Welcome to the Defense Download! This new round‐​up is intended to highlight what we at the Cato Institute are keeping tabs on in the world of defense politics every week. The three‐​to‐​five trending stories will vary depending on the news cycle, what policymakers are talking about, and will pull from all sides of the political spectrum. If you would like to recieve more frequent updates on what I’m reading, writing, and listening to—you can follow me on Twitter via @CDDorminey. 

  1. Today, Senator Rand Paul will take the floor to call for a vote on blocking arms sales to Bahrain—one of the countries waging war on Yemen. Senator Paul will be invoking the congressional oversight function included in the Arms Export Control Act (AECA). I’ll be watching the vote and covering its results on Twitter @CDDorminey. If you want more information on the conflict in Yemen, check out my colleague Emma Ashford’s work. For background on arms sales and congressional oversight, flip through the Risky Business report Trevor Thrall and I published earlier this year.
  2. “Incoming HASC Chair: Scale Back Plans for New Nukes,” Marcus Weisgerber. Representative Adam Smith is poised to become the House Armed Services Committee chairman and aims to “totally redo the Nuclear Posture Review” during his tenure. Cost is a motivating factor that Rep. Smith says the current plans haven’t taken seriously enough: “When you look at the needs we have in national security, the needs we have in the country and the $22 trillion debt, what they’re talking about in terms of totally rebuilding a nuclear weapons capacity in all pieces of the triad is way beyond what we can afford.”
  3. “Here’s what the Pentagon thinks the actual cost of a Space Force will be,” Aaron Mehta. Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan spoke to reporters this week and significantly decreased the government’s estimate of starting a Space Force. While the Air Force claimed it could cost as much as $13 billion, Shanahan’s team claims it can keep costs to the single digit billions, possibly as “low” as $5 billion.
  4. “Providing for the Common Defense,” National Defense Strategy Commission. This new report discusses the findings of a congressionally‐​mandated study on the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) and a wide variety of emerging national security threats. The authors call for a vague yet drastic increase in defense spending, claiming it is out of their purview to estimate how much implementing the 2018 NDS will actually cost—just that current resource levels are insufficient.