Skip to content
  • Home
  • About
    • Mission & Method
    • History
    • Principal Researchers
    • Contact Us
  • Publications
    • Military & Strategic Studies
    • U.S. Defense Policy
    • Regional Security
    • Wars & Military Operations
    • Budget
    • Arms Control
    • U.N. & Peace Operations
    • Defense Reviews
    • Terrorism & Counter-terrorism
    • Guest
    • All Publications
  • Blogs & Bulletins
    • Reset Defense blog 2020-
    • Defense Strategy Review blog 2009-2014
    • Wider War Watch blog 2001/2002
    • Reset Defense Bulletin 2014-2018
    • Reset Defense Bulletin 2011-2013
  • Site Map
  • RSS Feed
Project on Defense Alternatives

cknight

Reasonable Defense Cuts Possible

➪ HTML Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Blog, 09 January 2013.
Categories In the News

Solving the Fiscal Impasse Starts and Ends at the Pentagon

➪ HTML by Barbara Lee, Roll Call, 09 January 2012.
Categories In the News

Yes, We Have A (Defense) Spending Problem

(HTML version) by David Callahan, The American Prospect, 07 January 2013.
Categories In the News

Make Pentagon Savings Part of Budget Negotiations

(HTML version) by Keith Ellison and Mick Mulvaney, Huffington Post, 21 December 2012.
Categories In the News

It’s Time for a Plan “D”

(HTML version) by Barbara Lee, Huffington Post, 21 December 2012.
Categories In the News

Smaller ships being prioritized, but questions plague key vessel

(HTML version) by Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact, Tampa Bay Times, 20 December 2012.
Categories In the News

Reviews undertaken; hard slog of shifting military priorities is a work in progress

(HTML version) by Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact, Tampa Bay Times, 19 December 2012.
Categories In the News

Disparate defense think tanks reach common ground on defense cuts

(HTML version) by Carlo Muñoz, The Hill, 17 December 2012.
Categories In the News

Right, left call for defense cuts

(HTML version) by Jeremy Herb, The Hill, 10 December 2012.
Categories In the News

Local House members seek targeted defense cuts

(HTML version) by Josh Richman, Political Blotter, 10 December 2012.
Categories In the News

Toss Wasteful Defense Weapons Programs Off the Cliff

(HTML version) by Barbara Lee, Huffington Post, 05 December 2012.
Categories In the News

Budget Agreement Reached! 5 think tanks warn of things to come for the Pentagon

(HTML version) by Gordon Adams, Foreign Policy, 27 November 2012.
Categories In the News

More Than One Way to Skin the Defense Budget

(HTML version) by Sandra Erwin, National Defense Magazine, 18 November 2012.
Categories In the News

Sequestration Or Not, U.S. Firms, DoD Will Take a Hit

(HTML version) by Marcus Weisgerber, Defense News, 18 November 2012.
Categories In the News

Wonks: Room for cuts, but not through sequester

(HTML version) by Kate Brannen, Politico Pro, 16 November 2012.
Categories In the News

Two studies outline ‘responsible’ defense cuts

(HTML version) by Charles S. Clark, Government Executive, 15 November 2012.
Categories In the News

Should the United States increase or decrease its spending for defense?

(HTML version) Federation of American Scientists, 15 November 2012. Carl Conetta, Charles Knight, and Ethan Rosenkranz of the Project on Defense Alternatives; Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI); and Christopher Preble of the CATO Institute debate whether the U.S. should increase or decrease its spending for defense.

Categories Budget, U.S. Defense Policy

Coburn: Cut Wasteful Spending at the “Department of Everything”

(HTML version) by Ben Freeman, Project on Government Oversight blog, 15 November 2012.
Categories In the News

Frank: ‘Zero chance’ of sequester deal without massive military cuts

(HTML version) by Carlo Muñoz, The Hill, 14 November 2012.
Categories In the News

Press Tele-Briefing on Release of Reasonable Defense Report

Briefing w/ Congressman Barney Frank (audio),  14 November 2012.  
Categories Video, Audio, Events

The 2013 Budget and the ‘Fiscal Cliff’

(video) New America Foundation and Economists for Peace and Security, C-span, 13 November 2012.
Categories In the News, Video, Audio, Events

Fiscal Cliff? Obama Urged Not To Panic

(HTML version) by Dan Froomkin, Huffington Post, 13 November 2012.
Categories In the News

Massachusetts defense industry watching Elizabeth Warren closely: Bay State jobs are of concern

(HTML version) by Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, 12 November 2012.
Categories In the News

“Lame Duck” Congress Must Act to Prevent Sequestration

(HTML version) by Michele Nash-Hoff, Huffington Post, 06 November 2012.
Categories In the News

