Quick Tanks: The Best of Long-Form Defense Analysis, Briefly
A weekly review of the long-form content from the national security policy, defense policy, and related technology analysis community.
Welcome back, avid readers.
I am pleased to share another set of insightful reports with you today covering the following key topics:
The Biden Administration’s 2024 defense budget request and Congress's inconsistency in adjusting defense spending
The DoD’s mandated report on China's national strategy, military capabilities, operational activities, and regional security dynamics
China's security and defense engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean
Quick Tanks is a weekly collection and summary of the latest long-form analytic content on the topics of US defense, force structure, innovation, and policy considerations. We strive to aggregate all of the key sources of analysis and present brief, neutral summaries to help keep you informed. Should you feel inclined to learn more about any study, please reference the full report via the links provided.
The sponsor of the newsletter is the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts + Technology.
Tank you for sharing and subscribing, and happy reading.
Inconsistent Congress
Analysis of the 2024 Defense Budget Request
By Travis Sharp
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
Link to Report Page
Focus: The report analyzes the 2024 defense budget request and Congress's recent adjustments to defense spending.Analysis: The analysis examines budget data, with a focus on Congressional changes to administration requests from FY 2016 - FY 2023.Argument: The report argues that Congress has demonstrated a programmatic orientation toward defense spending, favoring hardware procurement over other areas and legacy systems over new initiatives aligned with strategy.Insights: The analysis reveals the inconsistent nature of Congressional support for important DoD initiatives since 2016, raising doubts about Congress's ability to shape forces for long-term strategic competition. Moreover, the budget cuts imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act would far exceed any amount saved by the DoD’s suggested divestments and zeroing of the defense programs deemed cuttable by Congress.Recommendations: The report recommends DoD find new ways to persuade Congress on essential capabilities, while Congress needs stronger policy entrepreneurs to improve procedures and elicit more useful information from the DoD.While the development and deployment of personnel, technologies, and defense concepts embody much of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) workload, the underlying factor that enables it all continues to be congressional funding. This annual CSBA report on the DoD budget request analyzes Congress’s adjustments to the defense budget request over recent years and delivers an urgent warning that Congress is inconsistent in its approach to defense spending. After boosting the defense budget significantly above administration requests in recent years, Congress passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 imposing caps that threaten significant budget cuts in two challenging scenarios.
The “frozen topline” scenario involves Congress failing to pass full appropriations for fiscal years (FY) 2024 and 2025, triggering flat nominal defense spending and a 5.4% real reduction from planned levels. The “abrupt cut” scenario involves Congress passing full FY 2024 appropriations but failing to do so for FY 2025, triggering a $36.5 billion (-6.1%) cut from FY 2024 to FY 2025. Both scenarios would deprive the DoD of inflationary relief and result in forced cuts that defense planners wish to avoid.
“Some legislators have proposed saving money by eliminating outdated weapons systems and excess infrastructure to save on O&M costs. Virtually every defense expert supports this idea. The problem is that Congress itself continually thwarts these divestments. Last year, Congress limited DoD’s ability to retire F-22 and EA-18G aircraft and the much-derided Littoral Combat Ship. Even if legislators miraculously approved all eliminations recommended by the Pentagon, the savings still would not be enough. DoD has identified annual savings of around $3 billion through weapons divestments and $2 billion through new base closures. Adding these savings to the amount above gets us to about 22 percent (~$8 billion) of a $36.5 billion cut…Reducing defense by the amounts featured in the two scenarios would likely require downsizing the U.S. military’s size, training, operations, and investments.”
The report also analyzes congressional adjustments from FY 2016 to FY 2023, finding Congress consistently steers more funds toward procurement of favored — and often legacy — systems and RDT&E.
The report also notes that Congress’s preoccupation with “hardware” raises concerns that US forces will not be positioned for long-term strategic competition.
