Barry Watts
Senior Fellow
Areas of Expertise
Strategy, Net Assessment, Guided Munitions Revolution, Long-Range Precision Strike, Directed Energy, US Defense Industrial Base, Defense Acquisition, Realistic Combat Training, Military Use of Space
Biography
Prior to joining CSBA in 2002, Barry Watts headed the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation at the Defense Department (2001-2002). Following retirement from the Air Force in 1986 until 2001, Mr. Watts was with the Northrop Grumman Analysis Center, which he directed from 1997 to 2001.
During his Air Force career, Mr. Watts flew a combat tour in Vietnam in F-4s, taught logic and philosophy at the U.S. Air Force Academy, served two tours in the Office of Net Assessment, and headed the Red Team in the Air Staff’s Project Checkmate.
Mr. Watts has written on a wide variety of military topics, including a number of CSBA monographs: Nuclear-Conventional Firebreaks and the Nuclear Taboo (2013); The Defense Industrial Base (2011, co-authored with Todd Harrison); The Revolution in Military Affairs (2011); Regaining Strategic Competence (2008, co-authored with Andrew Krepinevich); The Case for Long-Range Strike (2008); The Past and Future of the Defense Industrial Base (2008); U.S. Combat Training, Operational Art, and Strategic Competence: Problems and Opportunities (2008); Six Decades of Guided Munitions and Battle Networks (2007); U.S. Fighter Modernization (2007, co-authored with Steve Kosiak); Long-Range Strike: Imperatives, Urgency and Options (2005); and The Military Use of Space: A Diagnostic Assessment (2001).
He holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the U.S. Air Force Academy and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh.
Author Bibliography for Barry Watts
The Defense Industrial Base: A National Security Imperative
October 24, 2011 • By Barry Watts • Testimony
Chairman Shuster, Mr. Larsen, and Members of the Defense Business Panel, thank you for inviting me to testify at today’s hearing on the imperative to preserve essential elements of U.S….
Sustaining Critical Sectors of the U.S. Defense Industrial Base
September 20, 2011 • By Barry Watts and Todd Harrison • Studies
This monograph focuses on two main questions concerning what is most accurately described as the “military-industrial-Congressional” complex
The Maturing Revolution in Military Affairs
June 2, 2011 • By Barry Watts • Studies
In 1992, the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), Office of the Secretary of Defense, began circulating an assessment of a prospective late-twentieth-century military-technical revolution (MTR). Soviet military theorists had been…
The Implications of China’s Military and Civil Space Programs
May 11, 2011 • By Barry Watts • Testimony
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Commission, thank you for inviting me to testify at today’s hearing. I will confine my comments to the Commission’s questions on the overall context…
Regaining Strategic Competence
September 1, 2009 • By Barry Watts and Andrew F. Krepinevich • Studies
The central argument of this report is that, in light of the complex and intensifying security challenges the United States now faces, the nation can no longer afford poor strategic performance. The time to reverse the decline in US strategic competence is long overdue. The first task is for American political and military leaders to develop a clearer understanding of what strategy actually is, and what cognitive skills are necessary to craft and implement good strategies.