FY2018-FY2019 Defense Budget

I gather we finally have a defense budget in place and it runs through September 2019 (there is no requirement to pass a budget for only one year). It is an $80 billion boost above spending caps for this year and $85 billion above spending caps for FY2019. This is a total of $165 billion above spending caps. The U.S. defense budget was already at least $35 billion over the spending cap. The budget request for FY2107 was initially $583 billion. I gather the budget for FY2018 is the BCA Budget Cap figure of $549 + $80  = $629 billion. Don’t quote me on this.

See:

  1. https://www.yahoo.com/news/fiscal-hawk-paul-delays-senate-vote-budget-deal-002451918–business.html
  2. https://www.yahoo.com/news/congress-passes-massive-spending-deal-103529004.html

I did note that Senator Rand Paul in his brief filibuster speech last night said that we were involved in seven wars. Of the top of my head, I only count six:

  1. Afghanistan
  2. Iraq
  3. Syria
  4. Libya
  5. Somalia
  6. “Trans-Sahara” (Mali and Niger)

Makes me wonder which war I am missing (perhaps he is counting Yemen).

Also of note was that we ended up halting a battalion-sized attack in Syria by the Syrian government. See: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-syria-killed-100-russian-syrian-backed-fighters-2018-2

A few highlights:

  1. More than 100 Syrian soldiers are claimed to have been killed.
    1. Syrians claim they lost 7 killed and 27 injured.
    2. One SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) member was injured.
  2. The Syrian attack included 122mm Howitzers, multiple launch rocket systems, T-55 and T-72 tanks.
  3. U.S. responded with Air Force AC-130 gunships, F-15s, F-22s, Army Apache gunships, Marine Corps artillery, HIMARS (our Katusha) and MQ-9 drones.
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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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