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Aircraft Carrier Delayed by Budgeteers (From CBS Radio “Eye on the World”)
November 18, 2024 - Will Congress or the new Trump team fix the Biden administration’s shock decision to halt procurement of aircraft carrier CVN-82?  Stopping for two years could be catastrophic.  As I told CBS Radio, about 2,000 companies contribute to building an aircraft carrier, and “some of those long-lead suppliers may go out of business if there is a big gap.”  In a few years, we may not have enough aircraft carriers to cover all the hotspots in the world.
November 18, 2024
Can AI Help in Improving U.S. Military Logistics?
November 14, 2024 - The Wall Street Journal recently published an article highlighting what may be one of the biggest challenges that the U.S. military will face in case of a prolonged conflict in faraway regions: grossly inadequate logistics.
November 14, 2024
Army’s Future Tiltrotor Blazes a Trail in Software, Soldier Feedback (From RealClearDefense)
October 28, 2024 - Drones and unmanned systems are a big part of the Army’s future, but so is a revolutionary manned aircraft: FLRAA, the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft.  Read my analysis from Real Clear Defense below and here. In August, acquisition officials signed off on Milestone B, launching FLRAA toward first flight in 2026 and a potential $70 billion program.
October 28, 2024
Poland Will Be the New NATO Abrams Tank Center for Sustainment and Co-Production 
October 21, 2024 - The first of the Polish Army’s 250 new M-1 Abrams V3 tanks, the most modern version, will soon be delivered to that stalwart East European ally. Those combat vehicles will focus the Polish Defense Ministry’s attention on getting a maintenance and sustainment capability in place quickly.  They will need to avoid having inoperable tanks while they are urgently needed to deter potential Russian aggression.
October 21, 2024
Strike at Boeing Hits USAF KC-46 Tanker, Supply Chain
October 16, 2024 - With the strike at Boeing entering a second month, what about the impact on national security?  On Monday, President Joe Biden dispatched Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su to Seattle for the first in-person meeting between a government official and the two parties.  Su’s mandate was to “encourage both parties to move forward in the bargaining process,” according to a Labor Department spokesman.
October 16, 2024
6 Ways Iran Could Strike U.S. in the Mideast or Here at Home (from Fox News)
October 10, 2024 - As I wrote for FOX News today, Iran’s terror goons are in crisis mode right now. Having seen their missile attack on Israel fail yet again due to Israel’s powerful defenses, Iran is now expecting an Israeli counterstrike. “There will be severe consequences for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday, October 1. All the G7 nations agree Israel has the right to strike back, President Joe Biden added Wednesday.
October 10, 2024
Poland’s Secret Weapon Goes Beyond Abrams Tanks (From RealClearDefense)
September 30, 2024 - Poland has a secret weapon. No, not just the Abrams main battle tanks, F-35 stealth fighters, Patriot air defenses, Apache helicopters or other top-line equipment purchased by Poland.  Poland’s secret weapon centers on its intense national commitment to security against a resurgent Russia – and the favorable American opinion this inspires.
September 30, 2024
First-Ever ‘China Week’ Takes Aim At America’s Dependence On Beijing (From Fox News)
September 27, 2024 - The China fight is on.  Read my FOX Opinion piece here.  ICYMI, last week the House of Representatives passed stepped up to the Herculean task of passing 25 bills targeting Chinese intrusions into America’s economy and technology.
September 27, 2024
Fighter Planes Rule, So Why Is The USAF Delaying Its Advanced NGAD Plane? (From RealClearDefense)
September 16, 2024 - Take a look at the forces deterring Iran in CENTCOM, and one conclusion jumps out: fighter planes rule. Yet the Air Force has stopped dead on its program for a new fighter plane known as Next Generation Air Dominance or NGAD. The Air Force’s hesitation runs contrary to real-world demand. Admiral S. J. Paparo, Commander, INDOPACOM, wants NGAD. “Fully adopting fifth-generation aircraft by getting the Ford class certified for F-35C operations and expediting development of Next Generation Air Dominance are imperatives,” Paparo wrote recently.
September 16, 2024
The EU Retools For New Assaults On American Companies (From RealClearMarkets)
September 11, 2024 - The European Union (EU) has gone after American business with a vengeance for the past decade, imposing billions of dollars of fines against highly reputable companies, requiring product and service changes for Europe that primarily help European companies, and threatening many additional actions.
September 11, 2024
U.S. Venture Capital is Now in the High Tech Weapons Business
August 29, 2024 - The Wall Street Journal recently featured Anduril, a defense start-up company and its founder Palmer Luckey, as an illustrative example of Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists’ new focus on new defense companies working on futuristic weapons systems.
August 29, 2024
With Focus On Red Sea, U.S. Navy Has An Aircraft Carrier Gap In The Pacific (From Defense Opinion)
August 27, 2024 - Sending the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier at high speed to the Middle East has created an aircraft carrier gap in the Pacific. Read my piece for Defense Opinion here, and below.
August 27, 2024
Kursk Pocket Shows Ukraine Still in the Fight (From Real Clear Defense)
August 19, 2024 - Ukraine’s war against Russia is a stalemate no more. Putin did not see this coming. And NATO is content to let Ukraine take the war to Russia. Read full article here.
August 19, 2024
Iran Beware: US Moves These 6 Top Of The Line Strike Options Into Position In The Middle East
August 12, 2024 - Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is making sure U.S. Central Command is prepared to attack Iran, and/or its proxies, if Tehran strikes in the next few days. Read my 8.12.2024 piece for FOX News here.
August 15, 2024
Air Force Wavering on New Fighter Imperils World’s Most Advanced Engines
July 16, 2024 - America has something China doesn’t: the world’s most advanced fighter plane engines. Unfortunately, the U.S. Air Force is teetering on the edge of losing that precious lead, by delaying or restructuring its secretive Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD fighter. My article for Defense Opinion is here.
August 1, 2024
The U.S. Marines: They’ve Got The Answer, But Not The Ships (From RealClearDefense)
June 18, 2024 - The U.S. Marine Corps has been developing solutions to the China problem. Numbers will favor the PRC in any crisis that features extended naval warfare within a few hundred miles of China’s coast. Hence the importance of the Corps’ Force Design effort to field forces relevant to such conflict and the urgency with which the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding problem must be solved.
July 1, 2024
Five Ways AI Benefits The U.S. Military
Understanding the potential benefits of AI will play a key role in making America’s armed services more effective. Our newsletter below discusses the ways in which AI developments can make a positive impact on the military.
June 20, 2024
America Needs Maverick
WASHINGTON – Recently I happened to watch three movies and a short docudrama that left a strong impression. The stories are quite different and yet they have a central theme. In different ways they are an inspiring celebration of American resourcefulness, sometimes against the rules, resilience and dogged determination: the “can do” Maverick spirit.
June 18, 2024
America’s D-Day Pledge To Leadership Still Strong
June 6, 2024 - June 6, 1944, is remembered as a moment of great triumph and sacrifice and the beginning of America’s global leadership. Bonds were forged with allies Great Britain and Canada on the beaches of Normandy. Less than a year later, Hitler was defeated, and the peace won in Europe has lasted to this day. Freedom guaranteed by NATO extends to 32 nations and holds across Europe from Helsinki to Istanbul.
June 13, 2024
The Concept Driving The Army’s Air Assault Plans For The Indo-Pacific (From Breaking Defense)
June 5, 2024 - Chinese President Xi Jinping’s appetite for confrontation is rising. An emerging role for the Army in the Pacific will center on inserting forces to control short, sharp confrontations over islands and terrain features in the South China Sea.
In Ukraine (and Elsewhere) Russia and Friends Will Win by Default
May 1, 2024 - It is a sign of our troubled times that the much delayed vote by the US House of Representatives to approve a large package of military assistance to Ukraine (about $ 60 billion), along with additional packages directed at other US allies, has been celebrated as a triumph, yet another demonstration of American strong leadership when it comes to defending freedom and democracy around the world. Mike Johnson, Republican Speaker of the House, is now compared to Winston Churchill. Yet, this is the same Speaker who for months prevented a vote on the same package because of the pressure from members of his own Republican Party –in truth the openly pro-Putin wing of the GOP– adamantly opposed to military aid to Ukraine.
May 2, 2024
Low Earth Orbit Is A High-Value Domain (From RealClearDefense)
Low Earth Orbit – known as LEO – is the future for communications satellites. It’s also a high-value domain for national security. And it’s getting crowded. Elon Musk’s Starlink has over 5500 satellites on orbit and just launched 23 more Friday morning. Amazon is putting $10 billion into its LEO constellation named Kuiper that will build out to 3,236 satellites.
April 4, 2024
Our Economic And National Security Depend On Microelectronics No Longer Made In America
March 19, 2024 - In 2017, the Economist declared: “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.” The backbone of this digital economy is microelectronics. From simple switches to sensitive national security systems, today’s world runs on microelectronics. National security systems and every industry vertical making up our critical infrastructure depend on a technology stack comprised of semiconductors, integrated circuit substrates, and printed circuit boards (PCBs). Most of these components were invented and designed here in America but manufacturing was sent offshore chasing cheap labor and hefty government subsidies, primarily in Asia.
March 21, 2024
Why The Pentagon Needs A Quantum Czar
February 27, 2024 - Just when you thought drones, artificial intelligence and hypersonic missiles were the must-haves for future warfare, here comes yet another priority: quantum computing. Quantum computing literally changes the basis of information sciences. The Pentagon knows that, and has been fueling quantum information science research for years. In fact, across the government, there are no less than 14 quantum-focused centers at work on problems ranging from communications to extreme computing and entanglement distribution for secure encryption.
February 27, 2024
Patriots Among Us
February 22, 2024 - While we all enjoyed our President’s Day off on Monday, today is actually George Washington’s birthday. All hail to our first commander-in-chief. President’s Day was first consolidated to combine Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays, which was a good cause. But it has become watered down in the public mind, and now for many people it is a celebration of all our presidents. That is too bad, so the Lexington Institute has decided to go ahead and celebrate Washington’s birthday on its own with the below article.
February 22, 2024
America’s B-1 Bomber Teaches Iran A Firepower Lesson (From Fox News)
February 9, 2024 - On Friday, strikes by U.S. Air Force B-1 bombers demolished 85 aimpoints at four Iran proxy militia target areas in Syria and three in Iraq. And they did it launching from Texas.
February 12, 2024
Air Force’s Sentinel ICBM Program Is Struggling, Potentially Impacting Nuclear Deterrence (From Forbes)
January 01, 2024 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Bloomberg News reports that the Air Force’s effort to replace its aging ICBM force is facing substantial cost growth and multiyear delays. Called Sentinel, the program involves developing a new missile to replace Minuteman III and replacing a vast infrastructure of underground silos and launch centers.
February 1, 2024
Army Modernization, And The Virtues Of Moderation (From Forbes)
November 18, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The U.S. Army is in the midst of a successful campaign to modernize its equipment and close gaps in capabilities needed for an era of great-power competition. This is a distinct departure from the uneven performance of modernization efforts during the Bush and Obama administrations. What changed? Four lessons are apparent. First, the Army developed a clear plan, a roadmap for modernization, in 2018 and stuck with it.
November 21, 2022
U.S. Marine Corps Could Be Left With No Effective Amphibious Warfare Fleet (From 1945)
October 20, 2022 - Issue by by GPI Fellow Daniel Goure. The Department of Defense may be creating a “perfect storm,” a situation in which LSD decommissioning and LPD 17 Flight II production terminations, coupled with increasing costs for the LAW, could leave the Sea Services with inadequate numbers of both large and small amphibs.
October 24, 2022
The Biggest Threat To America’s Global Dominance In Software & Services Isn’t China–It’s Washington (From Forbes)
October 10, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Over the last 20 years, software and digital services have become the most vibrant sector of the U.S. economy. The pace of innovation is furious, and the impact on global commerce and culture is profound. At a time when America was losing ground in many traditional industries, companies like Amazon and Alphabet have redefined what it means to be competitive. That’s a good thing, because as President Biden’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance states, “in today’s world, economic security is national security.”
October 11, 2022
A Diminished America Cannot Win In Ukraine
Looking at the ongoing war in Ukraine, the most optimistic assessment is that Washington, notwithstanding enormous efforts to isolate Moscow and huge amounts of aid to Ukraine, at best managed to prevent Russia from taking over all of Ukraine. This is not insignificant, but hardly impressive considering the economic and military weaknesses of Russia, our adversary. Russia is a second rate economic power. Its GDP is just somewhat bigger than Spain’s. When it comes to their war planning, it seems that the Russians acted on bad intelligence about both Ukraine’s willingness and ability to resists and the preparedness of the Russian invasion force.
October 4, 2022
Beijing’s Blockade Of Taiwan Is The Latest Sign Washington Needs To Streamline Its Defense Trade With Allies (From Forbes)
August 05, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The United States government maintains a complex system for controlling arms sales called International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. It is designed to prevent military technology from falling into the hands of bad actors, but it impedes sending the same technology to friends–even when it is urgently needed. With Beijing now determined to match and surpass Washington in advanced technology
August 7, 2022
Raytheon’s SPY-6 Radar Family Will Revolutionize U.S. Navy Operations (From 1945)
July 15, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Daniel Goure. The U.S. Navy’s new operational approach to winning a high-end fight with a peer competitor is called Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO). The essence of DMO is found in three core tenets: making U.S. forces (particularly naval platforms but also land-based forces) hard to find, hard to kill, and highly lethal.
July 17, 2022
COO Chris Calio Says Raytheon Technologies Is Proving The Value Of The Merger (From Forbes)
July 1, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. When Raytheon and United Technologies disclosed their intention to merge three years ago, they laid out a vision of a consolidated enterprise that would be nearly unstoppable in aerospace and defense. It did not take long for that vision to be tested: the new company had to integrate operations in the midst of a global pandemic. But as time goes by and the pandemic recedes, the business thesis behind the merger is still intact.
July 4, 2022
GSA’s Power Grab Over DFTS Puts Critical Defense Transportation Contracts At Risk (From 19FortyFive)
June 28, 2022 Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Daniel Goure For more than a decade, the Department of Defense (DoD) struggled to find the right contracting mechanism that would allow it to take advantage of the enormous logistics capabilities resident in the private sector. Third-party logistics providers have the experience, tools, databases, and procedures to support a network of transportation providers while minimizing both the cost and time involved in moving goods and materials.
House Strategic Forces Panel Warns Plan For Airborne Control Of Nuclear Weapons In Wartime Is Lagging (From Forbes)
June 16, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren B. Thompson. The Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee is warning that Air Force plans to replace aging E-4B Nightwatch command-post aircraft are lagging. The four modified 747s would be used to command and control U.S. nuclear weapons in a war. In fact, they might be one of the few parts of the command-and-control system that survives the opening salvoes of an East-West war.
