Todd Harrison

Todd Harrison

Senior Fellow, Defense Budget Studies

Areas of Expertise

Defense Budgets, Military Compensation, Portfolio Management, Systems Engineering, Military Space Systems, Defense Acquisitions and Defense Industrial Base

Social

Biography

Todd Harrison is the Senior Fellow for Defense Budget Studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Mr. Harrison joined CSBA in 2009 from Booz Allen Hamilton, where he supported clients across the Department of Defense, assessing challenges to modernization initiatives and evaluating the performance of acquisition programs. He previously worked in the aerospace industry developing advanced space systems and technologies and served as a captain in the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

Since joining CSBA, Mr. Harrison has authored a number of publications on trends in the overall defense budget, modernization initiatives, the defense industrial base, military personnel costs, and the cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. He frequently contributes to print and broadcast media and has appeared on CNBC, CNN, NPR, Al Jazeera English, and Fox News. He has been a guest lecturer for a number of organizations, including Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the U.S. Army's School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), and the National Defense University.

He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with both a B.S. and an M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics. Mr. Harrison combines his budgetary, programmatic and engineering experience with a strong background in systems analysis to lead the Budget Studies program for CSBA. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Author Bibliography for Todd Harrison

Strategy in Austerity

June 21, 2012 • By Andrew F. Krepinevich, Simon Chin, and Todd Harrison

How does the leading power in the international system sustain its global position while facing the prospect of relative decline and an extended period of fiscal austerity? The answer to…

The Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Budget: Continuity or Change?

February 13, 2012 • By Todd Harrison

DoD preview of the budget left few surprises for the actual budget release. What is more interesting in this budget request are the major changes that were not made—the dogs that didn’t bark

$TRATEGY IN A YEAR OF FISCAL UNCERTAINTY

February 7, 2012 • By Todd Harrison

Defense strategy is about choices. In peacetime, strategy is often expressed in the budget as choices among different types of weapon systems and force structure. Bernard Brodie, writing in a…

Defense Cuts Could Be Only the Beginning

January 9, 2012 • By Todd HarrisonAnalysis

President Obama unveiled the Pentagon’s new defense strategy last week, calling it a moment to “turn the page” on the past decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The new…

DOD Must Protect Industrial Base

December 14, 2011 • By Barry Watts and Todd HarrisonAnalysis

As sequestration looks more likely by the day, the Defense Department faces the challenge of a new fiscal reality. After more than a decade of increasing budgets, the Pentagon has…