FACT CHECK: Fox News Examines Some Key Statements From Last Night’s Foreign Policy Debate

(HTML version) Fox News Insider, 23 October 2012.
Categories In the News

Romney’s Defense Plans Call For Higher Spending

(HTML version – audio available) by Larry Abramson, National Public Radio, 18 October 2012.
Categories In the News, Video, Audio, Events

The Wall Street Journal’s Disclosure Issue: Bolton Edition

(HTML version) by Remington Shepard, Media Matters, 11 September 2012.
Categories In the News

Building a Peace Economy

(HTML version) by Adria Scharf, Richmond Times Dispatch, 10 September 2012.
Categories In the News

A Smarter Way to Trim the Pentagon Budget

(HTML version) by Charles Knight, Time Battleland, 24 August 2012. The Reasonable Defense plan demonstrates how carefully conceived changes to the Pentagon budget can be consistent with economic recovery and also provide ample military capacity to protect America and our core commitments abroad.

Categories Budget, Publications, U.S. Defense Policy

A Reasonable Alternative to Sequester of DoD Funding

PDA Briefing Memo #56, 14 August 2012. (➪ HTML) ➪ PDF. An option for gradually reducing the Pentagon budget over four years that safely achieves savings comparable to the Budget Control Act over ten years.
Categories Budget, Publications, U.S. Defense Policy

Defense Sense: Options for National Defense Savings in Fiscal Year 2013

➪ PDF ➪ PDF summary of recommendations 15 May 2012. Cato Institute and Project on Defense Alternatives. The report outlines 18 recommendations for safely reducing the Fiscal Year 2013 defense budget by $17 – 20 billion. Two charts, one table.
Categories Budget, Publications, U.S. Defense Policy

How to Pay for Wars

(HTML version) by Benjamin H. Friedman and Charles Knight, The National Interest, 06 March 2012. A war tax or an effective cap on war spending can serve as a disincentive to reckless war making.
Categories Budget, Publications, U.S. Defense Policy
Older posts
Newer posts
← Previous Page1 Page2 Page3 Page4 … Page10 Next →