June 20, 2022
Navy’s Latest Shipbuilding Plan Is Not Good News For The Industrial Base (From Forbes)
May 13, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren B. Thompson. The number of warships in the U.S. naval fleet has not managed to get above 300 for two decades. Meanwhile, the country the Chief of Naval Operations describes as “our pacing threat,” China, is headed for 400 warships in its own fleet at mid-decade. The disparity is even worse than it seems, because Chinese forces are concentrated close to home, where Beijing also sustains a growing arsenal of long-range, antiship weapons.
May 22, 2022
Russian Aggression Highlights Need To Bolster P-8 Poseidon Maritime Patrol Force (From Forbes)
May 5, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Most of the war coverage from Ukraine is about what’s happening on the ground, but eventually NATO will have to rethink other facets of its military preparations in light of Russia’s aggression. One area that needs a close look with regard to both Russia and China is whether America and its allies have an adequate fleet of maritime patrol aircraft–particularly for finding and defeating hostile submarines.
May 9, 2022
Putin Learns A Lesson Washington Knows All Too Well: Military Power Can Kill People, But It Can’t Change Them (From Forbes)
April 14, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Vladimir Putin apparently launch Russia’s invasion of Ukraine believing that resistance would collapse quickly. The opposite has occurred: the Ukrainians fought back fiercely to defend their culture and identity. Moscow now realizes if it wants to pacify Ukraine, it will have to wipe out much of the population. The lesson is that while military power can be very efficient at dispatching troublesome locals, it is nearly powerless to destroy who they are or what they believe.
April 17, 2022
Air Force Confirms It Plans To Slash F-35 Buy In 2023–But Can’t Explain Why (From Forbes)
March 28th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The Air Force publicly confirmed on March 28 that it intends to buy a much smaller number of F-35 fighters in 2023 than previously planned. It says it still intends to eventually buy 1,763 of the stealthy fighters, but at the proposed rate for next year, that would take half a century. Congress will have something to say about all this. Here are five questions Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall should be ready to answer when budget hearings are held:
April 3, 2022
What Happened To Putin’s Little Green Men? (From RealClearDefense)
March 22nd, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Daniel Goure. Moscow’s assault on Ukraine seems to contradict what we had anticipated about how a future high-end conflict with Russia would unfold. What happened to Putin’s Little Green Men, who were so effective in seizing Crimea in 2014?  Although information coming from Ukraine is often incomplete, it is clear that the Russian military began operations with a defective plan, poorly trained forces, abysmal logistics, limited cyber operations, inadequate air support, insufficient precision munitions, and bad intelligence.
Putin’s Biggest Ukraine Blunder: Energizing German Rearmament (From Forbes)
March 10th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is turning into an epic disaster–for Russia. Its economy has been severely impaired and the reputation of its military is in tatters. However, that is not the biggest problem Putin’s ill-advised move has created for Mother Russia. He has managed to open the pathway for Germany to recover its lost status as Central Europe’s dominant military power.
March 14, 2022
5 Things NATO Must Do To Deter A Dangerous Russia (From 1945)
March 9th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Daniel Goure. The U.S. and Europe must now come to terms with the reality that no set of common interests, economic, cultural, or environmental, will be sufficient to keep Moscow from pursuing its strategic interests at the expense of those of other states. This includes military means. The idea of deterring Russia must now give way to that of defending Europe from the possibility of further Russian aggression.
How To Defend America Against A Russian Nuclear Attack (From RealClearDefense)
March 13th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The conventional wisdom among nuclear experts has long held that defense against a large-scale nuclear attack is not feasible. Nuclear warheads are so destructive that anything less than a perfect defense probably isn’t worth the effort–and no defense is perfect. However, Russia’s repeated nuclear threats since the Ukraine crisis suggest that the West may have no choice but to try defending itself, otherwise it could be coerced over and over again
What The US Army Must Do To Prepare For A War With Russia (From 1945)
February 25th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Daniel Goure. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is just the latest in a series of aggressions the Kremlin has perpetrated over the past decade on its path toward re-creating the Russian Empire and expanding its influence internationally. This latest attack demonstrates that the Russian military’s multi-decade modernization program is working. It also shines a spotlight on areas where the Russian military holds an advantage over its NATO counterparts
March 1, 2022
Putin’s Ukraine Invasion Makes Poland The Linchpin Of U.S. Military Plans In Europe (From Forbes)
February 25th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. With Russian dominance of Belarus and Ukraine now a foregone conclusion, Poland is poised to become pivotal to U.S. military plans in Europe. Like Taiwan in the east, Poland’s loss to the West would be a turning point with profound implications for America and its allies. But if Vladimir Putin is intent on enforcing his demands against NATO, then the possibility of a future military campaign against the Polish state cannot be discounted.
Whether Russia Invades Or Not, Biden Has Handled The Ukraine Crisis Well (From Forbes)
February 14th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. President Biden is living up to his advance billing as a foreign policy and defense expert in dealing with the Ukraine crisis. Operating within severe military, diplomatic and geopolitical constraints, Biden has fashioned a coherent strategy that may yet dissuade Russia from invading. Consider all the things Biden has gotten right. First, he has recognized the limits of intervention.
February 22, 2022
Putin Must Understand: Invading Ukraine Would Be A Historic Mistake For Russia (From 1945)
February 10th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Daniel Goure. The odds are growing that Russian President Vladimir Putin will make the greatest mistake of his career by invading Ukraine. This is likely to result in the very outcomes that the Kremlin claims it seeks to avoid. A new assault on Ukraine would weaken the Russian government, hurt its economy, over-extend its military, strengthen NATO unity and resolve, cause Washington to increase the U.S. military presence in Europe
February 13, 2022
Ukraine Tensions Should Be A Reminder Of Germany’s Nuclear Role In NATO, Which Will Soon Depend On 30 Super Hornet Fighters (From Forbes)
February 09th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Recent criticism of Germany’s reliability as an ally tends to neglect many of the concrete contributions it makes to NATO. One of the least-mentioned contributions is that Germany’s air force is part of a regional nuclear force that deters Russian use of weapons of mass destruction against European NATO nations. It’s a controversial mission, but one to which Berlin has repeatedly confirmed its commitment.
More U.S. Military Equipment Will Help NATO Send Moscow A Message (From The National Interest)
January 30th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Daniel Goure. Europe is closer to war today than at any time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. During his recent press conference, U.S. president Joe Biden asserted that Moscow had the necessary forces in place to conduct a major conventional land assault on neighboring Ukraine. Even if warnings from Biden and Western leaders can deter Moscow from acting on Putin’s threats this time
January 31, 2022
Russia Has A Clear Reason To Invade Ukraine Now If Talks Fail (From 1945)
January 11th, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Daniel Goure. This week, the U.S. and Russia are engaged in diplomatic talks regarding the escalating tensions on Russia’s border with Ukraine. It is a mistake to think that U.S. and NATO concessions regarding Ukraine will satisfy Moscow. President Putin is pursuing a grander, perhaps grandiose, strategy, aimed at establishing Russia as the preeminent power in both Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
January 17, 2022
Army’s Future Vertical Lift Will Reshape The Rotorcraft Industry–And Companies Know It (From Forbes)
December 17th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The U.S. Army has not developed an all-new combat rotorcraft since the Reagan years, but now it is developing two in a program called Future Vertical Lift (FVL). FVL is expected to generate demand for nearly 100 aircraft per year, making it by far the biggest source of demand for the domestic rotorcraft industry. That means leading companies must secure a berth on either the new recon aircraft or the new assault aircraft
December 19, 2021
How To Counter The Chinese Missile Threat: More Missile Defense? (From 1945)
December 13th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI fellow Daniel Goure. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is rapidly building a world-class military that could dominate the Western Pacific. As part of its near-meteoric rise, the PLA is rapidly becoming a missile superpower, capable of threatening the U.S. homeland as well as U.S. forces and allies in the Indo-Pacific region. In order to deter China and ensure that the People’s Liberation Army cannot use its missile power to conduct a disarming first strike against U.S. forces
Are U.S. Missile Defenses Vulnerable To Cyberattacks? (From 1945)
November 18th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI fellow Daniel Goure. The Chinese hypersonic missile threat has made the United States rethink its missile defense approach. U.S. defense officials recognize that America’s missile defense capabilities, while formidable, are designed to track and shoot down traditional ballistic missiles and would struggle with hypersonic systems.
November 29, 2021
Punishing India For Buying Russian Weapons Would Hurt America And Help China (From Forbes)
October 18th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The Biden administration will soon need to decide whether to sanction India for purchasing Russia’s S-400 air defense system. Doing so would be a big mistake. Washington has been working hard to build bridges to India, and now it needs New Delhi to participate closely with Australia and Japan in a quadripartite coalition to contain China’s regional ambitions. Any imposition of sanctions at this point would be counter-productive...
October 25, 2021
Dwindling U.S. Merchant Fleet Is A Crisis Waiting To Happen (From Forbes)
October 08th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Pentagon plans for sealift in a future war assume the availability of commercial cargo vessels and mariners. The government’s organic fleet of five dozen dedicated transports is too small to sustain a protracted campaign, and would require private-sector mariners to operate at full capacity from the initial days of conflict. So it should be a source of concern to military logistics planners that the U.S.-flag fleet of oceangoing commercial vessels has dwindled to a mere 182 hulls.
October 11, 2021
The F-35 Could Be The Dominant Fighter For The Rest Of The Century (From RealClearDefense)
September 16th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI fellow Daniel Goure. The Department of Defense (DoD) has maintained its technological preeminence and military dominance for nearly a century based largely on its ability to continually upgrade and modernize existing systems. Examples include the B-52, F-15 and -16 fighters and the M1 Abrams main battle tank. Much of the current U.S. force structure is based around capabilities first developed decades ago.
September 20, 2021
Why Nothing Can Replace Large-Deck, Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carriers In U.S. Strategy (From Forbes)
September 14th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The United States is the only nation that operates a fleet of large-deck, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers–eleven in all. They are the signature expression of American military power, and by far the most powerful conventional warfighting system ever conceived. Unfortunately, much of the public never hears the details of why carriers are indispensable in U.S. strategy.
Why Raytheon Technologies Could Become America’s Biggest Aerospace & Defense Business In This Decade (From Forbes)
September 02nd, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. When Raytheon and United Technologies merged in 2020 to become Raytheon Technologies, they created an aerospace enterprise with unrivaled market breadth and technical depth. There is a real possibility that by mid-decade, RTX will be the biggest aerospace and defense business in America. At present, Boeing and Lockheed Martin have more sizable sales, but Boeing has suffered significant setbacks in both its commercial and defense units
September 5, 2021
Afghanistan Was Lost Long Ago
August 23rd, 2021- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON – If we go beyond the hysterics, accusations and posturing that followed the sudden, messy fall of Kabul into the hands of the Taliban on August 15, it should be pretty obvious that the US effort to prop up the pro-western government in Afghanistan failed long ago. Kabul did not fall because of something that Washington did or did not do in the last few months. The root of this sudden collapse is old. It is to be found in the systemic weakness, maladministration and endemic corruption of the supposedly democratic government in Kabul that we tried to help and support for 20 years –yes, 20 years!
August 27, 2021
Why A Nuclear Deterrent Without ICBMs Would Be Dangerous And Destabilizing (From Forbes)
August 13, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The United States has long maintained a nuclear “triad” of land-based ICBMs, sea-based ballistic missiles, and bombers. Now some members of Congress are proposing that Washington forego replacing its aged ICBMs. That would be dangerous, because the number of targets an enemy would need to take out in a disarming first strike would fall from nearly 500 to barely 20.
August 15, 2021
The F-35 Is Going To Be The Free World’s Fighter (From 1945)
August 09th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Daniel Goure. The recent decision by the Swiss Federal Council (SFC) to acquire the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) as Switzerland’s next-generation air defense aircraft has made it all but official: the F-35 is fast becoming the free world’s dominant fighter. The Swiss conducted a comprehensive technical evaluation which found that the F-35A “has the lowest operating costs of all of the candidates evaluated.”
August 9, 2021
U.S. Shipbuilding Is At Its Lowest Ebb Ever. How Did America Fall So Far? (From Forbes)
July 23rd, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. There was a time within living memory when America was the world’s biggest builder of commercial oceangoing vessels, and its ships carried a third of global trade. Those days are long gone. The U.S. now typically produces less than ten such vessels annually, compared with over a thousand in China. And barely one-percent of U.S. trade is carried on U.S.-registered ships.
July 26, 2021
Why We Know F-35 Support Costs Will Fall In The Future (From Forbes)
July 20th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The Government Accountability Office put out a report earlier this month purporting to show that the F-35 fighter costs more to operate and sustain than U.S. military services can afford to pay. Somehow, though, the report failed to mention that F-35 is already more reliable and maintainable than the aircraft it will be replacing–not to mention more effective at executing key missions.
Why The Air Force’s “Bridge Tanker” Will Likely Be A Bridge To Nowhere For Airbus (From Forbes)
July 15th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The U.S. Air Force wants to buy 140-160 commercial derivative tankers following completion of the present KC-46 production run in 2029. The effort is called a bridge tanker because it is the transition to a next-generation aerial refueler. Boeing and Airbus are both are likely to bid, in a replay of the competition that Boeing won ten years ago. There isn’t much reason to expect it will go differently this time since they are bidding the same basic airframes.
July 18, 2021
Providing Poland With The M1 Abrams Would Help Secure NATO’s Eastern Flank (From The National Interest)
July 05th, 2021. Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. The 2021 NATO summit put members on the record that they would build a flexible, agile, and resilient force architecture “with the right forces in the right place at the right time.” U.S. and NATO forces along the eastern flank facing Russia are the equivalent of the stand-in force Commandant David Berger envisions for the U.S. Marine Corps. They will be operating from the start of a conflict within the engagement zones of Russian long-range anti-access and area denial capabilities.
