WarMonitor on Nostr: U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the closure of the Office of Net ...

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the closure of the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), which was created in 1973 by President Richard Nixon to serve as an “internal think-tank” within the Pentagon tasked with assisting senior defense and military officials with planning for future conflicts with peer-adversaries, most recently China. The ONA, which only accounts for roughly $10-20 million in defense spending per year, was shuttered by the Pentagon on Thursday, suggesting that the office would be restructured and then possibly reopened in the future with a new focus on the country’s “most pressing national security challenges.” Most recently, the ONA was focused on planning U.S. strategy for a full-scale war in China, which some officials have suggested could be coming by 2027, with the office having established a concept called Air-Sea Battle, which envisioned an initial “blinding campaign” by U.S. Air Force stealth bombers and submarines that would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radars followed by a larger naval assault by the Army, Navy and Marine Corps.