Former Defense Department official Thomas Mahnken has been tapped to become the new president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Mahnken, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planning from 2006 to 2009, will succeed Andrew Krepinevich, CSBA's founder and president since its inception 22 years ago.
"I am honored to be joining CSBA," Mahnken in a CSBA statement. "It is an organization that is at the forefront of thinking through the tough strategic challenges that the United States faces today, and will face in the future. Its work is a tribute to the highly talented group of analysts who make up CSBA."
CSBA recently issued a report finding that the United States' advantage in the electromagnetic warfare domain is eroding, but the Pentagon can regain its edge by shifting its priorities and developing new operational concepts. As Inside Defense reported this week:
The report notes that the Defense Department can "regain and maintain an enduring advantage in the [electromagnetic spectrum] warfare competition" that it lost since the Cold War ended if it shifts toward using low-power countermeasures to retake the airwaves.
"Specifically, DOD could shift toward using low-power countermeasures to defeat enemy passive and active sensors, as well as low probability of intercept/low-probability of detection (LPI/LPD) sensors and communications to reduce the likelihood that its forces will be counter-detected," the report states.
Many of these technologies are already mature, the report states, noting that they can be added to weapon systems. However, DOD needs "the operational concepts and formal requirements that would help transition these capabilities to U.S. warfighters, organizations to develop and acquire more versatile EMS warfare systems, and sufficient resources allocated to procure them," the report states.
CSBA recommends that the department lay out a vision for how troops will operate in the EMS, calling on the newly established EW executive committee to do so. In addition, the military departments should create EMS warfare operational concepts.