The Navy signed, Dec. 22, the expected five year, $14 billion contract with General Dynamics to build eight new Virginia class submarines. The contract calls for a production rate of one ship per year in 2009 and 2010 and two per year in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
Analysts contend that in a future filled with small wars where the organizational building block of potential opponents is not brigades and battalions, but rather smaller, distributed units, then perhaps the U.S. military should follow suit: train and organize to fight in small, independent, combined arms teams.
The Army released its new training manual this week, known as FM 7-0, an effort to shift from a focus on offense and defense operations in large conventional battles to operating successfully anywhere along the “spectrum of conflict,” including counterinsurgency and peacekeeping operations.
The Pentagon recently created a specialized unit trained and equipped to respond on very short notice to a large scale chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack anywhere in the U.S. The new active-duty unit of 4,700 personnel will be on high alert during next month’s presidential inauguration.
How much have we spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? The answer is $904 billion, according to CSBA’s Steven Kosiak. Waging war today is a far costlier endeavor than past U.S. military operations; the U.S. has already spent 50 percent more fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan than it did in the Vietnam War.
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