Reassessing Defense Priorities

Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute joins Defense & Aerospace Report Editor Vago Muradian to discuss the new budgeting tool developed by AEI and the Center for Strategic and International Studies to illustrate tradeoffs needed to achieve Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s demand that the military services redirect 8 percent of their annual spending to new priorities over the coming five years; partners on the initiative; whether defense spending will increase or whether the military services will have to make difficult tradeoffs; Hegseth’s demand that combatant commands and military services headquarters be streamlined; some ideas for Space Force headquarters consolidation that could be applied elsewhere; how to make thoughtful decisions in a zero sum budget environment; whether future efforts at reform will be harder to achieve if this administration’s drive for change fail; more thoughtful potential approaches to driving major change; and costs that might be imposed on the system by wholesale personnel cuts, retirements and other changes.