[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 →

[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 →

In the third of our ongoing series forecasting key defense issues for 2013, Aerospace Industries Association president Marion Blakey, a member of Breaking Defense’s Board of Contributors, talks about what it will take to preserve the critical defense capabilities in a time of falling budgets. If 9/11 brought to an abrupt end Francis Fukuyama’s “End… Keep reading →

No federal civilian furloughs — for a while — even if sequester hits, SecDef Panetta says: http://1.usa.gov/U0Wtfw SydneyFreedberg

[updated Wednesday 12/5] WASHINGTON: Top executives from four major defense and aerospace firms sent a message to Congress and the Obama administration today: the nation expects its elected leaders to lead and the well-paid executives are willing to accept higher personal and corporate taxes on the path to find a solution to the nation’s fiscal… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Dov Zakheim and Roger Zakheim, the father-and-son team of national security advisors to the Romney campaign, fenced with skeptical reporters this morning about what their candidate would actually do differently from the Obama administration. The big things, in brief: boost Navy shipbuilding by 66 percent; slash the civil service workforce at the Defense Department;… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Even with Congress in recess until after the November elections, the Pentagon remains focused on avoiding sequestration — which would require Congressional action before January — rather than planning the least painful way to implement the automatic budget cuts. “There isn’t a plan. I know this frustrates people, but we haven’t done detailed planning,”… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: “If we’re going to fix it, we’re going to have to take some risks.” That’s the core of Norman Augustine’s vision for Pentagon acquisition reform: He who dares may not always win, but he who doesn’t dare never will. The military’s system for buying weapons is so afraid of failure, the legendary former Lockheed… Keep reading →

[updated 3:00 pm with Kendall comments] WASHINGTON: If history is any guide, the cuts to the defense budget will prompt a new wave of acquisition reform — and if history is any guide, we’ll get it wrong, again. Frank Kendall, the undersecretary for acquisitions, logistics, and technology, rolled out a “Better Buying Power” initiative in… Keep reading →

If If the Pentagon wants to buy weapons that are delivered on time and don’t cost too much, then it should take decades of regulations, totaling thousands of pages, and “put a match to it,” the chairman of a Defense Business Board study told Breaking Defense. The best part is that’s a reform the Pentagon… Keep reading →