July 11, 2021
How We Will Win Against China
July 07th, 2021. Issue brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON – In America and more broadly in the West we have come (belatedly) to the realization that China is not going to become “more like us”. We are now in the early stages of a new Cold War, this time with China. This being the case, as we are now engaged in a new ideological, economic and geopolitical confrontation with a country that is not just a competitor, but an existential threat, how are we going to deal with this threat? Very simple.
July 10, 2021
Future Vertical Lift: Army Aviation’s Master Plan To Defeat China and Russia Without Breaking The Budget (From Forbes)
June 11th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The U.S. Army is leading a rotorcraft development program called Future Vertical Lift that aims to transform the way it conducts tactical air operations. Its immediate goal is to replace Cold War scout and assault helicopters with aircraft that are twice as fast and can fly twice as far. And that’s just the beginning–they will also deliver 360-degree situational awareness, seamless networking and diverse effects in a sustainable and affordable package.
June 13, 2021
The Russian Submarine Threat In The Atlantic Is Growing, But A Low-Cost Solution Is Available (From Forbes)
June 08th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The Russian Navy has recently resumed large-scale submarine exercises in the North Atlantic after a long hiatus. The U.K.’s defense secretary says Russian subs are “circling Britain’s entire coastline.” Unfortunately, the maritime patrol aircraft of America’s European allies have declined markedly in quantity and quality since the Cold War ended, and the U.S. Navy has plenty of other places around the world it would need to cover in wartime.
Deterring China Will Require Better And More Widely Distributed Sensor Capabilities (From RealClearDefence)
May 28th, 2021 - Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. The Indo-Pacific region is vast. The range, speed, and number of advanced weapons, both manned and unmanned, are increasing. U.S. and allied infrastructure are already within the so-called threat rings of potential adversaries’ offensive systems. To cover the environment and deal with growing threats, U.S. air and missile defenses will need increased sensing capabilities spread over a wide area, from the Western Pacific to the Contiguous United States (CONUS).
May 31, 2021
Russia: Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Strategy Spoiler? (From RealClearDefence)
May 15th, 2021 - Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. While the U.S. military likes to talk about being in an era of great power competition, it acts like there is only one real challenger: China. The armed forces are moving to reorganize and re-equip themselves to meet the specific dictates of potential future crises and conflicts in the Indo-Pacific region. Each is seeking to stake a claim on future resources and the prominence of their roles in countering the advance of China. Unfortunately, in its rush to make China the more imminent threat, the Pentagon is downplaying the threat from Russia, the actual most likely adversary, at least in the near term.
May 19, 2021
Army Leaders Endorse Upgrades Of Chinook Helicopter, Cite Industrial Base Concerns (From Forbes)
May 06th, 2021 - Issue Brief by Loren B. Thompson. The U.S. Army’s objections to Block II upgrades of the Chinook helicopter seem to be softening. On Wednesday of this week, Army Chief of Staff James McConville told the House defense appropriations subcommittee that his service needs the additional lift provided by the upgrades, and is mindful of the industrial base impacts if the upgrades do not go forward. The industrial fallout really would be significant, potentially shutting the main production line at the biggest industrial complex in southeastern Pennsylvania and destroying thousands of skilled jobs across a vast supply chain.
May 6, 2021
Great Power Competition Demands Revitalization Of America’s Military Sealift (From the National Interest)
May 03rd, 2021 - Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. In an era of great power competition, the U.S. military has had to relearn a number of strategic facts. Perhaps the most important of these is the central role that sealift has played in the United States’ ability to project power abroad. During the Cold War, the U.S. was able to not only deploy large forces overseas but move and sustain entire armies around the world. Today, 90 percent of U.S. forces are based on CONUS. They will have to get to the fight. Over the past three decades, the US sealift fleet has been allowed to decline precipitously.
 Since the Montreux Convention the possibility of accidents in the Bosphorus increased eightfold
Since the Montreux Convention The possibility of accidents in the Bosphorus increased eightfold  by Prof. Dr. Mustafa ILICALI In recent years, the increasing volume of traffic across the Bosporus has unfortunately started to create new safety threats with each passing day.  While in 1936 only 17 ships per day were passing through the Bosphorus Today, the number is around 130.  In other words, since the signing of the Montreux Convention in 1936, the number of ships passing through the Straits has increased to approximately eight times the original amount. 13,370 ships passed through the Panama Canal in 2020. Each ship that passed paid an average toll of US $ 262,000.  Moreover, 18,829 ships passed through the Suez Canal in 2020, and the average toll per ship is US $296,000.  Based on the Montreux Convention, the fee charged per ship from the 38,500 ships that passed through the Bosphorus in 2020 is just around US $3,900. 
May 3, 2021
US Leaving Afghanistan Is About Politics, Not Geopolitics
April 23rd, 2021. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON – Here we go. After some debate within his administration, President Joe Biden declared that all US troops will leave Afghanistan before September 11, a symbolic anniversary. This is not a decision contingent on conditions on the ground. We are leaving because of domestic politics calculations. Biden thinks that he will gain points with US voters by finally ending the now 20 year old “never ending war”.
April 26, 2021
Hypersonic Weapons Really Matter to U.S. Deterrence of Russia (From RealClearDefence)
March 27th, 2021. Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. Hypersonic weapons could dramatically change the balance of conventional military power between the United States and its major competitors, Russia, and China. Russia is investing heavily in hypersonic systems and is on the verge of deploying a variety of strategic and theater systems. The U.S. started behind its great power competitors but is racing to catch up. Hypersonics will enable the U.S. military to rapidly respond to the initiation of hostilities, strike high-value targets from much longer distances, and offset Russian advantages in dual capable theater missiles, integrated air and missile defenses, heavy armor, and electronic warfare.
April 5, 2021
Taiwan Tripwire: A New Role For The U.S. Army In Deterring Chinese Aggression (From Forbes)
March 26th, 2021. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. A potential Chinese occupation of Taiwan has become the most pressing concern facing U.S. military commanders in the Western Pacific. Washington needs to raise the stakes for Beijing in a way that more effectively deters aggression against the island nation. One way to do that is to permanently station a U.S. Army armored brigade in Taiwan that could help indigenous forces resist invasion. Armored brigade combat teams are among the most lethal ground formations in the world, but their real value in Taiwan is that they would force Beijing to contemplate engaging with U.S. military forces on the first day of conflict.
Ten Reasons Nearly Nothing Can Stop The F-35 Stealth Fighter (From National Interest)
March 4th, 2021. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren B. Thompson. Although over 600 F-35 fighters have been delivered to three U.S. military services and allied forces around the world, some people remain skeptical about the program’s success. However, signs of success are everywhere. It is the most survivable, versatile and lethal fighter in the world. It is being purchased by a dozen allies and is operational in nine countries. The fighter is being continually improved and is contributing technology to the Air Force’s next-generation bomber. It is also becoming cheaper to build and operate. No wonder the chief of staff of the Air Force said last week that F-35 is a “cornerstone” of his service’s future plans. I have written a commentary for National Interest here.
March 17, 2021
No Way Out: Why Nuclear Modernization Is Necessary (From Forbes)
February 24th, 2021. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Last week I participated in an online panel about nuclear modernization. My presentation focused on six slides that summarize why the U.S. has no choice but to modernize its triad of nuclear weapons. The argument comes down to this: (1) There is no effective defense against a large-scale nuclear attack; (2) The U.S. therefore deters attack by threatening unacceptable retaliation, but all the weapons in our triad must soon retire; (3) Maintaining an effective deterrent does not preclude nuclear reductions and costs a small fraction of the defense budget; (4) The Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine will host most U.S. warheads in the future because it cannot be destroyed in a surprise attack when at sea; (5) Land-based ballistic missiles need to be modernized because they greatly complicate the challenge of disarming the U.S. in an attack; and (6) Bombers provide flexibility in a crisis, but their cruise missiles are becoming unreliable and must be replaced to successfully penetrate enemy defenses.
March 8, 2021
Five Progressive Reasons Why President Biden Shouldn’t Cut The Pentagon Budget (From Forbes)
February 02nd, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Some progressive members of the Democratic Party are calling for a cut in defense spending to free up money for domestic programs. However, that might create consequences that are at odds with what progressives want. The Pentagon budget is an economic stimulus and jobs generator for thousands of communities, not to mention the closest thing Washington has to an industrial policy. Only 3% of the budget is currently spent on prosecuting foreign wars in places like Afghanistan. Budget cuts could bring a return of readiness issues that endanger warfighters and undermine the new administration’s credibility on national security. Beyond that, the military needs a technology refresh if it is to keep up with China’s military modernization, and the jobs created in the process could impact voting in swing states.
February 5, 2021
Why The Age Of The Aircraft Carrier Isn’t Over Just Yet (From The National Interest)
January 31st, 2021 - Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. Large-deck nuclear-powered aircraft carriers will be a key part of the Navy’s force structure for the next half-century, at a minimum. The primary reason for this is the remarkable adaptability and flexibility of the carrier air wing. When the current, evolving air wing is married to the functional improvements embodied in the new Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (CVN), the result will be an advanced military capability of unparalleled flexibility, mobility, effectiveness, efficiency, and reach. The ability to tailor the carrier air wing to specific mission requirements, and even to add non-traditional aerial platforms into the mix means that the Navy will continue to project military power over great distances and across the spectrum of conflict for decades to come.
Biden Defense Team Inherits Navy Robotic Warship Research Aimed At Deterring/Defeating China (From Forbes)
December 23rd, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Joe Biden is about to inherit a diverse portfolio of defense innovations funded by his predecessor. One of the most ambitious initiatives is the Navy’s effort to develop unmanned surface warships and submersibles capable of supporting the manned fleet in wartime. For instance, Boeing has a contract to deliver five robotic submarines capable of executive diverse missions with its modular payloads, from mine countermeasures to anti-submarine warfare to tactical reconnaissance. Sea Hunter, an unmanned surface vessel, is a testbed for experimenting with the use of robotic warships that can remain at sea untended for weeks, traversing many thousands of miles. Nobody in the Navy thinks such vessels can replace aircraft carriers or manned submarines, but they nonetheless could make the difference between victory and defeat in a future war for control of the Western Pacific.
December 27, 2020
Geospatial Intelligence–‘Geoint’–Becomes A Focus Of Military & Economic Competition (From Forbes)
December 11th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. After dominating the use of geospatial intelligence for decades, the United States is beginning to fall behind other nations, particularly in fostering a commercial ‘geoint’ industry. The science of using satellites to relate human activity to geography is equally useful for national security and economic purposes, but other nations in Asia and Europe have done far more to make the commercial side of the business attractive to investors. Existing federal policy makes it easier for China to dominate this and other facets of space activity, a goal that Beijing has set for itself by mid-century. If the U.S. wants to continue leading in space, and geoint in particular, it needs to do a better job of relating national security space policy to national economic goals.
December 14, 2020
Why Lloyd Austin Is A Superior Pick To Run The Defense Department (From Forbes)
December 08th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. President-elect Biden’s reported decision to nominate retired Army general Lloyd Austin to become Secretary of Defense is a wise move. Neither Biden nor the other announced members of his national security team have any intimate understanding of what modern war is like. They need at least one peer in their deliberations who has seen war up close, a professional who grasps the human dimensions of conflict. General Austin has seen combat at close hand from several perspectives, and has distinguished himself as one of the preeminent warfighters of his generation.
Five Reasons Return Of Boeing’s 737 MAX To Service Is Important To National Security ((From Forbes))
November 23rd, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. Aerospace is one of the few technology areas where America still unquestionably leads the world. Maintaining that edge is vital to national security. However, many observers don’t grasp the connection between the return of Boeing’s 737 MAX to service and remaining the world’s preeminent aerospace innovator. 737 is the main reason that Boeing is the nation’s biggest exporter. It is a source of cashflow that funds company R&D. It helps sustain an industrial ecosystem containing thousands of U.S. companies. And it is an expression of the American free enterprise system in action. Just as 737 MAX is critical to Boeing’s future, so Boeing is critical to America’s future.
November 24, 2020
Why The U.S. Can And Must Win The Race For Hypersonic Weapons (From RealClearDefence)
November 04th, 2020. Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. Winning the race to deploy hypersonic weapons will be one of the most important achievements in U.S. national security of the 21st Century. For the U.S. and its allies, hypersonic weapons are more than a counterbalance to Russia and China. They hold out the prospect for fundamentally undermining competitors’ massive investments in so-called anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. The Department of Defense has put together a well-thought-out and funded program to provide all Services with hypersonic weapons. Equally important, the aerospace and defense industries of the U.S. and several allies are demonstrating the technical expertise and innovative approaches that are likely to make hypersonic weapons a near-term reality
November 7, 2020
Biden Win Would Be A Mixed Blessing For Aerospace, But A Trump Win Could Be Worse (From Forbes)
October 20th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. President Trump has been a friend of the domestic aerospace sector during his first term, increasing Pentagon weapons outlays and promoting overseas arms sales. However, a second Trump term could be problematic if he tries to decouple from China, withdraws from NATO, or ends U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization. Such moves could make it harder for companies like Boeing to compete with foreign rivals. As president, Joe Biden wouldn’t do any of those things, but he would be less favorably disposed to weapons spending and would inject greater concern about human rights into the consideration of arms exports. Biden would also raise corporate tax rates, increase regulation, and limit the access of industry executives to the White House and federal agencies. So no matter who wins the election, challenges lie ahead for America’s aerospace industry.
Will President Biden Make The Same Mistake On Missile Defense That President Obama Did? (From the National Interest)
