Defense Budget 2021

Naval Warfare

Stormy Waters Ahead For Amphibious Shipbuilding Plan

Buried within the Navy’s fiscal 2022 shipbuilding plan is a major disruption of the amphibious fleet and its industrial base. The Navy will build the Light Amphibious Ships (LAWs) it wants, but there’s a trade-off. The number of large amphibious ships will decline by five to nine — 15% to 27%. Marines and others had […]

Congress

Rep. Langevin Presses SecDef On Cyber, EW Priorities

"The Department of Defense officially recognizes five domains of warfare," Rep. Langevin said. "For four of those domains, the senior civilian is a service secretary. Cyber has a deputy assistant secretary, which is four rungs lower than the other warfighting domains. Why does this make sense?"

Air Warfare

The Five Surprises In Pentagon’s 2022 Budget

Most observers had expected an increase in the Navy's shipbuilding accounts with this budget, especially after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, said that, even as an Army general, he would support budget increases for the Navy and Air Force in light of the Chinese threat. But this budget decommissions 12 ships and buys relatively few replacements.

Congress

China Is Not Outspending US On Defense; ’22 Budget Is Enough

Bill Greenwalt argues the US needs to increase its current level of defense spending by 3% to 5% a year in real terms, because China, our principal geostrategic competitor, is already outspending us on defense and time is not on our side. Greenwalt comes to this conclusion by claiming that in estimating the size of […]

Global

DoD Seeks $2.3B To Bolster US Chip Making

"From the DoD's perspective, they're highly dependent on [Asia] for fabrication and packaging [of chips]," Hudson Institute's Bryan Clark tells Breaking Defense. This has led to DoD calls to address a "fragile and threatened" chip supply chain.