What is driving U.S. public support for drones? Despite the large number of opinion polls available – there is very little known about the reasoning behind U.S. public preferences for unmanned air strikes, how strong these preferences are, and in what situations the American public would prefer unmanned over manned air strikes. There are two reasons for this.
Commercial and military aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group remembers Joe Sutter (1921-2016), the father of the Boeing 747 commercial jetliner.
Read the Report – A report by the Center for a New American Security examines the potential cost differences between a notional human-inhabited future naval aircraft and an uninhabited FNA. The authors assess the minimum cost avoidance of more than $30 billion over 30 years, with a more likely cost avoidance in excess of $100 billion. The report is authored by Paul Scharre, director of the CNAS Future of Warfare Initiative, and Daniel Berg, CNAS adjunct senior fellow.
Read the Report – A new report by the Center for a New American Security recommends the U.S. military focus greater attention, both within the acquisition process and during training and tactics development, on digital resiliency. The report is authored by Jacquelyn Schneider, an adjunct research associate with the CNAS Military, Veterans, and Society Program, and Ph.D. candidate in political science at The George Washington University.
Read the Report – Center for a New American Security Technology and National Security Program recommends the Department of Defense invest more in open source software and embrace it as a critical element of its efforts to maintain military technical superiority. The report is authored by CNAS Senior Fellow Ben FitzGerald, Adjunct Senior Fellow Dr. Peter Levin, and Researcher Jacqueline Parziale.
Assessing Defense Reform Series — Improving the efficiency, oversight, and professionalism of the security cooperation enterprise will help prove to Americans that these investments are worth the price. Still, security cooperation reform pursued by the Senate Armed Services Committee should account for the administration’s concerns, echoed by Senate appropriators, that the balance between DoD and DoS authority over security assistance be righted, given Department of State’s role as the lead for U.S. foreign policy.
Assessing Defense Reform Series — Because the number of Guard/reserve GO/FOs has been growing while the number of Guard/reserve troops has been constant, there would appear to be some opportunity for reductions. However, a 25 percent cut would be large and disruptive. Further, the loss of reserve three-star positions will likely be seen as a serious loss of influence in the reserve community.
Assessing Defense Reform Series — The House and the Senate National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bills have several provisions seeking to strengthen the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This paper examines the proposals to give the chairman some operational authorities. The concern is that global threats like ISIS or peer competitors like Russia and China cross regions and functions and, therefore, involve several COCOMs.
Critical Questions – Five years after the Budget Control Act became law, CSIS’s Todd Harrison looks…
This report examines the interests that a close U.S.-Egyptian bilateral relationship serves and also highlights the consequences of a different kind of relationship. No policy is without costs or drawbacks, but U.S. policymakers need to understand both the likely results of maintaining close ties with Egypt and the likely results of alternatives.