrote a measured response to this piece, which the Huffington Post has thus far not seen fit to print. It …
A recent article by the Associated Press leaves the reader with the impression that there haven’t been any defense cuts since the 1990s and that defense spending has not been “on the table” in recent deficit-reduction efforts. Nothing could be further from the truth. The article states that the cuts to defense under the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011, beginning in 2013, are “the first outright cuts since the so-called peace dividend of the early 1990s.” In reality, defense budgets have already been cut, are being cut now, and …
During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, President Obama largely glossed over the ongoing war in Afghanistan, where nearly 100,000 American soldiers are fighting to prevent the reemergence of a terrorist safe haven in the region. He did, however, deliver a misleading statement on the subject in declaring that “the Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.” The President’s inaccurate statement was duly noted by the Associated Press’s SOTU fact check, which highlighted findings of the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) …
Today, Earth is going to feel impacts of a solar storm. Millions of charged particles are heading toward Earth from the sun. This “space weather” has been created by the largest solar storm in the past six years. Impacts could range from losing communications between satellites and ground stations to causing damage to the electrical grid. One of the U.S. airlines is preemptively re-routing its flights away from the North Pole to avoid impacts of the geomagnetic storm. But this pales in comparison to truly massive space weather or electromagnetic …