October 24th, 2020. Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. All the services understand that both their legacy fixed facilities (such as Guam) and new expedient bases will be subject to an an expanded array of threats, including attempts by unconventional forces to penetrate their perimeters. Expedient bases face the additional challenge of providing perimeter security while simultaneously setting up a new base, conducting missions, and eventually conducting a withdrawal. While the main threat to military facilities may come from enemy ballistic and cruise missiles, it is time to consider the possibility of unconventional attacks involving small drones and infiltrators. Defending these facilities will require rapidly deployable sensor systems.
October 29, 2020
Will President Biden Make The Same Mistake On Missile Defense That President Obama Did? (From Forbes)
October 23rd, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. When Barack Obama became president in 2009, he almost immediately set about scaling back missile defense efforts for protecting the American homeland that he had inherited from his predecessor. In the end, he killed almost everything. The only program that remained, Ground-based Midcourse Defense, languished for years. Then Obama’s team discovered that all the warnings they had received about North Korea’s nuclear program were true. So they had to begin building back what they had cut or killed. Will President Biden make the same mistake? If he does, the U.S. could be left vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated North Korean ballistic missiles and a new generation of Russian/Chinese hypersonic weapons.
The Power Of A Growing International F-35 Community
September 25th, 2020. Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. The United States is rapidly building an international community based around the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The military value of such a community is indisputable. The F-35 will be one of the pillars supporting the creation of a new, sensor-rich way of warfare. But as the negotiations that led to the opening of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) demonstrated, potential international sales of the F-35 can provide significant diplomatic leverage as well. Moreover, experience has shown that operating the same platform and training with it alongside the same planes from other nations can bring militaries closer together. By managing the quality of the software and types of weapons available on the UAE’s fighters, the U.S. should be able to ensure Israel’s qualitative military edge.
September 27, 2020
Despite Pandemic, The U.S. Army Is In Its Best Shape In A Generation. Here’s Why.
September 10th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The U.S. Army was a mess when Donald Trump became president in January of 2017. Only two of its brigades were in a high state of readiness, its modernization plan was faltering, and the Army seemed trapped in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, four years later, the Army has been transformed. What happened? Five things stand out: a team at the top with good chemistry that agreed on what had to be done to fix the institution; more money better spent; fewer wars, better waged; steady progress on weapons modernization; and multifaceted efforts to improve soldier training.
Japan’s Rethink Of Aegis Ashore Could Tie Up Navy, Increase Costs And Cause Delays
August 11th 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. On June 15, Japan’s defense minister surprised Washington by suspending work on Aegis Ashore, a system designed to defend the home islands against a North Korean missile attack. Apparently Tokyo will need to craft a modified plan that minimizes the chance interceptor boosters will fall in civilian areas. That’s fine, but what it shouldn’t do is try shifting the land-based approach to sea. Defending the Japanese homeland against missile attack from warships would tie up scarce naval assets, greatly increase costs, limit growth options, and lead to multiyear delays. Aegis Ashore needs to proceed with modest adjustments, because the threat posed by North Korea is urgent.
August 13, 2020
Election-Year Attacks On Big Tech Will Undercut Peace And Prosperity
August 01st, 2020. Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. It’s election season. Politicians at both the federal and state levels are looking for ways of bolstering their reelection prospects. One way of doing this is to stage public spectacles, the modern version of ancient Rome’s gladiatorial games, designed to gain support for politicians from average voters. The most recent example of this strategy in action has been a campaign of attacks on so-called Big Tech: companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google.
August 6, 2020
Impact Of Pentagon Weapons Spending On Jobs (And Votes) In Four Battleground States
July 30th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Advisor Loren B. Thompson. U.S. presidential elections tend to be decided by small numbers of voters in a handful of battleground states. Partisan sentiment is so evenly split in those states that seemingly minor factors can decide who wins all of a state’s electoral college votes. So the fact that weapons makers play a major role in the economies of states like Arizona, Florida and Pennsylvania has intriguing implications for the November election.
July 31, 2020
The NATO 2030 Agenda Needs to Include Strengthening U.S.-Polish Defense Relationship
June 13th, 2020. Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. Earlier this week, NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, launched a new initiative, NATO 2030, to strengthen the Alliance and prepare it for new challenges over the next several decades. NATO 2030 could not come at a more important moment for the Alliance. The Alliance’s geographic, demographic, economic and technological circumstances have all changed significantly over the past three decades. One element of this new security environment is the growing importance of Poland in NATO’s defense strategy. It is important to help that country improve its military capabilities as part of the shift of NATO’s focus eastward. Poland is already acquiring U.S. Patriot air and missile defense systems and has signed an agreement to purchase F-35A stealth fighters.
June 16, 2020
Claims Of Aircraft Carrier Vulnerability Are False, But The Versatility Is Real
June 09th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. There has been a persistent drumbeat of concern since the Cold War ended about the supposed vulnerability of the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The nature of the threat and the likely perpetrators change over time, but somehow the danger to the carriers is always there–at least in the minds of some pundits. It turns out, though, that the carriers aren’t really as doomed as some claim. In fact, Pentagon analysts who want to reorganize the Navy are turning away from the vulnerability thesis as a rationale for change. That’s progress, but it seems that many around Secretary of Defense Mark Esper still don’t grasp the versatility and value of large-deck, nuclear-powered carriers.
A Pentagon Procurement Program That Seems Doomed To Fail
May 16th, 2020. Issue Brief by Daniel Gouré. The Pentagon writes lots of large, long-term contracts, particularly for major weapons platforms. Over the past several decades, the size and duration of contractors for services, particularly in the areas of information technology (IT) and networking, have increased significantly. The problem with massive, long-duration IT contracts is that the pace of technological change often makes them out-of-date almost from the start. An example of one such big contract is the Navy’s new contract to manage multiple IT networks, called the Next Generation Enterprise-Recompete (NGEN-R). The Navy recently awarded this contact to a company without experience with Navy and Marine Corps networks. The Navy’s plan to modernize its IT networks is likely to be dead in the water for an extended period while the NGEN-R contract transitions and networks struggle to deal with the new reality of communications in the era of COVID-19.
May 22, 2020
Air Force ‘Digital Century Series’ Fighters: Technologically Exciting, Operationally Unworkable
May 15th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. The Air Force has a vision of future fighter development that involves buying many different aircraft with limited service lives in small lots. Called the Digital Century Series, it is an attempt to leverage developments like digital engineering to stay ahead of the Chinese. It’s an exciting vision of what recent innovations can enable, but its operational implications are not so enticing. The tactical air fleet that results would be hard to synchronize in wartime, hard to sustain, hard to train pilots for, hard to use in coalition warfare, and hard to build a political base for–which is crucial to maintaining funding.  I have written a commentary for Forbes.
Raytheon Technologies Is Posturing To Be The Pentagon’s Top Cyber Supplier–Both Offensive And Defensive
May 08, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren B. Thompson. Raytheon Technologies, the merged aerospace and defense operations of Raytheon and United Technologies, is a very big enterprise. So big, in fact, that it will take analysts a while to sort out all of the company’s diverse competencies. When they do, it will become apparent that supporting offensive and defensive cyber operations for the national security establishment is a major business line. No company surpasses RTX (its stock symbol) in the depth and breadth of cyber expertise provided to the defense department, intelligence community, and various civil agencies of the government. I have written a commentary for Forbes.
May 9, 2020
Early Lessons From The U.S. Army’s Campaign To Conquer COVID-19
May 06, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren B. Thompson. The U.S. Army has done a remarkably effective job of responding to COVID-19. It has minimized the spread of the viral infection within its ranks, and helped local communities to cope with a surge in cases. So what lessons have Army leaders learned to date from their campaign to defeat the virus? Here are eight: (1) listen to soldiers in the field, (2) don’t wait to make hard choices, (3) discipline makes a difference, (4) keep the threat in perspective, (5) there’s no substitute for organic expertise, (6) you can’t contract for bravery, (7) be sensitive to community impacts, and (8) adapt to keep core missions on track. I have written a commentary for Forbes.
How Aerojet Rocketdyne Manages To Play An Outsized Role In The U.S. Defense Supply Chain
May 01, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren B. Thompson. U.S. policymakers in recent years have become increasingly concerned about the fragility of the defense supply chain. Critical suppliers can become choke-points in the production process if their operations are impaired and no alternate source exists. A case in point is Aerojet Rocketdyne, one of only two major domestic sources of space and missile propulsion following a wave of sector consolidations. AJRD, to use its stock symbol, has a broader range of competencies in its selected field than any other company, and on many U.S. military systems it is the only source of essential production inputs. Aerojet thus exercises outsized influence over the defense industrial base, despite its relatively small size.
May 2, 2020
How Coronavirus Could Permanently Transform The U.S. Military
April 20, 2020. Issue Brief by Loren B. Thompson. Much of official Washington seems to believe that once the coronavirus crisis passes, the nation can get back to normal. That might turn out to not be the case. There may never be a reliable vaccine to ward off COVID-19, just as there has never been a vaccine for the common cold. Even if there is, it will take a long time arriving–maybe years. In the meantime, the military will have to adjust its training and operations to minimize the danger of spreading infection. That is no small thing. Beyond that, every bad actor in the world now realizes that the world’s sole remaining superpower can be crippled by mere microbes, at a time when thousands of scientists around the globe have the skills to fashion novel pathogens.
April 24, 2020
Why The Air Force’s Latest Flight Plan For Its KC-46 Tanker Looks Likely To Finally Deliver Success
April 9, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren B. Thompson. Earlier this month, the Air Force disclosed amendments to the contract it has with Boeing for developing its next-generation aerial refueler. The planes are badly needed to replace aged Cold War tankers, without which many combat aircraft in the joint fleet could not operate effectively in foreign wars. The KC-46 Pegasus, as the new tanker is called, is the most capable aerial refueler ever built. But the Air Force has been unhappy with the plane’s remote vision system that operators use to fit the fuel line into receiving planes during flight. Under the contract amendments, Boeing will implement major enhancements to the vision system, and the Air Force will release $880 million to the company that had been withheld on the 33 tankers already delivered. I have written a commentary for Forbes
April 12, 2020
SOCOM Has Solved The Military’s ‘Tower Of Babel’ Problem
March 20th, 2020-Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. According to the Bible, all humanity once spoke the same language. But when the people sought to build a tower that would reach to the Heavens, God responded by causing them to suddenly speak different languages so they could not communicate and work together to complete the Tower of Babel. The word derived from this story, babble, means a confusion of sounds. Over the decades, the U.S. military has created a “Tower of Babel” problem in the form of incompatible communications devices, waveforms, data protocols and encryption schemes.
March 27, 2020
The EU Will Not Create Its Own Armed Forces
February 17th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. French president Emmanuel Macron said it right. In his speech at the Munich Security Conference he argued that “We need a European strategy that renews us and turn us into a strategic political power.” Indeed, there is no reason why Europe should not be a world power.
March 13, 2020
Five Reasons The U.S. Army Deserves To Be First In Line For More Modernization Funding
February 25th, 2020. Issue Brief by Loren B. Thompson. The Trump defense increases are over, and competition for scarce budget dollars among the military services therefore is likely to grow more intense. They all are facing a shortfall in modernization funding, but the Army arguably has the most compelling case for getting a boost.
Nuclear Threats Are Growing. How Should U.S. Missile Defenses Be Upgraded?
March 5th, 2020. Issue Brief by Loren B. Thompson. The U.S. has a grand total of one program in its entire military arsenal capable of intercepting long-range nuclear warheads aimed at America. It is called the Ground-based Midcourse Defense, and within ten years it is likely to lose its effectiveness against an evolving North Korean threat. The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency has responded by proposing a “next-generation interceptor” capable of defeating pretty much anything that Pyongyang can come up with.
March 7, 2020
Poland is becoming America’s key NATO ally
February 27th, 2020- Issue Brief by Daniel Goure, Following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine, the U.S. began a process of returning military forces to Europe and pressing its NATO allies to increase their defense expenditures and armed forces. More than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, many issues that were assumed to be settled needed to be readdressed
February 27, 2020
The U.S. Air Force’s Latest Budget Is Shrouded In Secrecy
February 13th, 2020- Issue Brief by GPI Senior adviser Loren B. Thompson, When the U.S. armed forces revealed their proposed fiscal 2021 budgets on Monday at the Pentagon, it became clear that the Department of the Air Force has a problem the other military departments do not. Much of what it wants to do with $63 billion sought for new weapons and warfighting technology is secret.
February 13, 2020
How UK Prisons Breed Terrorists 
February 13th, 2020- Issue brief by GPI Senior Adviser Michael Binyon, Coming out of prison in south London after serving only half his three-year sentence for terrorism, Sudesh Amman, a 20-year-old British Muslim, knew what he wanted to do. He was going to kill “unbelievers” – white non-Muslims – and die a “martyr” so that he could go to paradise. He outlined his intentions in a crude note to himself, and had already boasted to his fellow prisoners about the need to kill. He had even staged mock executions with his cell mate.
To Defeat Hypersonic Weapons, Pentagon Aims To Build Vast Space Sensor Layer
February 6th, 2020- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren Thompson, The Trump Administration is pursuing a series of secret military space projects that collectively will cost tens of billions of dollars. At least one of those projects is too big to hide: a Space Sensor Layer that would place hundreds of satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) to track hostile hypersonic missiles, and many ballistic threats too.
February 6, 2020
Three Huge Defense Threats For Which Washington Is Woefully Under-Prepared
February 3rd, 2020- The United States outspends every other nation on defense, and as a result has the best trained, best equipped military in the world. The joint force regularly undertakes missions that no other country’s military would be capable of executing.

