By Colin Clark
President Obama will announce his new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan sooner or later. Given that the key decision — at least publicly — will be how many more troops to send to Afghanistan it seems propitious to consider the Bush administration’s decision to surge roughly 30,000 troops to Iraq. How it worked and why is the subject of a new film, “The Surge: The Untold Story.”
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Two influential analysts told lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week that America’s strategic position in the world is eroding. America is losing its technological edge and is in deep financial trouble, while purchasing power is shifting from the West to Asia. Those trends cannot be undone, they warned, so the U.S. must adapt and seek greater cooperation with allies and establish “rules of the road” with potential rivals.
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When it comes to cyber attacks, the odds are against us. The head cyber protection guy at the National Security Agency, Richard Schaeffer, told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee that about 80 percent of attacks on our networks can be prevented. That is “unacceptable,” Sen. Ben Cardin, subcommittee chairman, told Schaeffer and the other government officials testifying before him. “We would never ponder a defense budget that is dependent on an 80 percent success rate.”
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The non-partisan CBO said defense budgets must grow by at least six percent beginning next year to pay for weapons programs currently on the books. The base defense budget would have to increase to an average of $567 billion annually for two decades. While that might not appear all that high, it must be viewed in the context of sluggish U.S. economic growth, record deficits, and the need to pay interest on that growing pile of debt.
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Amid warnings of the perilous state of the rotary-wing industry comes a new GAO report warning of a looming “tactical airlift gap” because no aircraft can move the Army’s “medium weight” weapons about the battlefield. The Air Force and Army are looking at the Joint Future Theater Lift (JFTL) effort, still in the conceptual stages, to provide a new aircraft that might fit the bill. The JFTL could be a massive rotary-wing aircraft, if the Army gets its way.
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair should sign by Dec. 1 a document laying out new responsibilities for the National Reconnaissance Office, builder and operator of America’s spy satellites. This will set in motion the first substantial changes to the NRO charter since 1965, four years after then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara created the NRO and drafted its charter.
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