WASHINGTON: “I am fully expecting to see sequestration in some form beginning in January,” Rep. Randy Forbes told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview. And those automatic cuts — or even the more targeted cuts likely in any deal to avoid a sequester — would undermine the nation’s new Pacific-focused strategy and the military’s AirSea… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The overall balance of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees will shift little in the 113th Congress, but individual causes and companies have lost important advocates as individual legislators went down to defeat. This may have been a banner year for incumbents– as most years are — but the House Armed Services Committee… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Hours after a House Armed Services Committee on sequestration elicited bitter laugh after bitter laugh from a roomful of observers while the two sides threw figurative spitballs at each other, the Senate almost, but not quite, passed a Continuing Resolution to keep the U.S. government funded for another six months. Sen. Daniel Inouye,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The stalemate over sequestration just got deeper today with horribly predictable political posturing over the tardy release of the Office of Management and Budget’s congressionally-mandated report on how the drastic automatic cuts would be implemented. The 394-page report set the stage for the mutual denunciations in its preamble, declaring House Republican proposals to avert… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Congress and the Obama administration should thank their lucky stars that hardly anyone watched this morning’s House Armed Services Committee hearing about sequestration. Everyone in the political arena will try to paint this one as the other’s fault. The GOP will blame the Democrats. The White House will blame the GOP. The GOP… Keep reading →

DepSecDef Carter @ #HASC says sequester wld mean cuts 4 F-35s, 1 P-8, 12 Strykers, 300 medium, heavy tactical vehicles CVN-78, LCS delays ColinClarkAol

CAPITOL HILL: Those nine warships the Navy planned to retire in the face of the budget crunch? Fuggedaboutit. They’re back in, if the Senate Appropriations Committee has anything to say about it. The Army wants to keep working on tanks? Cool. We got their back. Helicopters flew the guys who killed Osama bin Laden and… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON [updated 6:45 pm with Rep. Smith and AIA comment]: The Labor Department issued guidance today stating that defense companies and other federal contractors do not need to issue layoff notices sixty days in advance of sequestration. House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon immediately denounced the guidance as “politically motivated,” and his staff called it… Keep reading →

Panetta: sequestration would require getting rid of 100,000 troops – http://bit.ly/MMCbXc. Our past coverage: http://aol.it/K5YGSp SydneyFreedberg

CAPITOL HILL: The four service cyber commands want to move personnel and resources from routine network operations — the classic IT jobs — to online attack and defense executed with a “warrior” mentality, their senior officers told Congress yesterday afternoon. Increasingly “these men and women view themselves as warriors,” Vice Admiral Michael Rogers, chief of… Keep reading →