Center for a New American Security

From Mark Helprin in today's Wall Street Journal:

Cancelling the F-22 Raptor, the most capable fighter plane ever produced, is yet another act in the tragedy of a nation that, bankrupting itself, embracing moral decline, and apologizing to its enemies, is losing the will to prevail.

Travis Sharpe better watch out, because Shawn Brimley used to sit in his comfortable perch at CNAS and write all kinds of sensible stuff about the budget and the QDR, and look where it got him: in charge of the latter. That hasn't stopped Travis from writing this timely primer on the QDR and the new defense budget, which you can read here.

I received a paper copy of this a few days ago and understood it was embargoed so I didn't post it. But now I'm starting to receive it over email as a .pdf, so I figure it's out there already and that readers of this blog should get the chance to read it. My first thoughts on this are very positive.

Big news in defense policy circles. A draft of the QDR has been leaked to Inside Defense. It -- the QDR, not the leak -- has a strong whiff of Brimley about it. I would post the .pdf on my Scribd account, but the security settings on the file are too strict.

Update: Nevermind. One my tech-genius readers figured out how I could share the document.

Laura Rozen's blog post on the Eikenberry memos is worth reading if only because it features some quotes from those dinosaurs in the Democratic Party who think that when it comes to the military and its officer corps, it's still "us versus them".

I'll be out of town, but this is very much worth attending, if only to heckle Brimley about his cave etchings and why he hasn't gotten off his butt and finished the QDR yet. Sam Abrams deserves kudos for making this happen.

Seriously, the president and the secretary deserve some credit for this:

When the Obama administration proposed canceling a host of expensive weapons systems last spring, some of the military industry’s allies in Congress assumed, as they had in the past, that they would have the final say.

 

It has not escaped the British Ministry of Defense -- excuse me, Ministry of Defence -- that we colonists have a rather more lively public debate on our defense policy than does the mother country. As such, the MoD has partnered with known Canadian David Betz and the Kings of War Blog (hosted by the War Studies Department of King's College London) to seek fresh ideas from the educated public.

I'll be reading LTG (ret.) Dubik's report on building security forces (.pdf). My mother, meanwhile -- who thinks you guys curse too much but once sent me off to war with the immortal line "Just don't embarass your family" -- sent along the quote of the week from old D. D. Eisenhower himself, who was speaking in reference to a certain red-baiting senator from his own party:

From a reader: