CAPITOL HILL: Like water rushing downhill, flowing over or around or through every obstacle in its path, money in Washington will find a way. Today’s example is the newly released House Armed Services Committee’s “mark up” of the 2014 national defense authorization act. Striving to address shortfalls in military readiness created by this year’s hasty… Keep reading →

UPDATED THROUGHOUT WITH COMMENTS FROM CAPITOL HILL EVENT CAPITOL HILL: In an extraordinary letter to defense lawmakers and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, experts from nine Washington think tanks on the left and the right call for fundamental fixes to the defense budgets that, left undone, “threaten the health and long-term viability of America’s volunteer military.” The… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Intent on ensuring the American taxpayers gets value for money and the Defense Department gets tactical intelligence it needs, Rep. Mac Thornberry wants to fence half of the money for the Pentagon’s new Defense Clandestine Service. “I think that DIA has made significant progress in developing and explaining the DCS,” Thornberry, chairman of… Keep reading →

[updated with Adm. Greenert comment] House Armed Services seapower chairman Randy Forbes promised a “rebirth” of oversight in my interview with him last week, and he makes a down payment on that in his subcommittee’s markup of the defense bill. It includes a host of new reporting and certification requirements. Top of the deck comes the… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Yes, the defense budget is a mess. Continued uncertainty about whether sequestration will go away or is the new norm has thrown the annual budget process into even greater disarray than usual. But, Rep. Randy Forbes believes there’s a silver lining. Precisely because the president’s budget request is largely overtaken by events, Congress… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Tracking the winners and losers of this year’s House authorization markup — the draft bill produced by the House Armed Services Committee — is one of Washington’s most exhausitng pastimes. The final bill often does not appear until 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or even later in the morning the day… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Rep. Mac Thornberry’s new bill has been depicted just as a demand that the executive branch notify Congress about drone strikes, but there’s much more to the “Oversight of Sensitive Military Operations Act,” introduced Thursday by the House Armed Services Committee vice-chairman. [Click here to read the full text of Rep. Thornberry’s Oversight of Sensitive Military… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: What homemade roadside bombs could do to Army and Marine ground vehicles was the ugly surprise of the last decade. What sophisticated long-range missiles could do to Navy aircraft carriers could be the ugly surprise of the next. “I think it would almost follow like the night to the day,” Rep. Randy Forbes told… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Army’s problem with its new Apache helicopters isn’t as bad as we thought when we first wrote about it last week. It’s worse. We knew that Northstar Aerospace, the subcontractor making the transmissions for lead contractor Boeing, had fallen behind on building that crucial component. We knew at least seven of the latest… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Sequestration is not the Navy’s only shipbuilding problem. In the near term, the automatic cuts to the 2013 budget are bedeviling efforts to save money by buying ships in bulk. Negotiators are racing the clock to salvage a multi-year procurement contract to buy 10 DDG-51 Aegis destroyers for the price of nine; Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told reporters today he was “optimistic.”

In the longer term, however, after the 10-year, $500 billion cut in defense spending required by sequestration, the Navy has dug a different hole for itself. The service has crafted a 30-year shipbuilding plan that requires massive increases in funding to levels that the Navy’s acquisition chief Sean Stackley admitted to Congress had not been seen since the Reagan build-up.

“Can you present… a scintilla of evidence” that the 30-year plan can be funded, an exasperated Rep. Randy Forbes, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s panel on seapower, asked during a hearing this morning.