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Defense Spending

A Wartime Budget Without an Innovation Strategy

OPINION — “The use cases that help to drive the research agenda can come from a variety of different settings…We need to acknowledge that it's okay [...] More

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The Neoprime Club: Silicon Valley and The Rise of Defense Disruptors

OPINION — Today, after a post-9/11 era defined by global counterterrorism and asymmetric warfare, the U.S. is preparing for potential near-peer [...] More

The Math Behind Trump's $1 Trillion Defense Budget

OPINION — “The President's FY ‘26 [Fiscal Year 2026] National Defense Budget requests $1.01 trillion, which is a 13 percent increase from FY '25 [...] More

NATO Lures Trump Back - at a Cost

NATO Lures Trump Back - at a Cost

CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING – The stakes at this week’s NATO summit were sky-high – support for Ukraine, a shoring up of Europe’s defenses, and the [...] More

The Senate Drives a Nuclear Spending Spree

OPINION — “America’s defense strategy and strategic posture must change in order to properly defend its vital interests and improve strategic [...] More

What are we Getting for Record Defense Spending?

OPINION — Next year’s national defense spending — for the Defense Department, the Department of Energy [for nuclear weapons] and other security [...] More

<p>Chinese CH-5 Drone</p>

Will China Start Selling the 'AK-47' of Drones?

From the time of the first kinetic strike by an unmanned aircraft in October of 2001, the United States has relied heavily on remote-controlled drone [...] More

Austerity Cloud Hovers Over Pentagon Wish List for Guerillas and Climate

The Senate-passed, fiscal 2018 Defense Authorization Bill carries two little-publicized amendments that will impact future war-fighting [...] More

Mattis Hails Nuclear Triad as Pentagon Conducts Review

Mattis Hails Nuclear Triad as Pentagon Conducts Review

As Defense Secretary Jim Mattis concludes a nuclear-focused trip, his public backing this week of all three parts of the triad likely serves as an [...] More

Capitol Hill Budget Brawls Stretch Navy Resources Thin

“If we do a continuing resolution, we are not only not rebuilding our military, we are harming our military,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told his Senate [...] More

Will Congress Break the Budget Caps This Time Around?

The Congress is heading for another budget crisis as the beginning of fiscal 2018 approaches on October 1.At issue is when and how Congress will act [...] More

Time for Missile Interceptors in Space?

An effective space-based sensor network is a critical component of the U.S. ballistic missile defense system. The better the data the missile defense [...] More

U.S. Fails to Unscramble Mixed Messages on Qatar-Saudi Dispute

Two weeks have passed since I wrote the column about the Saudi-Qatar split, and as of today the Trump administration seems still unable to get its [...] More