Our Work

Reset Defense Blog

  • Aslı Ü. Bâli on Why the War on Iran Accelerates the Decline of U.S. Global Primacy
    I am a subscriber to Peter Beinart’s Notebook. I find him a generous and engaging [more]
  • The Future of the Tank
    Unterseher surveys the evolution of anti-tank warfare—from artillery, mines, infantry weapons, and guided missiles to drones, precision munitions, and networked reconnaissance—and shows how modern defenses increasingly exploit top attack, long range, and coordinated fire. It then traces the tank’s history from World War I through the Cold War, emphasizing how armored forces repeatedly adapted to countermeasures and doctrinal change. The author concludes that large independent tank formations are less survivable today, especially under ubiquitous drone surveillance and precision fires, but tanks still matter when integrated into combined-arms systems. The likely future is a battlefield with fewer tanks with greater emphasis on networked defenses employing agile engineering, lighter forces, precise artillery, and drones. [more]
  • Ukraine War: A Practicable Ceasefire… and its Alternative
    Carl Conetta, 4 Feb 2026 Summary Excerpts from “The Ukraine War Prospect: How Peace [more]
  • Hegseth’s Crusade – a more White, Male, Alt-right US Military
    Carl Conetta, 15 Oct 2025 Pete Hegseth wears his masculinist panic on his sleeve [more]
  • European Defense: First the Horror Vacui, Then What?
      European national security institutions continue churning through the stages [more]
  • Ukraine: Securing Its Future with a Self-Sustaining Defense
    by Charles Knight, 20 February 2025 On February 12th, the new Secretary of Defense [more]
  • Lift the Syria Sanctions: The Principal Danger in Syria Today is Instability
    Confounding current policy on the new Syria is the 2018 designation of the nation’s [more]
  • Israeli Rule-Based Order: Assault on post-Assad Syria Declared “Defensive”
    New Arab, Israeli strikes on Syria ‘completely lawless’, UN experts say [more]
  • Putin Announces Significant Change in Russian Nuclear Use Doctrine
    Carl Conetta, 26 Sept 2024 Speaking to the Security Council on Sept 25, 2024, [more]
  • Putin verbatim: Ukraine’s Use of NATO Deep Strike Missiles Would Mean West at War with Russia
    Summary: Putin asserts that Ukraine’s use of Western long-range [more]
  • Expert Letter on Ukraine: NATO Should Not Move Ukraine Toward Membership
    July 3, 2024 – Full letter with 61 signatories ⇒ PDF The letter argues that [more]
  • Why the Biden Cease-fire Proposal Will Not End the Gaza War Despite UN Approval
    Carl Conetta, 12 June 2024 The UN Security Council resolution supporting the Biden [more]
  • Brinkmanship and Nuclear Threat in the Ukraine War
    Western brinkmanship in Ukraine depends on denying there is a brink. That’s a [more]
  • “Nuclear Blackmail” – Misdirection in the Ukraine War Debate
    Some say that turning to diplomacy in the face of nuclear threats will prompt a [more]
  • Catastrophe: The Global Cost of the Ukraine War
    Carl Conetta, 02 May 2023   The Russia-Ukraine war has been a disaster for [more]
  • Fantasy in Ukrainian War Scenarios – what will 2023 bring?
    by Charles Knight, March 2023. The present status of the war in Ukraine begs the [more]
  • Now That They Made a War – 1 year & 20 years after the invasion of Iraq
    The following is a Postscript (March 2004) to the report (September 2002) of a [more]
  • oped: We Are Tempting Armageddon in Ukraine – Aviation Week
    by Carl Conetta, appearing 07 Mar 2023 in Aviation Week. Link to original oped: [more]
  • Noted: Of Nuclear Bluffs and Red Lines in the Ukraine War
    by Charles Knight In his New York Times essay of 02 January 2023, “Putin Has No Red [more]
  • Noted: The Fate of Russia in US Policy
    An excerpt from “NATO Expansion: Costs and Implications” a presentation [more]
  • Iskender nuclear capable missileThe “Stable Nuclear Deterrent” collapses in the Ukraine War
    Charles Knight, 17 October 2022 A society must assume that it is stable, but the [more]
  • Did NATO expansion prompt the Russian attack on Ukraine?
    The short answer is “no” – but there is more to the issue than that. A closer [more]
  • Russia-Ukraine War: Estimating Casualties & Military Equipment Losses
    Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, updated 03 Apr 2022 Within days of [more]
  • And So Now… It’s War?
    Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, 21 Feb 2022 The battle within [more]
  • Putin’s Next, Best Move – The Logic and Limits of Russian Action on Ukraine
    Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, 14 Feb 2022 Summary: Moscow will act [more]
  • Pentagon Fact Sheet on February 2022 Troop Deployment to Europe
    Pentagon Fact Sheet: Posture Update in Support of Allies in Europe (PDF), 02 Feb [more]
  • 1947 Map of Division of KoreaNoted: The origin of the 38th parallel division of Korea – the map
    noted by Charles Knight, 31 January 2022. Below is the US Army map (from the US [more]
  • Resolving the Ukraine Crisis
    War? Only If We Want It Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, 26 Jan 2022. [more]
  • Honest John missileNoted: Attending to the Historical Perspective of the Other Side in Nuclear Proliferation Diplomacy
    by Charles Knight, 09 January 2022 Iran – Israel/USA   It is thought [more]
  • To End America’s Longest War the US-Korea Alliance Must Change
    A relationship of partners will be more productive than the archaic patron-client one that actively shuns South Korean interest. And such strategic recalibration would come with the added benefit of helping end America’s longest war. [more]

PDA Reset Defense Bulletin

subscription form

Powered by EmailOctopus

Who and What

  • About
    • Mission & Method
    • History
    • Principal Researchers
    • Contact Us
    • Site Feeds & Social Media
  • Site Map

Search this Site

Featured on the PDA Homepage

In the center column, we highlight "blurbs" for featured publications. These are a selection of the 200+ PDA articles and reports published on this site, spanning the period from 1988 to the present. Follow the ➪ arrows to HTML or PDF full-text versions.

To see the chronological listing of all PDA publications visit:

https://comw.org/pda/category/publications/

For an index of PDA articles, reports, blog posts, and resource pages organized by subject categories, visit:

https://comw.org/pda/site-map/

PDA-Conetta/Knight Tweets @defensealt

  • Ukraine: Options for a Confidence-Building Defense
    With the advent of the Trump administration, Ukraine has lost its primary war sponsor. This makes […]
  • Lift the Syria Sanctions: The Principal Danger in Syria Now is Instability
    At present, the most critical international security concern regarding Syria is its stabilization – […]
  • oped: “Hold Ukraine accountable for corruption, misspent aid”
    Author James Durso offers a rather harsh assessment of Zelensky’s war leadership: The former […]
  • The Most Effective Antidote to ISIS Attacks? No.
    Graeme Wood’s argument in The Atlantic (view report here) is almost exactly wrong in a key […]
  • The secret US soldiers who trained free-falling with a NUKE between their legs
    “The SADM (Special Atomic Demolition Munition) was a top secret nuclear weapon no different […]
  • Enabling genocide? Former Biden officials reflect on the US president’s legacy
    “The war in Gaza has provoked widespread humanitarian concerns, ranging from famine to ethnic […]
  • World Health Org Chief OK But Others Killed in Israeli Strike on Yemen Airport
    “At least four people were killed and 21 others injured in the attack on [Dec 26] after […]
  • Red Cross: “Obliteration of health care system in northern Gaza puts civilians at grave risk”
    “The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reiterates its urgent call for the […]
  • “Syria is doomed to instability Outside agents will stoke chaos” True?
    Rajan Menon: Syria is doomed to instability Outside agents will stoke chaos, Menon tours the […]
  • US says it has 2,000 troops in Syria, not 900 as previously declared
    from Al Jazeera: Pentagon says the additional forces have been in Syria for ‘a while’, before fall […]
  • Groups Dominating post-Assad Syria, late Dec 2024
    Orange Zone is controlled by the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) led by the Kurdish […]
  • from ISW: Status of Russian Bases in Syria
  • ACLED: Syria – Which groups have been fighting each other and where?
    Report from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED): “Despite the recent […]
  • Offensive Disarmament – A Remarkable Israeli Blitz Weakens New Syrian Government
    In 480 air strikes (as of Dec 12), Israel has decimated much of what remained of Syrian military […]
  • Syrian rebels had help from Ukraine
    David Ignatius reports in a Washington Post op-ed that “according to sources familiar with […]
  • Background on the post-Assad Clash over Manbij in Syria
    Manbij is a cross-roads city on the western side of the Euphrates not far from the Tishrin Dam […]
  • Guardian: Israel, US and Turkey launch strikes in Syria to protect interests
    The warbirds and scavengers are circling: “The US has struck targets associated with Islamic […]
  • Israeli jets strike 300 targets in Syria, aircraft and naval fleet destroyed
    from The Jerusalem Post: “Most of the strikes were in southern Syria and around the city of […]
  • Public Ukrainian estimate of war dead: 43,000 troops. Other sources disagree
    There are several NGO efforts in Ukraine to identify troops killed in war by name, gleaned from […]
  • North Korea, Russia Defense Treaty Comes into Force
    The Defense Post reports the activation of the Kim-Putin defense pack. A serious setback for […]
  • Blinken Says Ukraine Needs to Get Younger People Fighting Russia
    from USNews article: “Blinken’s comments, in an interview with Reuters, reflect a […]
  • Warzone: “Claims Swirl Around US Strikes In Eastern Syria”
    US forces may well have attacked (or counter-attacked) Syrian government or Iranian militia units […]
  • Yes, Ukrainian Special Forces have been active in Syria
    Earlier this year, at least. Kyiv Post, Ukrainian Special Forces and Syrian Rebels Decimate Russian […]
  • US Deployment Areas in Syria
    The  map below, produced by Jusoor (a research group in Turkey), purports to show a full picture of […]
  • Who controls Syria
    Note: The first map does not accurately portray the deployment of US troops. Only a small minority […]
  • How Syria’s rebels became makers of drones and guided missiles
    “Sourcing basic weaponry has been relatively easy for HTS: Syria has been awash with arms […]
  • The Patient Efforts Behind Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s Success in Aleppo
    from War on the Rocks: Article explores in useful detail the recent evolution of Hayat Tahrir […]
  • What is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham? And how did the Islamist group evolve into a key player in Syria’s civil war?
    from The Conversation: “The group originated as an offshoot of the Nusra Front, the official […]
  • Syria’s North-western Front Erupts
    In-depth report from The International Crisis Group is HERE. “Syria’s civil war, which has […]
  • Syrian Rebels’ Surprise Offensive Highlights Assad Regime’s Weakness
    From CSIS: “The Kremlin has been pushing for normalization between Ankara and Damascus and […]

Who and What

  • About
    • Mission & Method
    • History
    • Principal Researchers
    • Contact Us
    • Site Feeds & Social Media
  • Site Map
  • Home
  • About
    • Mission & Method
    • History
    • Principal Researchers
    • Contact Us
  • Publications
    • Military & Strategic Studies
    • U.S. Defense Policy
    • Regional Security
    • Wars & Military Operations
    • Budget
    • Arms Control
    • U.N. & Peace Operations
    • Defense Reviews
    • Terrorism & Counter-terrorism
    • Guest
    • All Publications
  • Blogs & Bulletins
    • Reset Defense blog 2020-
    • Defense Strategy Review blog 2009-2014
    • Wider War Watch blog 2001/2002
    • Reset Defense Bulletin 2014-2018
    • Reset Defense Bulletin 2011-2013
  • Site Map
  • RSS Feed
2026 ©