The “New” US Defense Strategy and the FY2013 US Defense Budget: The Details of What the Department Has Said to Date

During the last month, the US Department of Defense has issued a series of announcements, and two white papers summarizing its “new” approach to strategy and the decisions it is making in its FY2013 budget submission to cut the size and cost of US military forces. It also has released its first topline breakouts of how it intended to reduce US defense spending over time between FY2013 and FY2017.

The Burke Chair at CSIS has developed a briefing that examines these documents and announcements in detail, focusing on the data actually provided by the Department of Defense. This briefing also contains charts and graphs showing the impact of the numbers the Department has released on spending from FY2001 to FY2017.

The briefing also lists the key data and issues that have not been addressed to date in the Departments statements of reporting, and the key issues in the data that have been released.

The new briefing is entitled The New US Defense Strategy and the Priorities and Changes in the FY2013 Budget. It is available on the CSIS web site here.

Another new report examines the past problems in federal spending, cost escalation, program delays, and key program failures that have meant two decades of past Department of Defense budget submission could not actually buy the forces they planned to buy.

This new report is entitled The DoD Threat to US National Security:

Controlling Costs and Demanding Effective Program Execution, and is available on the CSIS web site at:

https://csis.org/files/publication/120128_US_DoD_Threat_National_Security.pdf

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Anthony H. Cordesman

Anthony H. Cordesman

Former Emeritus Chair in Strategy