Read the Report — As Congress prepares to review the administration’s proposed defense budget, the Center for a New American Security Defense Strategies and Assessments Program has released a new report, “Is the U.S. Military Getting Smaller and Older? And How Much Should We Care?” In the report, author Steven Kosiak argues that the U.S. military’s declining force size and increasing age are not simply a byproduct of budgetary or other pressures beyond the Department of Defense’s control. Rather, they are largely the result of policy and programmatic choices made by DoD and service leadership. He concludes that if the military wants to arrest these trends it will require a shift in the decisionmaking process of its leadership.
