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321. Masterpiece Theater: Missed Opportunities for Missile Defense in the 2020 Budget

Author:
Tom Karako and Wes Rumbaugh
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
Just over a year ago, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan announced that the 2020 defense budget would be the “masterpiece” that would finally align Pentagon spending with the new direction of the National Defense Strategy.1 The release of the new budget follows the January 2019 release of the Missile Defense Review, which laid out the administration’s vision of how U.S. missile defense policy, programs, and posture should be adapted to contend with more challenging missile threats in an era of great power competition.2 At the review’s release, President Trump declared the “beginning of a new era in our missile defense program,” setting a goal to “detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States—anywhere, anytime, anyplace.”3 Unfortunately, neither the modest language of the Missile Defense Review nor the activities and funding levels in the proposed 2020 budget come anywhere close to achieving that goal. They specifically lack the programmatic and budgetary muscle movements to contribute meaningfully to overall U.S. deterrence and defense goals in relation to Russia and China. The Missile Defense Review nominally widens the scope of missile defense policy from a focus on ballistic missiles to countering the full spectrum of missile threats. Yet these new policy and budget proposals remain remarkably consistent with the program of record that preexisted the National Defense Strategy. Apart from steps within the services for incremental improvements to air defenses and some studies on countering hypersonic glide vehicles, the focus remains on the limited ballistic missile threats posed by otherwise weak rogue regimes.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Budget, and Missile Defense
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

322. Acquisition Trends, 2018: Defense Contract Spending Bounces Back

Author:
Rhys McCormick, Samantha Cohen, Gregory Sanders, and Andrew Philip Hunter
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
Defense Acquisition Trends, 2018: Defense Contract Spending Bounces Back is the latest in an annual series of report examining trends in what DoD is buying, how DoD is buying it, and whom DoD is buying from. This report analyzes the current state of affairs in defense acquisition by combining detailed policy and data analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of the current and future outlook for defense acquisition. This analysis will provide critical insights into what DoD is buying, how DoD is buying it, from whom is DoD buying, and what are the defense components buying using data from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). This analysis provides critical insights into understanding the current trends in the defense industrial base and the implications of those trends on acquisition policy.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Private Sector, and Military Contractors
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

323. Shifting the Burden Responsibly: Oversight and Accountability in U.S. Security Sector Assistance

Author:
Melissa Dalton
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
The United States increasingly relies on allies and partners to accomplish shared security objectives around the globe. In recent years, a greater emphasis has been placed from burden sharing to burden shifting—enabling allies and partners to assume responsibility for their own security challenges through security sector assistance. Burden shifting responsibly to allies and partners requires the United States to integrate oversight and accountability measures into the implementation of security sector assistance. Oversight and accountability mechanisms for security sector assistance allow the United States to better direct, track, and calibrate its assistance to partners to ensure the full scope of U.S. policy goals are met. However, amid reforms being undertaken by the U.S. government to adapt security sector assistance policy and processes, greater clarity is needed on how to connect policy goals of oversight and accountability to planning, operations, doctrine, and training across the security assistance enterprise. This study conducted by the CSIS Cooperative Defense Project builds upon its previous initiative, entitled Oversight and Accountability in Security Sector Assistance: Seeking Return on Investment, to assess the levels of progress on implementing reforms throughout the security sector assistance enterprise and developing an action plan that addresses specific issues along planning, operations, policy and doctrine, and training lines of effort.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Military Strategy, and Hegemony
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

324. Space Force or Space Corps?

Author:
Kaitlyn Johnson
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
In 2018, President Trump requested that the U.S. military restructure its space offices and personnel to create a U.S. Space Force. Since then three competing visions for how the Department of Defense (DoD) should be restructured to better support its national security space enterprise have been crafted: one from the DoD itself and two from either chamber of Congress. This brief compares these three legislative proposals to create a new military service for space.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Space, and Space Force
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

325. The U.S. Department of Defense’s Role in Health Security

Author:
Tom Cullison and J. Stephen Morrison
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
Protecting the homeland against biological threats begins with preventing those threats from reaching our shores. The Department of Defense (DOD) contributes to overall U.S. health security through programs specifically aimed at countering biological threats from all sources—through public health activities coordinated with civilian counterparts at home and abroad and through research and development of medical countermeasures aimed at protecting U.S. Forces against health risks throughout the world. Civilian and military scientists, public health experts, and disaster planners are somewhat familiar with DOD’s health security capabilities, yet most lack a clear understanding of the breadth, depth, and limitations of DOD’s capacities. A solid and consistent U.S. policy framework has steadily evolved over the past few decades that identifies health as a national security issue and calls for a broad-based, inclusive national response to addressing the issue of health security. Now is the time to more fully integrate DOD’s unique expertise and capabilities in a more cohesive and efficient manner. This paper provides a broad overview of DOD health security activities and capabilities and also offers select concrete recommendations for strengthening the coherence and integration of DOD activities, with a special emphasis on leadership, novel diseases and new dangerous forms of resistance, surveillance, building host country capacities, and expanded exercises.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Health, and Civil-Military Relations
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

