#defense department

The defense community suffered a grave loss on the morning of Tuesday, March 26, with the passing of Andrew W. Marshall at age 97. Marshall was in many ways the model of a public servant. When he retired, it was not at age 65, but rather after 65 years of service. He was a rarity […] The post

What might congressional hearings with the chief of staff of the U.S. Space Force sound like in 2035? The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee might begin the questions with: The Space Force headquarters staff has doubled in size since 2020, we’ve conducted offensive space operations

Newly selected one-star generals and admirals in the U.S. military are often jokingly warned that pinning on their new rank means “you will never again have a bad meal, and you will never again hear the truth.” It’s not surprising that many of the unvarnished truths well-known to privates, lance

When militaries avoid making choices about new technologies, they often wind up with something like the “screw-sloop”: a hybrid solution that fails to take full advantage of either the old or the new technology. In the mid-1800s, many navies commissioned screw-sloops, which were warships with both

In December of 2017, before the Department of Defense released its 2019 budget request, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan tried to manage expectations about its contents. He argued that the National Defense Strategy, with its prioritization of competition with China and Russia, was