“The U.S. Department of Defense’s fiscal year 2015 budget request outlines a sound path to responsibly meet the risks and challenges of the current national security environment. The plan also proposes a number of smart, targeted reductions to defense spending that will maintain U.S. military capabilities and the All-Volunteer Force while helping return the country to a peacetime footing. Nonetheless, the Pentagon’s planning process indicates that it is still operating under the assumption that the near-record-high funding levels that characterized the decade after 9/11 will return—and if the U.S. Department of Defense, or DOD, can just weather this short-term budgetary storm, it can avoid adjusting its long-term plans to reflect existing fiscal realities.” By Lawrence J. Korb, Max Hoffman, and Kate Blakeley |April 24, 2014.