U.S. Defense Policy

We kidded ourselves for a while that Star Wars had gone away. We pretended that flower power was winning. But in our heart of hearts, in our 3 a.m. nightmares, we knew that no toy of destruction, once conceived of, has ever been left to rest. Like Mordor's ninth ring of power*, hidden forever deep in a dark river beneath a mountain, some Gollum was sure to chance upon it, and once set free it would again corrupt all who carelessly picked it up; (*J.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings). Below is a computer engineer's report on the technical viability of Star Wars I, circa 1986. Judge for yourself how relevant it is to Star Wars II, millennium edition...

The world became a very different place after the devastating attacks on New York City on September 11, 2001. Without a doubt it was a much more dangerous place to live in as it open the eyes of the world to the dangers faced by terrorist groups. I will argue that this change was not adequately reflected in U.S. nuclear weapons policy which remained fixated on deterring inter-state war under the Bush Administration.  Although this policy changed under the Obama Administration, it still remains dangerously reliant on nuclear weapons. I will argue that U.S. policy of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to attack is ineffective and irresponsible. This thesis shows that nuclear weapons policy under President Bush was highly flawed and created a more dangerous world to live in. While admittedly the Obama Administration negotiated new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which actively encouraged the safe storage and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, his rhetoric and actions are at odds with each other. The Obama Administration, while envisioning a world free of nuclear weapons, acted to ensure this will not become a reality in the foreseeable future by committing the U.S. taxpayer to a long and expensive process of modernisation of the nuclear arsenal. I believe that this commitment to extend the life of the nuclear weapons programme is a step in the wrong direction and will argue that non-proliferation is the only safe option available to the U.S. to counter the new threat it faces.

Niniejszy rozdział stanowi analizę polityki zbrojeniowej Stanów Zjednoczonych oraz kondycji amerykańskiego przemysłu obronnego w pierwszej dekadzie XXI wieku. Pierwsza część dotyczy lat wcześniejszych i stanowi swego rodzaju wprowadzenie do właściwej analizy tematu w drugim i trzecim fragmencie, podzielonych na dwa podokresy. Ostatnia zaś odnosi się do najnowszych wydarzeń w omawianej kwestii oraz jest próbą wskazania możliwych scenariuszy dla amerykańskich zbrojeń.

(Article available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14702436.2017.1294970) This article reappraises the two most-studied country cases of military outsourcing: the USA and the UK. It argues that the contemporary wave of military contracting stretches back to the beginning of the cold war and not only to the demobilisation of armies in the 1990s or the neoliberal reforms introduced since the 1980s. It traces the political, technological and ideational developments that laid the groundwork for these reforms and practices since the early cold war and account for its endurance today. Importantly, it argues that a persistent gap between strategic objectives and resources, i.e. the challenge to reconcile ends and means, is an underlying driver of military contracting in both countries. Contemporary contracting is thus most closely tied to military support functions in support of wider foreign and defence political objectives. Security services in either state may not have been outsourced so swiftly, if at all, without decades of experience in outsourcing military logistics functions and the resultant vehicles, processes and familiarities with public-private partnerships. The article thus provides a wider and deeper understanding of the drivers of contractualisation, thereby improving our understanding of both its historical trajectory and the determinants of its present and potential futures.

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy has made profound changes in its strategic concepts, operating structures, naval doctrines and combat systems to adapt its forces both to the changing security environment and to
achieving a Revolution in Military Affairs that promised to transform war at sea. This article examines those changes – firstly oriented towards littoral warfare, later to achieve the revolution and nowadays to secure its access to any point of the globe by contributing to the Air-Sea Battle – aimed at
maintaining the relevance of the U.S. Navy in American foreign policy.

The uneven performance of the US armed forces
in anticipating, preparing for and carrying out the
post-conflict phase of Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ has
brought into relief a ‘missing link’ in the US’s
awesome military capability. The operational setbacks in Iraq have also dented the enthusiasm surrounding Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s concept of ‘military transformation’. Having enabled the three-week blitz to Baghdad in 2003, this concept has proven less applicable in the subsequent  stabilisation phase. In recognition of these deficiencies, the US
Department of Defense (DoD) is now seeking to implement a raft of reforms to improve the military’s ability to conduct ‘stability operations’. This constitutes a potential turning point, as the US military has since the Vietnam War focused mostly
on conventional combat.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as the main engine of growth of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, owing to its naturally cross-cutting, general-purpose nature. From a military perspective, the range of potential applications is at least as vast as the current range of tasks that require human cognition, e.g., analysing and classifying visual data, organising logistics, operating vehicles, or tracking and engaging hostile targets. How can Western nations – by which I mean those nations that are members of either NATO or the European Union (or both) – make the most out of the rise of AI, bearing in mind its potential defence applications?

The closure of 91 military facilities and the relocation of 54 others came closer to being realized last March (1988) after the House Armed Services Committee voted in favor of the congressional amendment that would being the base closure and relocation (BRAC) process in 1989. Of the almost $700 million per year the recommended closing and relocations would save the US DoD budget, the largest part will come from US Air Force facilities.
[Authored by G. Jacobs under pseudonyn "Gene D. Tracy]