“Congress’s generous funding of legacy helicopters, the Littoral Combat Ship, and C-130s shows that it still clings to established weapons systems. These types of programs often lack the operational relevance that would justify hefty budgetary increases, especially given alternative investment options…Since FY 2016, the Air Force C-130 program received $3.6 billion more in additional funds from Congress than the Air Force F-35. In percentage terms, the C-130 and EC-130 received increases of 84.5 percent and 85.1 percent, respectively, over DoD’s aggregate requests. Comparatively, the F-35 received only a 10.8 percent increase. From FY 2018 to FY 2023, Congress provided the Air Force with an additional $6.3 billion for the procurement of C-130J aircraft – a nearly 1,825 percent increase from DoD’s requested amount of $347 million. This additional funding directed the purchase of 52 C-130Js for the Air National Guard and 10 C-130Js for the Air Force Reserve. In contrast, Congress cut $135.0 million from the Air Force’s newest platform, the B-21 Raider.”
Ultimately, the report argues the Pentagon and Congress both have roles to play in improving the coherence of U.S. defense spending outcomes. Senior defense officials should communicate clear, tangible, and specific rationales for minimum investments needed in each spending account, expressed to Congress in compelling, plain English that makes force requirements clear. DoD should also develop operational concepts that enable the military to fight and win with the resources Congress provides. Moreover, policymakers should implement procedural changes that shape decision-making processes to produce better outcomes, such as mandating that the DoD establish certain facts in plain English before Congress approves multi-year procurements.
I urge readers seeking greater insight into this complex but vital issue to consult the full CSBA report.
Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China
By U.S. Department of Defense
Link to PDF
Focus: An annual report to US Congress detailing military and security developments involving China. It covers China's national strategy, military capabilities, operational activities, and regional security dynamics.Analysis: Detailed analysis of Chinese strategy, doctrine, capabilities, and operations across all military services and domains. It also draws on US defense intelligence sources.Argument: China is rapidly modernizing its military to achieve its strategic objectives, posing an increasing threat to regional security and U.S. interests. Thus, the US must strengthen deterrence and preparedness.Insights: The report highlights China's development of new capabilities like hypersonic missiles, expanding nuclear arsenal, underground facilities, and intelligentized warfare concepts.Recommendations: Congress should provide funding and authorize policies to counter China's military modernization. Moreover, the Department of Defense should re-open lines of communication with China's military.This congressionally mandated report provides a comprehensive overview of China's military modernization efforts and the rapid expansion of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities across all warfare domains. It details how China aims to transform the PLA into a "world-class" military by 2049, with the goal of completing the modernization of its armed forces by 2035.
A key focus of the report is China's nuclear forces. It highlights that China is aggressively expanding and diversifying its nuclear arsenal, including developing new intercontinental ballistic missiles, deploying new nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, and constructing over 300 new ICBM silos. China's nuclear stockpile is estimated to have surpassed 500 warheads in 2023, with projections it could exceed 1,000 operational warheads by 2030. This nuclear buildup significantly exceeds prior projections.
In the naval domain, the report notes that the PLA Navy remains the largest navy in the world with over 370 ships and submarines. It continues to build modern destroyers, frigates, aircraft carriers, and auxiliary ships, increasing its ability to conduct long-range power projection operations beyond East Asia.
The report also notes the developments of China’s conventional missile forces. The PLA is improving its land-attack and anti-ship precision strike capabilities with new missiles like the DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicle. These place US bases and naval forces at greater risk within the Indo-Pacific region.
Additionally, the report highlights advances in China's space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities intended to deny adversaries access to those domains during a crisis or conflict. This includes anti-satellite missiles, satellite jammers, and offensive cyber capabilities that could target critical infrastructure.
The pace and scale of China's defense spending underpins its military modernization, sustaining over 20 years of annual growth. China is dedicating immense resources to defense research, development, and acquisition programs aligned with the PLA's modernization goals.
While the PLA is reforming its joint operations structures and training more realistically, it still lacks actual combat experience for much of its force. However, the report notes China's patient determination to systematically modernize the PLA into a military capable of fighting and winning wars, deterring foreign intervention, and projecting power globally. The scope and intensity of China's military modernization continue to exceed most expectations and have profound implications for the Indo-Pacific security environment. Anyone seeking to truly understand the military dimensions of China's rise as a major power should devote time to reading the full report closely.