However, there are existential defense threats for which the nation is not prepared—existential in the sense that they could make the continued functioning of democratic government within U.S. borders nearly impossible.

These threats get short shrift in national strategy, either because they have never occurred before or because there are no easy remedies. Unfortunately, the vulnerability of the U.S. to the threats could make them attractive options for America’s enemies in the future.

February 3, 2020
Trivializing Impeachment
January 22, 2020- Issue brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, The Democrats who hold the majority in the US House of Representatives did their best to present their vote leading to the start of an impeachment process, potentially leading to the removal of President Donald Trump from office, as a solemn and sad moment dictated by the gravity of the charges and the urgency of the constitutional crisis created by a criminal president.
January 22, 2020
Cyber War Happening Now – We Are Not Ready
January 16th, 2020- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, We are at war. Aggression which one day can take devastating dimensions is targeting America on a daily basis. I am talking about cyber warfare. Unfortunately, it is very hard to label cyber war as “war”, simply because it is vastly different from the “conventional war” we are used to study, discuss and prepare for.
January 16, 2020
Europe’s Dreams
January 13th, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, We heard from Ursula von der Leyen, the new President of the European Commission, that she will lead a “geopolitical” Commission. So, we are led to believe that, under her leadership, there will be deep thinking and strategizing about how to effectively combine the significant European economic, business, investments and military assets so that the EU will play a leading role on the world stage.
January 13, 2020
War With Iran?
January 10th 2020- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, The killing of General Qassem Soleimani, the legendary head of the Iranian al Quds force, is a game changer in America’s creeping hostilities with Iran. I wrote recently that unless the US wants to engage in a conflict over Iraq, this poor, war-torn country is lost to us, on account of the solid Iranian grip on it.
January 10, 2020
Brexit 2020
January 8th 2020- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Michael Binyon, at the end of this month, Britain is to leave the European Union, 47 years after it joined what was then the Common Market. It will be a shock – although long anticipated – for the other 27 members. No country has ever left the EU, and this spectacular no-confidence vote will test the hopes of the remaining members to stay committed and united.
January 8, 2020
Raising The Temperature In The Middle East
January 6th 2020- Issue brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, After the unexpected airstrike that killed IRGC General Qassem Soleimani, right outside the Baghdad airport, analysts began speculating what Trump’s end game may be. In other words, is this just an ill-conceived, spur of the moment decision? Or is this targeted assassination of the master mind of all the Iran-led irregular forces operating with impunity in the Middle East part of a carefully orchestrated US “plan”?
January 6, 2020
How A Dangerous Court Ruling Could Give China The Lead In 5G Technology
December 12, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren Thompson, Despite a chronic trade deficit in advanced technology products, the United States remains a global trendsetter for networking and telecommunications. U.S. companies are currently in a battle with Chinese state-influenced enterprises like Huawei that will determine whether American dominance continues into the era of 5G communications.
December 12, 2019
$22B Navy Contract Highlights Why GD’s Electric Boat Is One Of The Most Valuable Franchises In U.S. Defense
December 10, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren Thompson, This week’s announcement that the Electric Boat unit of General Dynamics will receive the biggest shipbuilding contract in Navy history underscores the unique role that “EB” (as it is often called) plays in U.S. defense. The contract provides $22 billion for construction of nine Virginia-class attack submarines, an amount that could increase to $24 billion if the Navy exercises the option for a tenth sub.

