#defence-funding-gap

#defence-funding-gap

"My constituents are saving thousands of dollars and they know it. Republicans can and should take credit because the alternative would've been massive tax hikes under the Democrats had they won the 2024 election."

The economics are hard to ignore. Shooting down a drone with AeroVironment's LOCUST laser system costs less than $10, using just two to five seconds of laser energy. Compare that to the interceptor missiles currently used against Iranian drone swarms, which cost orders of magnitude more and are in short supply across allied arsenals.

Retired Army Special Forces officer Mike Nelson criticized Hegseth's rhetoric, stating, 'That's a necessary end to achieve goals through military force - you have to kill people to achieve them. That's not the end. It's a weird obsession with death for the sake of it.'

The U.S. has discovered that air superiority and missile defense systems designed to counter tens/hundreds of aircraft and missiles is insufficient against asymmetric attacks of thousands of drones.

"To accelerate current weapons development timelines, DARPA is considering an alternative development paradigm to increase the nation's magazine depth and breadth."

The White House is seeking a 10 percent cut to nondefense spending, proposing a reduction of $73 billion from federal programs outside the military, targeting environmental initiatives.

Our war fighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds.

But logistical consistency, like coherence and gravitas, does not characterize the new NDS. It is a document that supposedly nests within the National Security Strategy, explaining at greater length the implications of overall policy for the armed forces. The 2026 version does not do that. Rather, it restates some of the basic priorities of the Trump administration but for the most part confines itself to flattery of the president, insults, and bombast.