China’s weapons acquisition cycle 5-6x faster than the United States — “We are going to lose” if we don’t change
I would tell you anecdotally that China is still, after gains we’ve made in the last five years or so, about five to six times […]
defense budget
Noah Smith on defense spending and diversification
But the next question is, how do we prevent such debacles from happening? Simply slashing defense budgets seems unlikely to do the trick, for the […]
Inflationary lessons for the Department of Defense
Here’s Friedrich Hayek discussing the negative consequences of economist’s presumption that they can control macroeconomic outcomes — from his 1974 Nobel prize speech The Pretense […]
Defense budgets are “sticky” in the near term
In a letter to committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and ranking member Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the Democrats, most of whom are in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, urged the panel’s […]
The boarder wall and reprogramming authority in the DOD
While serving as undersecretary of defense (comptroller), I presided over DoD financial management during the dark days of 2013 when sequestration slashed funding for military […]
Wild ride on the Trump defense budget
It is interesting how fragile the DOD is with respect to small changes in the budget plans. We find strong push-back from defense insiders that modest cuts will lead to large risks. Either you scale back military operations or you cut investment in new systems …