This isn’t the first time Electric Boat has received the biggest naval shipbuilding contract ever. The $17 billion contract for the last “block” of Virginias, awarded in 2014, was also described at the time as unprecedented in size.

December 10, 2019
President Trump Should Offer to Sell M-1 Tanks to Poland
December 4th, 2019- Issue brief by Daniel Gouré, When Poland joined the NATO alliance in 1999, its military was saddled with rapidly obsolescing platforms and equipment largely of Soviet design. In response to the Russian seizure of Crimea and its massive military buildup, Warsaw initiated a major modernization program intended to provide its military with advanced capabilities. One key element of that effort is to upgrade or replace the Polish army’s fleet of old armored fighting vehicles, particularly its battle tanks.
December 5, 2019
Should Washington Sell The B-21 Bomber To Australia?
December 4, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren Thompson, the U.S. Air Force is developing a long-range bomber that will be able to hold any target at risk, anywhere in the world. It is called the B-21 Raider, and will be the most survivable, versatile strike aircraft ever built. It is likely to eventually replace all the heavy bombers in the current U.S. fleet. On November 6, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published an article in its journal The Strategist arguing that Australia should buy 12-20 B-21s from the United States. The article was written by senior analyst Marcus Hellyer, who convincingly laid out the geopolitical, operational and budgetary logic of such a move.
December 4, 2019
After Decades Of Warnings, U.S. Gets Serious About EMP Dangers
November 21, 2019- Issue brief by Paul Steidler, For decades government policy experts and scientists have known about the dangers of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events which could cripple large sections of the power grid for long periods of time. EMP disturbances occur naturally, through solar storms. They could also happen due to high-altitude nuclear bomb detonations or through on-the-ground attacks by terrorists or saboteurs.
November 21, 2019
Once It Gets Green Light From FAA, Boeing Still Faces Complicated Task To Get 737 MAXs Off The Ground
November 13, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, "Consider, for instance, the basic steps involved in returning the plane to service. First the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) needs to approve a software update to the MCAS flight control system and a redesign of the plane’s twin flight control computers so that the MAX can be recertified as airworthy. Then the FAA needs to approve revised training requirements and supporting documents for crews who will be flying the plane. Then the grounding order is lifted, after which each carrier must submit proposed training programs to regulators for approval, training is conducted, and the MAX can finally begin carrying passengers again".
November 13, 2019
Congressional Dysfunction Threatens To Halt Trump Defense Buildup
November 11, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, Over the last several weeks, there has been growing concern on Capitol Hill that Congress might not pass a budget for the 2020 fiscal year that began October 1. When these situations arise, as they almost always do at the beginning of a fiscal year, government shutdown is averted by passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) that maintains prior-year spending levels into the new year.
November 11, 2019
If President Trump Isn’t Reelected, What Will That Mean For The Military?
November 4, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, President Trump isn’t likely to be removed from office through the impeachment process. Even if every Democratic member of the chamber voted for removal in a Senate trial, 20 Republican senators would have to turn on Trump to expel him from office. That outcome looks exceedingly improbable today.

The more plausible scenarios for Trump’s departure would be either resignation or failure to win reelection. The president shows no sign of resigning, so next year’s election looms as the biggest opportunity for those who say the nation can’t stand another four years of Trump to seat a more congenial chief executive in the White House.

November 4, 2019
Why Sell Weapons To Taiwan? Because Washington’s China Strategy Won’t Work Without It.
October 28, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren Thompson, Someday very soon the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan, will receive formal approval from Washington to move ahead with its biggest purchase of U.S. arms in many years. The package includes over a hundred M1A2 tanks, hundreds of surface-to-air and anti-tank weapons, and the first U.S. fighters Taipei has bought from America since 1992.
October 28, 2019
DoD Leaders’ Modernization Plans Will Require Rethinking How It Partners With Industry
October 21, 2019- Issue brief by Daniel Gouré, The Department of Defense (DoD) is on a mission to transform the way it acquires advanced military capabilities. Each of the Military Services has stood up a special organization expressly for the purpose of shortening the cycle time associated with developing and procuring new weapons systems and promoting innovation.

The U.S. Army has been boldest, creating a new four-star command, Army Futures Command (AFC), for the express purpose of speeding up all aspects of modernization. The aerospace and defense industry has a long history of operating special organizations devoted to pursuing innovative solutions to challenging technical and operational problems. Pratt & Whitney, one of the Nation’s premier developers of commercial and military aircraft engines, has responded to DoD’s imperative for rapid modernization by standing up its own innovation cell in Florida called GatorWorks. This new organization is already demonstrating the innovative thinking for which its military customers, particularly the Army and Air Force, are looking.

October 21, 2019
What USTR And Boeing Want From Europe To End The Tariffs
October 14, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, This week’s media coverage of the World Trade Organization’s decision to approve U.S. tariffs on European products in response to illegal subsidies of jetliners has followed a familiar pattern.

The dominant themes are that there are no winners in trade wars; that America and Europe both have legitimate complaints against how the other side’s aerospace sector has operated; and that the tariffs the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) plans to impose later this month are part of a broader Trump Administration strategy to help American companies at the expense of foreign competitors.

October 14, 2019
Five Reasons The Air Force’s Digital Century Series Is Doomed To Failure
October 1, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, The Air Force has embarked on a revolutionary approach to aircraft, satellite and software development that it hopes will greatly compress the time required to bring major advances into the active force. Dubbed the “Digital Century Series” after a burst of early Cold War innovation, the new approach could reduce the time required to develop new combat aircraft to five years, with additional years of time saved in developing military spacecraft and major software advances.
October 1, 2019
Brexit Woes Continue in The UK
October 1, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Graham Bardgett, Will U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson pull a rabbit out of his Magician’s hat and get a new deal from the EU? Or is he determined to drive on over the cliff edge using Emergency Powers to thwart the law?

A vote of no confidence in the UK Government aimed at replacing Boris Johnson as Prime Minister is imminent, the Westminster leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party Ian Blackford said Sunday 29 September. But its success relies, he said, on all opposition parties in the UK Parliament joining forces to prevent the Prime Minister allowing the country to crash out of the EU without a deal amid warnings of catastrophic economic consequences.

On October 15, Britain stops being a democracy
September 30, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, By a vote of 298 to 56 on September 4 and a second similar vote on September 9, the House of Commons voted to approve an election on October 15, yet because of a supermajority provision unknown to the British constitution, Parliament was not dissolved. A Parliament you cannot dissolve is no longer a democratic institution, any more than was the Rump Parliament after Pride’s Purge. On October 15, therefore, Britain will turn the clock back 370 years, into the world of Praise-God Barebone. It will then need a Cromwell, or better still a Restoration to return it to democracy and legitimate rule.
September 30, 2019
Poland Is Becoming the Keystone of NATO’s Evolving Security Architecture
September 18, 2019- Issue brief by Dan Gouré, The Republic of Poland is rapidly becoming the critical member of the NATO Alliance in its increasing efforts to deter Russian military threats and counter Moscow’s attempts to subvert European democracy. Poland is no free rider when it comes to European security. It is spending more money in terms of a percentage of GDP than other NATO countries. The Polish military has a serious modernization program underway that over time promises to make it a serious counterweight to the Russian Army.
September 18, 2019
Thanks to Fracking, No Panic in the US After The Attacks on Saudi Oil
September 18, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, The most astonishing consequence of the unprecedented, devastating attack on Saudi Arabia which crippled the Kingdom’s oil production and refining facilities is what did not happen, especially in the USA.

There was no panic in the US or worldwide; no skyrocketing, out of control oil prices. Yes, crude prices went up, significantly; but not in a dramatic way, if you consider that the supplies of Saudi Arabia, the leading world exporter, (along with Russia), have just been cut down by 50%! That 50% represents 5% of total world supply. In an environment where strong demand matched tight supply, this sudden shortfall would be a disaster, especially for the US, along with China the leading oil consumer. But right now world oil supplies are not stretched, notwithstanding steady demand, thanks to the US fracking revolution which added millions of barrels of oil a day to global energy markets. More on this in a moment.

The President Is Right — China’s Fentanyl Is Killing Too Many Americans
September 17, 2019- Issue Brief by Paul Steidler, Kudos to President Trump for tweets tearing into China and President Xi Jinping on Friday for not stepping up to stop fentanyl shipments to the United States. With 47,600 opioid deaths in 2017 alone, this crisis must end.

The president should double down while sharpening and refining his messaging. And he should do so regardless of the ups and downs of tariff negotiations.

China has become the worldwide manufacturing hub of opioids, and with that has arisen criminal businesses that export fentanyl and other deadly narcotics to the United States. These businesses are sophisticated and slick: they operate through well-designed websites that include online chats, negotiate for bulk purchases, take bitcoin payments and even specify shipping preferences.

September 17, 2019
Why Aircraft Carriers Are The Most Cost-Effective Way Of Containing China’s Military
September 16, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, Deterring and/or defeating aggression by China’s military has become a top priority of U.S. defense strategy. Due to China’s geographical circumstances, Pentagon planners assume that any outward thrust of the People’s Liberation Army, Navy and Air Force would occur in the east, presumably using maritime routes. So it is there that America and its allies intend to block aggression
September 16, 2019
Brexit Mess turns into Quagmire
September 5, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Graham Bardgett High ranking veteran Conservative MPs, including grandson of Winston Churchill, Sir Nicholas Soames, and Father of the House of Commons Kenneth Clarke, helped stop UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushing forward with a disastrous "Do or Die No Deal Brexit” on 31 October.
September 6, 2019
Vigilance Essential for Electric Grid Protection
September 4, 2019- Issue Brief by Paul Steidler, While cyber-attacks that steal credit card information or hacks into celebrities’ computers get far more media attention, electric grid attacks are far more ominous. And, as numerous senior government officials have pointed out, this can be easily done by Russia, China and many others.
September 4, 2019
America Lost Its Ill-Conceived War in Afghanistan
September 4, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, The longest American war is finally coming to an (unhappy) end. America is negotiating its departure from Afghanistan. A draft deal sketching a time line for US troops withdrawal has been hammered by US Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban. Good news? Not really. Let’s be clear. America is not negotiating from a position of strength, after having inflicted painful losses on the Taliban, our enemy. This is not a carefully crafted peace treaty, with credible built-in conditionalities and safeguards.
No Brexit without a deal on the Irish Border
August 22, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Graham Bardgett, Diplomatic relations between the Republic of Ireland and the UK Government appear to have hardened in relation to the increasing prospect of a “No Deal on Brexit”. In Dublin, the Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney, who is also the Republic’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, has said that Ireland would not be carrying out bilateral negotiations with the UK in relation to no-deal Brexit planning.
August 22, 2019
Argentina: From Bad to Worse
August 19, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, Once a prosperous nation, for decades Argentina has been a country in semi-perpetual economic crisis. In 2015 it seemed that the voters had gained some common sense. After years of catastrophic mismanagement by the populist Peronist President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, (preceded by her husband who died in office), characterized by a mix of subsidies, protectionism and massive state interventions, plus a bankruptcy, the voters turned to Mauricio Macri, a pro-business moderate conservative, as the right person to turn things around, restore business confidence, and convince foreign investors to come back to Argentina.
August 19, 2019
A Boeing-Northrop Team May Be The Only Way To Fix The Air Force’s Flawed ICBM Competition
August 13, 2019- Issue Brief by Senior Adviser at GPI Loren B. Thompson, Intercontinental ballistic missiles housed in hardened underground silos are a vital part of the nation’s nuclear deterrent. They are cheaper to maintain and more responsive in a crisis than the submarine-launched missiles and bombers that comprise the rest of the strategic force. At least, that’s what the Pentagon’s most recent nuclear posture review found. However, the 400 Minuteman III ICBMs in the current force are 50 years old, and not expected to be reliable beyond 2030. The Air Force has done an admirable job of keeping the missiles in a high state of readiness, but they need to be replaced. With that goal in mind, the service launched a program called the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) to develop a successor.
August 13, 2019
Army Futures Command’s Report Card After Its First Year
August 12, 2019- Issue Brief by Dan Gouré, Army Futures Command (AFC) was stood up on July 1, 2018. It achieved full operational capability on July 31, 2019. In that time, AFC has made some remarkable strides, particularly considering the U.S. Army’s inherent conservatism. Even before the location of the new command’s headquarters was established or a commanding officer selected, the Army organized eight Cross-Functional Teams (CFTs) to advance the Service’s critical modernization priorities. The CFTs are beginning to produce results.
August 12, 2019
Defense Against Hypersonic Attack Is Becoming The Biggest Military Challenge Of The Trump Era (From Forbes)
August 9, 2019- Issue Brief By GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, Russia and China are testing weapons that can fly several times faster than the speed of sound — in other words, over a mile per second.  In addition to their extreme velocity, these “hypersonic” weapons fly below sensor horizons, are maneuverable, and may even be invisible to radar.  All of which makes them devilishly difficult to track and intercept.  But if effective defensive measures can’t be devised, America’s vast investment in current strategic systems will be largely negated, and the survivability of forward-deployed forces will be doubtful. 
August 9, 2019
Aerojet Rocketdyne Cuts Costs, Builds Infrastructure To Compete For Engines On Future ICBM
August 8, 2019- Issue brief by GPI senior adviser Loren B. Thompson, Last month’s revelation that Boeing may not bid to develop the Air Force’s next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile surprised many. If the company’s concerns about how the program is being competed are not resolved, rival Northrop Grumman may be headed for lucrative monopolies on all three legs of the nation’s nuclear “triad.” The unsettled state of the program, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), doesn’t just impact the big aerospace integrators who want to be prime contractor. It also affects a highly specialized supply chain of domestic contractors whose ranks have thinned dramatically since the end of the Cold War.
August 8, 2019
Why mass shootings? Heavy political rhetoric, psychopaths, and too many weapons
August 6, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, The El Paso slaughter stunned America. It is human nature that when something completely out of the ordinary happens –an immense tragedy in this case—everybody wants to know “why”. And this case the simple “why” seems to be that the young man who went to the Walmart to kill as many Hispanics as he could did so because of his White Supremacist convictions. Apparently, he strongly believes that Latinos and Hispanics are alien enemies, and therefore they must be eliminated.
August 6, 2019
Using Commercial Satellites To Control Nuclear Weapons Is A Bad Idea — But It’s Being Discussed (From Forbes)
August 5, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, Next month marks the 70th anniversary of the day in 1949 when U.S. intelligence discovered the Soviet Union had conducted its first successful test of a nuclear weapon. From that day forward, most Americans have understood that nuclear war would likely be the worst fate that could ever befall our republic. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the appearance of new threats, though, the sense of urgency about nuclear security has waned. The infrastructure supporting nuclear deterrence has decayed to a point where all three legs of the strategic “triad”—land-based missiles, sea-based missiles and long-range bombers—need to be replaced. Meanwhile, the architecture used to command and control nuclear forces has changed little since the Reagan era.
August 5, 2019
Why America is a Unique Country – Part 2
August 2, 2019 Issue Brief By the President of the Global Policy Institute, Paolo von Schirach. Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers of America sincerely believed that “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” were and are indeed self-evident and unalienable rights, given to each human being by a Supreme Being. These attributes, “attached” to each person from birth, were described as Natural Rights, and therefore something that no government could legitimately take away from any and all the individuals who collectively constitute The People.
August 2, 2019
Congress Should Fully Fund The Air Force’s Long-Overdue Competition For A Safer Ejection Seat
August 1, 2019 issue Brief by Senior Adviser at GPI Loren B. Thompson, When a fighter pilot’s plane is hit by enemy fire, he or she may have only seconds to escape the doomed craft. Similar situations can arise in peacetime because fighters are designed to operate at extremes of speed and maneuverability, so training accidents are a hazard of the profession.
August 1, 2019
Five Money-Pit Projects The U.S. Air Force Can Do Without
July 25, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson The U.S. Air Force is currently flying the oldest, smallest fleet of combat aircraft in its history. It has fewer than 200 heavy bombers to cover the entire world, and many are not available for flight on a typical day. Most of the aerial refueling tankers that are supposed to support those bombers on long-range missions are over 50 years old. Hundreds of Air Force fighters suffer from age-related maladies such as corrosion, metal fatigue and parts obsolescence.
July 25, 2019
Five Sobering Lessons From Iran’s Downing Of America’s Most Capable Drone
July 5, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren Thompson, Iran's destruction of a U.S. Global Hawk unmanned aircraft with a surface-to-air missile near the Strait of Hormuz should be a wake-up call for proponents of autonomous or remotely-piloted war-fighting systems. The era of drone warfare is not upon us, because the vehicles currently available for military purposes are too limited in their capabilities to survive combat with a reasonably well-equipped adversary.
July 5, 2019
Saudi Arabia’s Transformation and U.S. Energy Security: Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst…
July 5, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Jonathan Chanis Since the elevation in June 2017 of Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to Crown Prince, or next in line to the King, instability in Saudi Arabia and the wider region has grown to such an extent that many observers and analysts now say the oil geopolitical risk premium—the additional amount of money buyers will pay for a barrel of oil due to future supply uncertainty—has returned.
How To Secure The Internet Of Battlefield Things From Cyber Attacks (From The National Interest)
June 30, 2019- Issue Brief by Daniel Gouré DoD also has a litany of consumer devices running on its networks, from printers to video monitors and cameras to refrigerators. These devices are continually communicating with one another, as well as with higher headquarters all the way back to the Pentagon. Some observers call this the “Internet of Battlefield Things” (IOBT). The exponential growth of the IOBT is creating new vulnerabilities to cyber attacks at an alarming rate.
July 3, 2019
Alaska, Area 1002, And U.S. Energy Security
July 2, 2019- Issue Brief By GPI Fellow Johnathan Chanis The recently passed Senate budget resolution provides the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with a pathway to enhance U.S. energy security by opening Area 1002 of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Petroleum production in Alaska peaked in 1988 at over 2 million barrels per day (mbd) and it has steadily declined since that time. It has fallen by over 1.5 mbd over peak 1988 levels and in 2016 averaged just 490,000 barrels per day (b/d). Throughout most of the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, Alaskan production represented over one-fth of total U.S. crude oil production—a development that greatly increased U.S. energy security. Similarly, today, opening Area 1002—a small part of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge—to oil exploration and development can reduce U.S. foreign import dependence. Increasing domestic oil production is an economic and national security imperative.
July 2, 2019
Five Principles That Will Power President Trump’s Reelection (From Forbes)
July 2, 2019- Issue brief by Senior Adviser at GPI Loren B. Thompson The entire field of candidates seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination seems to be trending leftward in the run-up to primary season. If history is any guide, that will enable President Trump to win a second term despite his manifest eccentricities. Five themes capture the tenor of Trump’s likely reelection bid–peace, prosperity, sovereignty, self-sufficiency and energy (meaning activism). It’s unlikely any progressive candidate can beat that lineup in 2020, assuming the economy remains strong. While Democrats will focus their message on domestic economic and social issues, the Trump campaign will be largely focused on security-related and nationalistic themes. That’s the kind of platform that typically prevails in our quadrennial political drama. I have written a commentary for Forbes
The Military Cost of Defending the Global Oil Supply
June 28, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Jonathan Chanis According to the calculations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the cost to the United States of defending the global oil supply is zero. Failure to accurately assess the true military cost of protecting the global oil supply underestimates the value of the Fuel Economy Standards (FES) program to U.S. national security The zero-cost estimate comes from the way the U.S. government budgets for national defense. Since it is difficult to assign a cost to the oil protection mission—and since the Department of Defense (DoD) would realize no savings if this mission were not pursued—EPA and NHTSA conclude that it is pointless to assign any value above zero for this activity. This approach fails to account for the large opportunity costs of protecting the global oil supply.
June 28, 2019
Trump Drives Down Price Of F-35 Fighter 25% From Obama Level
June 17, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson; Media coverage of President Trump is so consistently negative that a casual observer might easily conclude he has accomplished nothing constructive during his time in the White House. But here is an example of a major spending program where the President pledged to save billions of dollars and proceeded to do precisely that through tough negotiating and relentless pressure.
June 21, 2019
Winston Churchill’s 1914 Turkey Bungles Haunt Trump in F-35 Crisis
June 14, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Sieff Currently, the United States government with the enthusiastic support of far too much of Congress appears to be on a collision course to repeat a catastrophic bungle and insult against the nation of Turkey that Winston Churchill inflicted on the Ottoman Empire more than a century ago. Indeed, the most senior US officials in NATO, including Ambassador to the Alliance Kay Bailey Hutchison, have warned flatly that if Turkey goes ahead with its planned purchase of the excellent S-400 air defense system from Russia, then Washington will cancel its proposed sale of the F-035 to Ankara – a move that the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish people alike would regard as the gravest and must humiliating insult.
June 14, 2019
The Invisible Giant That Dominates Eurasia
April 4, 2019 - Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Sieff: The largest military organization in the history of the world has just announced its annual main military exercises. And the organization is not NATO. The decision to hold the joint exercise -- "Sary-Arka-Antiterror 2019" -- was announced the day before during the 34th meeting of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan. Delegations from India, Kazakhstan, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan attended the meeting, the report said.
April 4, 2019
Two States with no Solution in Sight
March 27, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Research Associate Charles W. Simmons: A major policy shift is underway in Washington. President Trump signed a declaration recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a Jewish settlement in Southwest Syria that was seized by Israel during the 1967 Six Days War because the high elevation – a strategic military advantage – allowed Syrians to easily aim at and hit Israeli targets. It was later annexed by Israel in 1981 but is not legally recognized by the international community.
March 27, 2019
After the Midterms: The Invisible Victory of the US Industrial Northeast
December 20, 2018 - Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Sieff: "The outcome of the November 2018 midterm US Congressional elections was not the sweeping blue wave of Democratic triumph repudiating with national rage the policies of certainly controversial President Donald Trump: But almost un-noticed it confirmed the shock basic results of the 2016 presidential elections."
December 20, 2018
America about to leave Afghanistan?
September 12, 2018 - Issue brief by Paolo von Schirach: "US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford recently made an unexpected visit to Kabul, Afghanistan in order to meet with Government officials."
September 12, 2018
John McCain and the Funeral of America’s Uni-power Moment
