President Biden’s Pentagon is soon to release the next National Defense Strategy (NDS). To have impact, the NDS will need to provide clear guidance on key issues, identify and prioritize threats, specify strategies to counter them over specific time periods and by domain and/or region, detail priority missions as well as those that can be shed, and provide explicit guidance for force design and development as well as global force management. These are the key questions the 2022 NDS should answer.
Congress should pass defense authorization and appropriation bills with a significant and necessary topline increase. A higher topline is not an end in itself, however. Additional resources – both for procurement and modernization -- will only be valuable to the extent they are tightly focused on measures that meaningfully enhance the ability to deter and, if necessary, defeat aggression in the most pressing and realistic scenarios. Our recommendations of how to spend an increased topline:
Semiconductors are critical for U.S. economic prosperity and national security. Taiwan has a central role in global semiconductor production, and the defense of Taiwan will be vital to maintaining U.S. access to these advanced chips. Read FAL's report on how they interact and what the U.S. should do to guarantee continued access to semiconductors.
Opponents of nuclear modernization have recently seized on analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), falsely suggesting a sudden increase in the project cost of U.S. nuclear forces. Twisting the CBO's analysis is merely the latest attempt to undermine nuclear modernization - here are facts.
The Biden Administration and Congress should be wary of attempts to create a false choice between defense and infrastructure spending. Defense spending is not choking off infrastructure investment.
What should President Biden's National Defense Strategy (NDS) contain? Our report lays out the key objectives that should guide the drafting and oversight of the NDS, and provides dozens of specific recommendations for Congress and the Executive Branch.
As President Biden prepares to submit the FY2022 budget to Congress, myths and misinformation surround the defense budget. The facts are important to remember, and the stakes are higher than ever. FAL's deconstructs 10 myths about the defense budget, and gives the real facts.
As Congress reviews President Biden’s FY2022 budget request, China is escalating its threats against Taiwan and Russian forces are amassing on Ukraine’s eastern border. Providing adequate funds for our military is critical - so is how we direct that funding. Here are 10 principles that should inform the national defense budget:
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