326. China’s New 2019 Defense White Paper

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
For all the furor over Iran and the Gulf, or Britain and Brexit, the most important foreign news of the month is what would normally be a relatively obscure Chinese official document: China’s National Defense in the New Era. This White Paper was issued on July 22nd in both Chinese and English. Unlike China’s previous defense white papers — the most recent of which came out in 2015 and was blandly reassuring to the point of being vacuous — the new White Paper picks up the gauntlet that the U.S. threw down in its 2017 National Security Strategy and in 2018 National Defense Strategy. Both of these documents effectively made China the key objective in strengthening U.S. military forces and single it out as America’s primary strategic competitor. China’s National Defense in the New Era is a clear and detailed 51-page response to the massive shift in U.S. strategy from a focus on counterterrorism and extremism to competition and possible conflict with China and Russia. It flags the fact that America and China are now competing superpowers, and that China’s growing military forces are developing to the point where they will be able to challenge the United States. More than that, the detailed contents of the White Paper are a direct response to the official U.S. reports on Chinese Military Power issued by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and by the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Intelligence, Military Strategy, and Conflict
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

327. Achilles’ Heel: Adding Resilience to NATO’s Fragile Missile Shield

Author:
Ian Williams
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
Tensions with Iran are once again increasing. The slow implosion of the nuclear accord, Iran’s harassment of cargo ships, and the downing of a U.S. unmanned aircraft have made plain the risk of conflict between Iran and the United States. The dispute should also draw attention to the questionable preparedness of the United States and its allies to fight a war with Iran on short notice and deal with that war’s blowback across the Middle East and Europe. Regional missile defense architectures are an important part of that preparedness. Iran has the largest and most diverse supply of ballistic missiles in the Middle East region, and Tehran has shown an ability and willingness to use them in combat operations.1 Iran is also learning to employ other kinds of aerial threats, such as long-range cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In a conflict with Iran, U.S. and allied forces would likely face a wide spectrum of air and missile threats. The biggest U.S. investment in Iran-centric missile defenses has been the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). EPAA is a phased buildup of U.S. missile defense assets in and around Europe to deter and, if necessary, limit damage from an Iranian missile attack on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Yet the EPAA architecture is heavily dependent on the nominal, unencumbered performance of a single radar deployed relatively close to Iran. This produces a single point of failure susceptible to malfunction or operator error. It also presents an Achilles’ heel that a determined or imaginative adversary could exploit. Iran certainly fits both descriptors. In 1958, strategist Albert Wohlstetter wrote that U.S. confidence in its nuclear second-strike ability was achieved only by “ignoring the full range of sensible enemy plans.”2 This same critical judgment should be applied to confidence in the EPAA as currently configured. Inasmuch as a sensible adversary such as Iran relies upon its missile forces to achieve its defense goals, it should be credited with the foresight to target single points of failure that would preclude the effective application of that missile force. Fortunately, there are practical steps that NATO and the United States can take to further adapt EPAA for greater resiliency. Upgrades to existing radars, the integration of allied radars into the missile defense mission, and the addition of air and space-based sensors would do much to improve EPAA’s capability and survivability, improving U.S. and NATO preparedness for an unexpected Middle East conflict.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, and Missile Defense
Political Geography:
Europe, Iran, North Atlantic, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

328. Acquisition of Software-Defined Hardware-Based Adaptable Systems

Author:
Maura Rose McQuade, Andrew Philip Hunter, and Schuyler Moore
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
The increasing importance of software has created an opportunity for the Department of Defense (DoD) to harness innovation through the acquisition and modification of adaptable systems that are 1) inherently multifunctional and 2) designed for continuous modification. Identifying an acquisition approach to these types of adaptable systems that are software-defined and hardware-intensive is particularly challenging from an acquisition perspective as these systems do not fall into typical acquisition phases that discretely differentiate between phases such as research & development and production. However, there are several existing enablers that, if adopted, can mitigate barriers to the acquisition of adaptable systems.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Science and Technology, Military Strategy, Infrastructure, and Innovation
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

329. Understanding DoD’s Defense-Wide Zero-Based Review

Author:
Seamus P. Daniels
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
On August 2, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist issued a memo calling for a “comprehensive zero-based review of all defense-wide (DW) functions and activities” in the Department of Defense (DoD). The goal of this ongoing effort, led by the deputy secretary, is to ensure the alignment of resources with the National Defense Strategy (NDS) through the FY 2021 program review cycle and to “support a longer-term focus on structural reform” that generates future savings. In line with Norquist’s call to “begin immediately and move forward aggressively,” the review kicked off on Saturday, August 10, only eight days after the memo was issued. This brief explains what the review entails, which defense-wide organizations are subject to it, and previous efforts at driving efficiencies in the “Fourth Estate.”
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, and Civil-Military Relations
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

330. U.S. Military Forces in FY 2020: The Strategic and Budget Context

Author:
Mark F. Cancian
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
lthough the dictates of the 2018 national defense strategy are clear, implementing them in the real world is difficult in the face of real-world crises, the inertia of legacy investments, and the long timelines needed to field new capabilities. Thus, the budget continues the priorities that Secretary James Mattis set in 2017 but struggles with the need to make trade-offs.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Military Affairs, and Budget
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America