September 7, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Sieff: "Who really mourned during the week of exceptional honors for Senator John McCain and what did they really mourn for?  Who really grieved and why? It did not appear to be the American public. At best they were casually respectful. The coverage of his funeral showed at least in Washington DC a respectful stream of thousands of mourners. But there was no outpouring of either numbers or grief."
September 7, 2018
Trump’s Vision & NATO’s Future: Streamline The Alliance For Modern War
July 19, 2018, Douglas Macgregor, It would be wrong for Europeans to conclude that President Trump wants to withdraw all US forces from Europe. The President simply wants the US military to be NATO’s security guarantor of last resort, not NATO’s "first responder."
July 19, 2018
The U.S. Army Could Revolutionize Long-Range Fires (From RealClearDefense)
May 18, 2018 - Issue brief by Daniel Goure: "In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Army Secretary Mark Esper revealed that Long-Range Precision Fires (LRPF) is his service’s top priority. Currently, the Army has a multi-phased program designed to first improve and then transform the capabilities of its artillery, rocket and missile systems."
May 22, 2018
Ozmen’s Selection For Space Council Advisory Group Signals Sierra Nevada’s Arrival As Major Player
February 22, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Loren B. Thompson: "The National Space Council disclosed on Tuesday of this week that Sierra Nevada Corporation CEO Fatih Ozmen has been selected as a candidate to join the council’s user advisory group.  This is a clear signal that privately-held SNC has ascended to the first tier of players in the domestic space sector.  Sierra Nevada is jointly owned by CEO Ozmen and his wife Eren, who serves as President of the company."
February 22, 2018
America Needs to Think About the Next War—Before It’s Too Late
February 22, 2018 - Issue Brief by Douglas Macgregor: "Inside democratic societies, shrewd and far-sighted defense strategies focused on modernizing armed forces for future wars are always difficult to achieve. Thus, when a modernization strategy succeeds as it did in 1991 with the Battle of 73 Easting, Americans should pay attention. At 4:18 PM on 26 February 1991, the two lead cavalry troops of an 1,100-man Armored Cavalry Squadron consisting of Abrams tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and supporting artillery charged out of a sandstorm and attacked a full-strength 2,500-man Iraqi Republican Guard Brigade with T-72 tanks, BMPs and artillery in the Iraqi desert along the North-South grid line referred to as “73 Easting.”
Endless terrorism in Afghanistan
February 2, 2018 - By GPI Fellow Fazle Chowdhury: "The recent blast shook Kabul’s streets. The incident appeared to be near a central part of the city with offices of European Union, a shopping market area and a hospital. The bomb exploded in the crowded street at 12:15pm Kabul time on Saturday January 27. It was set off by an attacker who managed to pass through a very tight security checkpoint disguised as a driver of a hospital van.
February 2, 2018
Why the Army Isn’t Prepared for the Next Great War
January 31, 2018 - Issue brief by GPI Senior Adviser Douglas Macgregor via The National Interest: "After years of service inside the U.S. military’s cutthroat bureaucracy, senior officers can recite the lessons of the past, but very few can grasp their future implications. The challenge is to find ways to create --today-- the armed forces capable of dealing with tomorrow's threats."
February 1, 2018
A Must Read for Trump’s National Security Team
November 17, 2017 - By Daniel Gouré of Lexington Institute: "A newly published report from the American Enterprise Institute, authored by Mackenzie Eaglen, Repair and Rebuild: Balancing New Military Spending for a Three Theater Strategy, should be required reading for the entire national security establishment. The report’s author must be complimented for addressing the disconnect between the magnitude and variety of core U.S. national interests and vital security commitments on one side of the ledger, and the inability of the current U.S. military to defend them all, on the other side. Repair and Rebuild rejects the false choice often found in the current defense debate between the need to shore up current readiness and the requirement to modernize in anticipation of future threats. Instead, it recognizes that the military must do both with an emphasis on ameliorating current weaknesses and capability gaps. Repair and Rebuild provides detailed recommendations for both near-term actions to repair the damage done to the military by decades of underfunding and overuse and initial investments that begin the process of rebuilding its erstwhile preeminence".
November 17, 2017
Boeing Thinks Airbus Is Making A Big Mistake With Bombardier Partnership (From Forbes)
October 27, 2017 - By Loren Thompson of Lexington Institute: "Early coverage of the proposed partnership between Airbus and Bombardier to build the latter company’s CSeries jetliners has made the deal sound like a setback for Boeing. That isn’t the way Boeing sees it. It could have gotten the same deal Airbus got, and chose to not pursue a relationship. Regardless of what role Airbus plays on the CSeries, Boeing expects that hefty duties will be imposed on imports of the planes into the U.S. for years to come. Bombardier will not be able to escape those duties by performing some production at the Airbus complex in Alabama, and any significant shift of jobs there from Canada would create a political firestorm in Bombardier’s home market. After all, Airbus was able to secure a majority interest in CSeries without spending any money — after Canada has spent billions of dollars keeping Bombardier afloat. Airbus will face its own issues with subsidies in the coming year, as the World Trade Organization rules that European governments have failed to remedy illegal launch aid that hurts U.S. industry. That could lead to harsh countermeasures, impairing Airbus business prospects almost as much as the impending demise of its A380 superjumbo. "
October 27, 2017
Choosing A New Trainer Might Prove Challenging For The Air Force (From The National Interest)
August 14, 2017 - By the Vice President of Lexington Institute Daniel Goure: "Later this year, the U.S. Air Force will select a company to build a new jet trainer designated T-X to replace the aging T-38 Talon. Although not a large procurement, the Air Force plans to acquire just 350 aircraft, it is an important one. One might think that picking a winner would be easy. Yet, there are a lot of factors that need to be considered in the selection of a new advanced jet trainer. Clearly, cost will be an important consideration. The way the Air Force wrote the request for proposal gave many in the aerospace and defense community the sense that the lowest price offering, so long as it met a set of baseline performance standards, would be selected. Yet price should not be the only consideration. Evaluators must also assess a number of risk factors. One of these is technical risk or, said another way, technical maturity. Related to technical risk is production risk. Then there is schedule risk which could also create resource risks if projected budgets fail to materialize or funding is stretched out. "
August 14, 2017
Cyber Threat Data Sharing Needs Refinement
August 11, 2017 - By Constance Douris of Lexington Institute: "Technologies are being interconnected and integrated onto the nation’s electric grid to decrease weaknesses. However, these physical and computerized elements multiply the number of access points for cyber risks, making protection of the grid challenging. If done correctly, sharing cyber threat information eliminates the chances for one cyber threat or attack to affect multiple stakeholders."
August 11, 2017
OA-X: An Air Force Program Warfighters And Taxpayers Can Do Without (From Forbes)
August 8, 2017 - By Loren Thompson of Lexington Institute: "After studying the concept for over a decade, the Air Force this summer will host a flight demonstration to determine whether off-the-shelf light attack aircraft have anything useful to offer in the way of future capabilities. Officials are thinking mainly of low-cost, slow-moving turboprops equipped for close air support. The idea doesn’t make much sense. First, turboprops won’t survive operation in most places worth going. Second, the Air Force already has a host of other aircraft available for the mission that is more capable. Third, rather than saving money, OA-X (as it is called) will cost the Air Force money it doesn’t have for the next decade or so. Fourth, even in uncontested air space, jets offer numerous performance advantages over turboprops in performing close air support. Finally, the global war on terror seems to be winding down, while the threat of high-end combat with near-peers is growing."
August 8, 2017
Five Fast-Track Options For Blunting North Korea’s Missile Threat To America (from Forbes)
August 7, 2017 - By Loren Thompson of Lexington Institute: "Diplomacy is getting U.S. leaders nowhere in slowing the North Korean missile program, so now Washington will need to consider its military options. Beefing up missile defense of the homeland is much less dangerous than taking offensive action against North Korea. But all of the near-term defensive options for coping with the danger focus on one program: Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD). No other program in the Pentagon’s portfolio can intercept long-range ballistic missiles in the time frame when better defenses will be most urgently needed. So the Trump Administration needs to think in concrete terms about how to quickly make GMD as effective as possible. The most compelling options are increasing the number of interceptors above a planned 44; accelerating development of a redesigned kill vehicle to be carried on the interceptors; upgrading sensors used in discriminating hostile warheads from decoys and debris; building additional missile defense sites, perhaps with mobile launchers; and picking up the pace of testing to assure GMD would function successfully in a crisis. "
August 7, 2017
What Would A President Pence Mean For America’s Military?
June 20, 2017 - By Loren Thompson of Lexington Institute: "If the troubled presidency of Donald Trump ends early, vice president Mike Pence would presumably become president. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what that would mean for domestic policy because Pence is a movement conservative who has been remarkably consistent over the years on subjects like abortion and regulation. When it comes to the military, though, Pence’s views are less clear. His father was a decorated combat veteran in Korea and his only son is a lieutenant in the Marine Corps. Pence hails from a region and a tradition that venerates military service. His voting record over six terms in the House was generally hawkish. But like fellow Tea Party alumnus (and White House budget director) Mick Mulvaney, Pence looks like more of a deficit hawk than a defense hawk. In other words, he probably wouldn’t back big increases in military spending unless they could be offset in a way that minimized new federal borrowing. With personnel and readiness always funded first in the Pentagon’s budget, modernization of aging combat systems might lag in a Pence administration — despite his Hoosier-based affinity for heavy manufacturing."
June 20, 2017
The U.S. Military Is Suffering A Crisis Of Strategy, Not Just One Of Readiness
June 19, 2017 - By Dan Goure: "Everyone agrees that the U.S. military has a readiness crisis. Yet more consequential for the future of the U.S. military than its current readiness crisis is the crisis of strategy. The U.S. military has been at war with Islamic terrorism for more than 16 years. The U.S. must confront the reality that it is involved in a conflict which can neither be avoided nor can be won; it is a problem to be managed. The search for victory in the current fight requires an enormous expenditure of resources and lives, adding to the wear and tear on platforms and personnel while, in a budget-constrained environment, draining the military of resources desperately needed to modernize its aging force structure for the fights to come. I have written on the need for a new strategy for The National Interest."
June 19, 2017
How Raytheon Will Unlock The Value Of Its Cyber Security Business For Shareholders (From Forbes)
June 15, 2017 - By Loren Thompson of Lexington Institute: "Defense contractor Raytheon is flying high. Its stock is trading near an all-time high, up over 80% since Dr. Thomas A. Kennedy became Chairman & CEO in 2014. E.P.S. rose 21% year-over-year in the first quarter, and Wall Street is noticing. Argus Research says the company's business mix and growth outlook merit a premium valuation. Morningstar says Raytheon is poised "for some of the fastest growth in the defense industry," and despite the recent run-up in share price is 'the least expensive pure-play defense name' "
June 15, 2017
Washington Must Act Now to Stop North Korean Missiles
May 9, 2017 - By Sean Kennedy: "North Korea’s nuclear capabilities are increasing while Washington fails to fully fund Ground-based Missile Defense (GMD) that could protect the US homeland from a devastating nuclear attack. It is imperative that Congress and the White House act to get GMD ready for the likely event that a hostile state tries to strike the United States."
May 9, 2017
Eisenhower’s ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ Shrinks to 1% Of Economy (from Forbes)
May 8, 2017 - By Loren Thompson of Lexington Institute: "During the early days of the Cold War, the United States had a public and private weapons sector that consumed resources equivalent to 3-4% of gross domestic product. President Eisenhower referred to the industry and its supporters in government as the “military-industrial complex,” hinting that they might exercise undue influence over federal priorities. Perhaps he was right."
May 8, 2017
GMD: The Only Program That Can Stop A North Korean Nuclear Warhead From Reaching America (From Forbes)
April 28, 2017 - By Loren Thompson: Nuclear weapons are the worst military threat that America faces. A single 500-kiloton warhead exploded over a major U.S. city would destroy or heavily damage all buildings to a radius of three miles, and cause widespread fires to a radius of six miles. Electric grids and other fragile infrastructure would fail for tens of miles in every direction. If it was a big city like New York or L.A., prompt and delayed fatalities would likely exceed a million people. Radiation would render much of the damaged area uninhabitable for years.
April 28, 2017
Five Reasons Trump Won’t Reverse The U.S. Military’s Long Decline (From Forbes)
April 27, 2017 - By GPI Senior Adviser Loren Thompson: "Donald Trump ran for the presidency promising that he would rebuild America’s military. The joint force definitely needs renewal, but after 100 days in office, Trump doesn’t look like the leader who can accomplish it. For starters, the military has been in gradual decline for a long time — roughly two decades — and that isn’t likely to be fully turned around during Trump’s tenure."
April 27, 2017
Army Needs To Speed Up Efforts To Close Critical Capability Gaps
April 24, 2017 - By Dan Goure of Lexington Institute: "Over the past year the U.S. Army has been conducting a Strategic Portfolio Analysis Review (SPAR) of its 780 weapons and equipment programs. Championed by Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, the key requirement of the SPAR is to identify modernization priorities that must be pursued in order to maintain and eventually regain overmatch to credibly deter and defeat near-peer adversaries. Based on the SPAR’s identification of critical capability gaps, the Army’s leadership will decide which programs require immediate attention and resources and which programs can be slowed down or de-scoped to extract resources to be placed against higher priority needs."
April 24, 2017
Terrorism
April 16, 2017 - By GPI Senior Adviser, Michael Binyon: "Swedish police have begun questioning the Uzbek driver who rammed his truck into a shop-front in Stockholm, as nervous Swedes wonder whether more of the large number of disaffected Muslim immigrants in their midst are preparing suicide bombings."
April 17, 2017
How White House Budgeting Director Mick Mulvaney Sabotaged Trump’s Defense Spending Increase (From Forbes)
March 31, 2017 - By GPI Senior Adviser Loren Thompson: "President Trump has made rebuilding America’s military one of his top priorities. He says it is more important than controlling budget deficits. However, that is not the way White House budgeting director Mick Mulvaney apparently sees it. He has structured proposed defense spending increases for the current fiscal year and next year in a manner that makes them almost impossible to pass on Capitol Hill. Among other things, they would require Democrats in the Senate to go along with repealing a law capping defense outlays even though Mulvaney proposes to fund the military increases by slashing domestic programs important to the party. That’s the exact opposite of what Democrats have said would be required to win their buy-in on more defense spending."
March 31, 2017
Aircraft Carriers: The Unique Value of America’s Most Famous Combat System
Research Report by GPI Senior Adviser Loren Thompson of Lexington Institute: "Aircraft Carriers: The Unique Value of America’s Most Famous Combat System"
March 6, 2017
Army Warns Congress Its Budget Behavior Will Get Soldiers Killed
February 16, 2017 - by GPI Senior Adviser Loren Thompson: "Congress hasn’t managed to complete a federal budget in time for the beginning of the new fiscal year since 1997. The partisan dysfunction that has discredited Capitol Hill in the eyes of many voters is so serious that it threatens to get soldiers killed. That’s what the vice-chief of staff of the Army told congressional armed-services committees last week, warning that his own service may be forced to send soldiers into combat that are under-trained and poorly equipped for lack of money."
February 16, 2017