Defense Policy

Will the bomber always get through?

By James Hasik

The long-term survivability of the LRS-B is a known unknowable. Will the US Air Force’s new stealth bomber be sufficiently survivable? Naïve calculations sometimes presume, to quote Stanley Baldwin’s 1932 speech in the House of Commons, that “the bomber will always get through.” History has proven otherwise, and at the start of a ten-year development […]

Artificial strategy

By James Hasik

Are even the computers smart enough for the gray zones? General Joseph Votel, head of US Special Operations Command, is worried about “gray zones.” As he told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities back in March, he is vexed by today’s “ambiguity on the nature of the conflict, the parties involved, and the […]

Bayonets, pistols, and JLTVs

By James Hasik

What three recent cases tell us about relative burdens in military procurement. Just the other day, I noted how outgoing Air Force procurement chief Bill LaPlante has been insisting that the Pentagon’s business of buying weapons has been improving over the past few years. Not everyone, however, is equally moved. On 18 November, at our […]

The Mistral will follow you

By James Hasik

Egypt’s procurement of helicopter carriers is truly strategic. As I wrote the other day, the Al-Baghdadi Gang has truly found tragic ways to combine brutality with stupidity. Attacking Russia and France in the same month, as Robert Pape of the University of Chicago wrote in the Boston Globe, is clearly an indication of desperation. Dealing with […]

The LRS-B and nukes

By James Hasik and Rachel Rizzo

Does the Long-Range Strike Bomber need nuclear capability, and does nuclear capability need the LRS-B? Recapitalizing the air-breathing segment of the American nuclear triad has generally not been the US Air Force’s first argument for developing its new Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B). Sustaining a global capacity for massive, repeated, marginally economical surgical strikes has long been the […]

A new New Look

By James Hasik

The West needs “a complete strategic rethink” of how it goes to war. In The Australian last November, David Kilcullen argued that “the West’s failed counter-terrorism strategy requires a complete rethink.” Set aside for the moment James Fallows’ screed in The Atlantic last December. Thirteen years of not-quite-winning two wars in the Middle East and South Asia, despite overwhelming material […]

PowerPoint guys versus bean counters

By James Hasik

The battle for the soul of the American military, part 1 Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, who is now running for president, wants a bigger Army, a bigger Navy, and a bigger Marine Corps: 50 brigades, 300 to 350 ships, and 36 battalions. How would she pay for it? The debate at which she […]

Biberman in Wiley Online Library: One Shield, Two Responses: Anti‐U.S. Missile Defense Shield Protests in the Czech Republic and Poland

By Atlantic Council

Transcript: The Future of US Extended Deterrence in East Asia

By The Atlantic Council

Atlantic Council The Future of US Extended Deterrence in East Asia Welcome: Jon Huntsman, Chairman, Atlantic Council Moderator: Barry Pavel, Vice President and Director, Brent Scowcroft Center for International Security Speakers: Richard Armitage, President, Armitage International Kurt Campbell, Chairman and CEO, The Asia Group, LLC Location: 1030 15th Street, NW, 12th Floor (West Tower), Washington, […]