President-elect Trump and his national security team want change in the U.S. military. They can score fast wins by correcting major defense program mistakes made by the Biden administration.
Here are a set of top priorities the new Trump administration should consider for the first 100 days in the Department of Defense.
Among the first actions it takes in the Pentagon, the incoming Trump administration should commission a top-to-bottom review and reform of the Navy bureaucracy that develops new warships.
It’s now almost impossible to imagine a time in Air Force Special Operations without the CV-22 Osprey. The Osprey has been at the forefront of the toughest missions since its first combat deployment in 2009.
An important American national security institution stands at a crossroads. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which for decades has protected key domestic industries against potential threats from foreign investments, has been thrust into uncharted territory.
It will take years to purge the myriad military systems containing content from our adversaries. In the meantime, we remain at risk for a catastrophic event that could disrupt military operations and cripple critical infrastructure.
Every military aviation accident is a tragedy, and we must always strive to improve safety. But context is important, and the idea that the V-22 is more dangerous than other aircraft is just a myth, pure and simple.
Sending the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier at high speed to the Middle East has created an aircraft carrier gap in the Pacific. The carrier fleet is stretching to perform its global role.
The Navy’s more diverse ecosystem of maintenance has seen its shipboard, tender-based and local-homeport components decimated since the end of the Cold War. Bringing back a maintenance and repair system at multiple levels might ease the burden on shipyard-level maintenance and repair.
With the end of a cooperative framework, the Arctic is rapidly becoming the next contested area in great power competition, and the U.S. is in danger of being a day late and a dollar short.
The Air Force is facing pressure to rethink its tanker modernization strategy and cut back on new KC-46 contracts. Cutting back would be a bad idea.
The U.S. Air Force is teetering on the edge of losing its precious lead in jet engine expertise by delaying or restructuring its secretive Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD fighter.
If the nuclear triad is to remain viable into the 21st century, then all three of its elements ought to endure the same level of programmatic scrutiny. The Air Force’s troubled Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile is one such program that demands greater scrutiny.
President Biden’s proposed defense budget for fiscal year 2025 eliminates further funding to bridge the shortfall in electronic components needed for semiconductors to function.
The V-22 Osprey – in versions tailored to the Marine Corps, the Navy and Air Force Special Forces respectively – are widely used, having flown collectively over 750,000 hours.
U.S. investors may have helped bankroll China’s aircraft carrier program by providing financial liquidity in 2018 and 2019 to complete its second flattop, Shandong, giving the country a capability that can be used to further threaten Taiwan and its neighbors
U.S. Navy ship totals at 290 will decline for 10 years before trending upwards again. In comparison, China’s navy lists about 340 ships, and it will grow to 440 by 2030.
Until and unless the Russians understand that they can’t win militarily, a negotiated settlement is not an option.
Our national defense and economic security are at risk because we rely so heavily on adversaries and geopolitical competitors for the technologies that power our military systems and critical infrastructure.
The U.S. Army’s newly released fiscal 2025 budget incorporates the top lessons from combat in Ukraine and sends a powerful message as a deterrent against possible conflict with China.
In order to prevail in this new Cold War, the U.S. must ensure that its high-tech companies are able to compete successfully against their Chinese rivals.
Among Poland’s weapons purchases, nothing is more likely to prevent Russia from invading NATO Europe than the M1 tank – arguably the West’s apex ground combat predator.
The changing climate is already having a profound effect on many of the more than 5,000 U.S. military installations worldwide, including 1,700 that are located in coastal areas affected by sea level rise and storm patterns.
Congress and key agencies in the executive branch and not doing enough to support defense innovation. More can and should be done – or else our efforts to deter conflict will ring hollow, and we will risk failure in the battlespace.
What is missing in the discussion about the right size Navy needed to counter growing threats is a defined maritime strategy, a type of document not used by the service since the end of the Cold War.
The U.S. Ready Reserve Fleet of cargo and fuel ships that move military gear around the world when needed for a conflict is in serious need of an upgrade. The fleet is aging and generally not ready for war.
With sound traveling farther the ocean will be noisier, and undersea stealth platforms such as submarines will simultaneously find it more difficult to hide in some circumstances and easier in others—and that is only the beginning.
The nation’s mine infrastructure is facing a historic nearly-40 plus year period of neglect and under-investment since the end of the Cold War. This decay also includes industrial capacity, explosives, training, infrastructure, ships and personnel.
It is critical for the world to learn from mainland China’s previous conquest of Taiwan as a guide to how China may seek to seize that island again.
Israel has always prided itself on not asking the U.S. to send soldiers to fight on its behalf. If another front opens up, if U.S. forces in the Mediterranean fail to deter, it may have to reverse its longstanding policy.