Paper Tiger or Pacing Threat?
China’s Security and Defense Engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean
By Ryan C. Berg and Henry Ziemer
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Link to PDF; Link to Report Page
Focus: China's security and defense engagement in Latin America and the CaribbeanAnalysis: In-depth policy analysis drawing on expert interviews, open-source data, and original research to examine the spectrum of China's security activities in the regionArgument: China is becoming more assertive across five categories of security engagement, posing risks of infrastructure use during conflict, empowering regional dictatorships, and eroding civil-military relationsInsights: China's approach leverages non-traditional tools like infrastructure and policing to make gains below the threshold of overt military confrontationRecommendations: The U.S. should fill force modernization and equipment shortfalls, bolster the defense cooperation mechanisms, clarify red lines, enhance disaster response coordination, and more to preserve its regional partnershipsThe CSIS report analyzes China's security and defense engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Specifically, the report argues that while China frames its ties to LAC in economic terms, Beijing is becoming more assertive in bolstering defense and security initiatives that pose risks to the U.S.
To explain the multilateral fashion of China’s engagement with LAC, the report categorizes Chinese security activities into five dimensions: dual-use infrastructure projects, public safety assistance, humanitarian aid, arms sales, and joint military training. It spotlights Chinese infrastructure projects with military implications, like space tracking stations in Argentina and port deals in Panama. On public safety, the report details how China exports policing techniques and technologies like mass surveillance. The report also highlights increases in Chinese humanitarian aid to LAC countries over the past decade as well as growth in arms sales and more frequent joint military exercises between China and select LAC militaries.
“Further south, the Espacio Lejano Station in Neuquén Province, Argentina, has drawn consternation for the direct role of Chinese military forces from the PLA Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) in its quotidian operations. Espacio Lejano represents China’s only deep space ground station in the southern hemisphere, thus filling an important coverage gap in China’s space domain awareness. The internal workings of the station are remarkably opaque, even by the standards of China’s dealings, with the media describing the facility as a “black box.” The facility is officially considered sovereign Chinese territory, and Argentina is barred from conducting inspections. The equipment contained in Espacio Lejano possesses important dual-use telemetry tracking and control (TT&C) capabilities, used for monitoring and providing positional guidance to satellites in orbit. In times of conflict, the TT&C capacity found here would greatly augment China’s anti-satellite warfare operations, a capability the PLA has assiduously cultivated since its first successful anti-satellite test in 2007. Even more concerning is the fact that the United States’ own satellite coverage of the southern hemisphere remains incomplete. Therefore, Espacio Lejano not only offers the PLASSF an important capability to degrade or deny the space domain to the United States but also could enable China to conduct attacks with conventional or hypersonic missiles against the homeland, striking up from Antarctica and, in the process, evading U.S. missile defenses, the majority of which are oriented toward the Arctic.”
Overall, the analysis sees three primary threats from expanded Chinese security engagement in LAC. First, dual-use projects could aid Chinese operations against the U.S. in a conflict. Second, Chinese security support empowers LAC dictatorships. Third, military ties may undermine democratic civilian control of LAC armed forces.
The report provides a series of recommendations to help ensure US security and protect relationships with LAC countries:
Leverage U.S. partners to fill force modernization and equipment shortfalls
Bolster the defense cooperation mechanisms of the inter-American system
Clarify U.S. red lines when it comes to security engagement
Invest in U.S. core competencies in military education and training
Enhance interagency and international cooperation for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief
Improve cooperation on countering illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and the nexus between transnational organized crime and environmental crimes
Strengthen awareness and training on cybersecurity
Invest in citizen security and delink citizen security from the regional conversation on drugs
While some engagements may appear benign, the authors make a compelling argument that taken together, Beijing is pursuing a sophisticated strategy that poses real risks to US interests and partnerships in the region. For policymakers and regional experts concerned with China's ambitions in the Americas, this report is essential reading to understand the multifaceted nature of Chinese engagement and to chart a thoughtful path forward for the United States.
