On this Washington Roundtable episode of the Defense & Aerospace Report Podcast, sponsored by Bell, our guests are Dov Zakheim, PhD, former DoD comptroller, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Dr. Patrick Cronin of the Hudson Institute, Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO who is now with the Center for a New American Security and Chris Servello, a founder of Provision Advisors public relations firm (and Defense and Aerospace team member).

Topics: 

— Congress adjourns to celebrate Passover, Easter and Ramadan, debate on wisdom of increasing Pentagon spending by $100 billion as some suggest is needed to counteract impact of 8.5 percent inflation

— Whether Europe will support prolonged war in Ukraine and sanctions on an increasingly brutal Russia

— Finland and Sweden move toward NATO membership as French election runoff heads to final week between anti-EU, anti-NATO Marine Le Pen and President Emmanuel Macron

— West surges more military equipment to Ukraine as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asks top US defense firms to quickly address Ukrainian warfighting needs

— At what point Western arms ships will cross Vladimir Putin’s red lines for unspecified retaliation

— China’s long-range logistical demonstration in shipping air defense systems to Serbia as US lawmakers visit Taiwan and diplomats head to Solomon Islands

— India’s reliability as a Quad partner

— Administration’s Ukraine war messaging and impact of sinking of Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva — built in 1979 in Mykolayiv as the Slava, Russian for Glory

— How administration should respond if Russia used chemical weapons in Mariupol