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Department Of Defense

The Pentagon’s $54 Billion Bet on Autonomous Warfare

OPINION — The Department of Defense does not always announce structural shifts loudly; often, it buries them in the dense columns of budget lines [...] More

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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

The Pentagon Needs a Real Budget, Not Stop-Gap Solutions, says top DoD official

The Pentagon Needs a Real Budget, Not Stop-Gap Solutions, says top DoD official

CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING — With President Joe Biden and top Republican lawmakers sitting down together this week in the hopes of averting an historic [...] More

The Uneasy Balance between Care and Provocation

OPINION — This past March and April, US Naval Forces attached to Central Command carried out live fire exercises in the North Persian Gulf’s [...] More

Coronavirus and the Military

During this time of social distancing, The Cipher Brief is bringing our experts to your laptop in a new series of web-based briefings on critical [...] More

Offensive Operations and US Defense

OPINION — “Offensive operations, often times, is (sic) the surest, if not the only (in some cases) means of defence,” a retired George Washington, [...] More

How to Support and Distance Yourself from the President's DoD Budget

OPINION — Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer last week joined the very public chorus of defense experts in questioning whether President Trump’s call [...] More

Boosting U.S. Hypersonic Capabilities

OPINION — The Senate last week added $1.2 billion to the fiscal 2019 Defense Appropriations Bill to increase the Pentagon’s offensive and defensive [...] More

Cutting Cyber Command’s Umbilical Cord to the NSA

Despite the many logistical and operational challenges of a transition, many acknowledge that U.S. Cyber Command must eventually separate from the [...] More

Columbia Class Submarine Improves Versatility, Endurance, and Stealth of the Triad

Among the three legs of the triad, the U.S. Navy’s ballistic missile submarines are the most survivable and the hardest to detect. Their advanced [...] More

How Will America’s Next-Generation ICBM Improve Nuclear Deterrence?

The only remaining U.S. ICBM, the Minuteman III, entered service in 1970. While upgrades have extended the life of the Minuteman III program, the [...] More

The New Nuclear Triad

The New Nuclear Triad

Defense Secretary James Mattis on June 14 gave Congress an update on the 2017 Nuclear Posture Review, saying, “We’re looking at each leg of the triad [...] More

Best Of: Aircraft Carriers: Bigger is Better

Editor's Note: For this year’s Memorial Day feature, The Cipher Brief revisits its coverage examining the future of U.S. aircraft carriers. As I [...] More