What to Look for in the FY 2021 Defense Budget Request
In this brief, experts from the CSIS International Security Program outline major issues to watch in the FY 2021 defense budget.
Author:
Tom Karako
65 items, Page 2 of 7
Trump’s Blind Spot
New missile defense plans depend upon the success or failure of one thing: a new layer of space-based sensors. At the January release of his administration’s new missile defense policy review, President Donald Trump announced the beginning of a “new era” for missile defense. To be sure, a new period of missile threats has already...
Coup-proofing? Making Sense of Turkey’s S-400 Decision
On July 12, Turkey received the first elements of the S-400, a fourth-generation surface-to-air Russian missile system. Few recent weapon sales have been as geopolitically charged as this one. U.S. officials have threatened both military and economic sanctions should Turkey acquire the Russian system. The delivery comes after many years of negotiations for more advanced...
Act Now to Advance Air and Missile Defense
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan has warned that the U.S. has come to take military superiority for granted, as a kind of birthright. Perhaps no aspect of military superiority has been taken for granted in the post-Cold War period more than air superiority. With the return of great-power competition and the renewed need to...
Distributed Deterrence: The Continuing Utility of ICBMs
Like its three predecessors, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review reaffirmed the need for the nuclear triad of bombers, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Now comes the hard part. With the authorization and appropriation cycle for fiscal 2020 now underway, the United States is moving closer to the coming bow wave of modernization efforts...
The Missile Defense Review: Insufficient for Complex and Integrated Attack
The 2018 National Defense Strategy calls renewed strategic competition with major powers the central challenge of our time. The 2019 Missile Defense Review (MDR) represents the Trump administration’s attempt to adapt US missile defense policy, posture, and programs to this challenge. Upon the document’s public release in January 2019, President Trump stated that it marked...
Masterpiece Theater: Missed Opportunities for Missile Defense in the 2020 Budget
Just over a year ago, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan announced that the 2020 defense budget would be the “masterpiece” that would finally align Pentagon spending with the new direction of the National Defense Strategy. The release of the new budget follows the January 2019 release of the Missile Defense Review, which laid out...
The 2019 Missile Defense Review: A Good Start
The Trump administration has today released its long-awaited Missile Defense Review (MDR). Initiated pursuant to both congressional and presidential direction, the report represents an attempt to adapt U.S. missile defense policy, posture, and programs to the strategic environment of great power competition. The United States and its allies face a more complex and challenging aerial...
Beyond the Radar Archipelago: A New Roadmap for Missile Defense Sensors
In missile defense circles, commentators frequently remark that that there are only so many islands or ships in the Pacific on which to put radars. Reading through recent missile defense budget requests, however, one is struck by the fact that the Pentagon seems to have doubled down on a strategy of building a chain of...
Don’t Dumb Down This US Army Radar
Abandoning 360-degree coverage would make air defenses more vulnerable and undermine their mission Press reports and statements from U.S. Army leadership suggest that omnidirectional capability for the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, may be slipping away as the threshold requirement it deserves to be. Air defenders and joint forces under their...