Regardless of who wins the November presidential election, current law dictates that massive cuts in defense spending will take affect on Jan. 2, 2013. It’s a policy known as sequestration, and it will take $492 billion out of the defense budget. Speaking at Heritage’s Bloggers Briefing this week, House Armed …
Defense officials need to rethink the way they award contracts, says Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute. Goure argues that, in its effort to promote competition, the Pentagon has actually convoluted its system and potentially weakened the defense industrial base. Frequent changes to regulations make it difficult for …
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 …
President Obama’s new national defense strategy is a budget-driven exercise masquerading as a strategic plan, writes Heritage’s Kim Holmes, former Assistant Secretary of State, in The Washington Times. In trotting out the new strategy, President Obama said the “tide of war is receding.” Accordingly, U.S. forces will “no longer be …
President Obama visited the Pentagon on Thursday to outline his plan for gutting our nation’s military. Obama’s vision makes America more vulnerable to foreign threats and leaves our armed forces less able to provide for the common defense. As we’ve previously illustrated, Obama has proposed significant reductions to the Pentagon’s …
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta asserted during a press conference on September 20 that the recently enacted debt ceiling law requires $450 billion in savings from the Department of Defense (DOD) budget over the next 10 years. While this is a widely accepted assertion, it is not accurate. The debt …