FORT LAUDERDALE: As automatic cuts to the 2013 budget look increasingly unavoidable, with the deadline for a Congressional deal only a week away, Army leaders are preparing fallback positions to defend the service from a full decade of sequester cuts. That includes new guidance on cutting modernization and planning for potential cuts to personnel and… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Added Capitol Hill Reaction AFA Winter, Orlando: Imagine if someone told you 70 percent of all American combat aircraft would not be ready to fly in time of war by July. That’s just what Air Force Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told some 600 people attending the Air Force Associations’s annual… Keep reading →

ARMY WAR COLLEGE: Hours before Pyongyang conducted its latest nuclear test, military officers here at the Army War College began waging a wargame whose classified scenario is transparently concerned with North Korea. That is not happenstance. [Click here for more coverage of the Army’s “Winter Wargame”] After a decade of guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan and… Keep reading →

Richard Whittle, in addition to being a regular contributor to Breaking Defense, is a senior scholar at the Wilson Center. He is writing a book on the Predator, the first armed drone. In an earlier incarnation, Rick once accompanied the late congressman Charlie Wilson to Pakistan for a visit to the Afghan mujahedeen. The Editor… Keep reading →

The Air Force general responsible for most of the nation’s military nuclear force is worried that the Continuing Resolution and the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration will wipe out 20 percent of the money he needs to keep his force combat ready. “You can’t take those kinds of reductions we’ll be looking at without… Keep reading →

[UPDATED with details on carriers] THE CAPITOL: With the Obama Pentagon excoriating federal lawmakers for their apparent inability to avoid sequestration or to pass a defense spending bill, and the Navy going down to one carrier in the Persian Gulf for lack of funds, GOP lawmakers today defended the latest Republican proposal to stop the… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: French forces have made great strides driving al-Qaeda-linked insurgents out of Mali’s major cities, said the Pentagon’s top counterterrorism official, Michael Sheehan. But any long-term solution requires local forces in the lead — not Westerners. And those recent successes in Yemen and Somalia provide a model for Mali — and for Afghanistan after 2014.… Keep reading →

[UPDATED with comments from Maj. Gen. Michael Repass, SOCEUR]WASHINGTON: Even the celebrated Special Operations Command is feeling the budgetary bite of Washington dysfunction, SOCOM chief Adm. William McRaven said today. “I haven’t gone through the list yet,” McRaven told reporters accosting him after a speech, but SOCOM will make cuts “just like the services” (the… Keep reading →

[CORRECTED with revised data from Army] CRYSTAL CITY: If Republicans and Democrats can’t come to terms, the combination of sequestration, a year-long Continuing Resolution, and reduced Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) funding will slam Army readiness accounts by $17 billion to $19 billion, Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said this morning. All told, he said,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: While the House has voted to extend the debt limit to May, the automatic federal spending cuts called sequestration still loom $90 billion large, half that bill for the Pentagon alone. Yet, as fourth quarter earnings calls begin, the defense industry and its stock values remain remarkably resilient. What gives? Or rather, what isn’t… Keep reading →