What are operational concepts and is there a spin-on to the defense establishment from the commercial sphere that can infuse defense strategy with innovative answers to that question? Last November, I wrote about the report of the National Defense Strategy Commission…. Read more »
Wedged into the week between the mid-term elections and Thanksgiving, publication on November 13th of “Providing for the Common Defense,” the report to Congress of the National Defense Strategy Commission, has drawn too little attention. In it, the dozen, sober-minded… Read more »
A convergence of indicators suggests the recently passed Defense Appropriations Act will mark a peak for US defense spending. Even the Administration’s own outyear defense-spending projections grow at an annual rate of only 2 percent, which is just enough to… Read more »
At the NATO summit four years ago, the heads of state and government gathered in Wales recommitted themselves to increasing defense spending in real terms and to achieving the NATO guideline to spend a minimum of 2 percent of their… Read more »
Earlier this spring at the Atlantic Council, I hosted a panel discussion among the chief executives of AM General, Cubic Corporation, and Siemens Government Technologies (SGT). While these three companies—prime contractors predominantly for automotive vehicles, training and transit technologies, and… Read more »
In a commentary published in Aviation Week on Inauguration Day, I described “signposts and metrics” of force posture, defense spending, and acquisition management that I would be using to gauge the true magnitude and direction of change that would emerge… Read more »
Each fall, I am privileged to speak at the SpeedNews AerospaceDefenseChain conference on a panel with three distinguished industry observers recurrently entitled “The Four Horsemen—Outlook and Trends Within the A&D Industry.” The title is a cheeky moniker which the panel’s… Read more »
It is hard not to read a pretext for protectionism into the Executive Order President Trump signed last month under the ponderous title, “Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States”…. Read more »
In mature industries like aerospace and defense, mergers and acquisitions are primary tools of corporate strategy. As the bases of competition for product and service offerings become ever more firmly established, the race for competitive advantage increasingly relies on initiatives… Read more »
What does the Trump Administration portend for defense policy? Will it increase the defense budget? Will it change the size, structure, and disposition of military forces? Will it cancel important acquisition programs? For now, the best answer to these questions… Read more »