Category: Content Series

England Without a Shipyard?

By James Hasik

What the Scottish Threat Reveals About the Cost of Domestic Shipbuilding England, it seems, will soon be without a naval construction yard. Defense News reported this week that BAE Systems will shortly be closing its yard in Portsmouth, for lack of work from the Royal Navy, and consolidating all its British shipbuilding on the Clyde in Scotland. […]

Spotlight Venezuela

By Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

In the first installment of our Spotlight series, the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center explores three scenarios of how the increasingly volatile situation in Venezuela may unfold. This is a particularly critical moment as the country heads toward municipal elections on December 8 with President Nicolás Maduro recently being granted emergency decree powers […]

Corporate Strategy that Befits Industrial Policy

By James Hasik

AeroVironment’s Possible Alliance with Eurocopter Market contractions are frequently time for industrial restructuring, yet merger activity in defense is at a ten-year low. To start, a handful of strong signals from the US and German governments have discouraged even speculation about mergers between the largest firms. Moreover, with so much uncertainty over customers’ spending plans, valuations are hard […]

Taming the Overzealous Implementation of BBP

By James Hasik

When Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced recently his pending retirement, we at the Council began to think about his legacy, both in that job and in his previous as under secretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics (USD AT&L). Perhaps his most salient initiative was the Better Buying Power guidance of 2010. Through the first and […]

Dynamic Corporate Strategy Forum Discussion

On October 18, the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security held a private, roundtable discussion for its Corporate Strategy Forum on the topic of “The Outlook for Government Services.” Speaking to the issues of the place of services businesses in the scheme of the defense industry were Stan Soloway, president and CEO of […]

Gauging the Implications of Disruptive Technologies in European Security Challenges

By James Hasik

Last week, the Atlantic Council hosted a delegation of the Party of European Socialists for a discussion of the implications of disruptive technologies. Remarks were off-the-record, but my presentation on the implications for European security (one of three from Council senior fellows) should be open for consideration. As my two colleagues spent their time talking […]

Technology or Skill?

By James Hasik

What Determines Military Quality, and Why Should Industry care? Battlefield performance may be a rare arbiter of military quality, but when the opportunity arises, it forms an unmistakable signal. So before any military forces and the industries behind them land in that crucible, it’s worth asking what inputs predict which organizations are more likely to emerge […]

Jonathan Faull on Transatlantic Approach to Financial Reform

On October 9, the Atlantic Council hosted Jonathan Faull, director-general of Internal Market and Services at the European Commission, to discuss recent European financial regulatory reforms, EU bank re-capitalization efforts, and the future of the transatlantic economic partnership broadly. The discussion was moderated by C. Boyden Gray Fellow Dr. Chris Brummer, and touched on issues […]