WASHINGTON:  Fewer F-35B Joint Strike Fighters, MV-22 Ospreys, AH-1 Cobras, and UH-1 Hueys. No Marine Personnel Carrier. Maybe no Joint Light Tactical Vehicle to replace the Humvee. 8,000 fewer Marines on active duty. The Marine Commandant has put all that on the table as part of his proposal to the Defense Secretary’s Strategic Choices and… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: The Army’s widely publicized decision to cut 10 brigade combat teams from bases in eight states is just part of the story of the incredible shrinking armed services. To start with, it’s not actually 10 brigades: It’s 11, the 10 announced this afternoon and a player to be named later. Or, if you count… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Even amidst the furor over sexual assault and NSA leaker Edward Snowden, the budget cuts known as the sequester dominated this morning’s discussion before the Senate Appropriations Committee. Testifying before SAC’s subcommittee on defense, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey both pleaded for, in Hagel’s words, “time and flexibility.” The… Keep reading →

[updated with Democratic comment] CAPITOL HILL: Lobbyists and journalists focus on the big numbers in the defense budget when they look at the annual National Defense Authorization Act. But in the political theater that is the House Armed Services Committee’s markup of the NDAA, sometimes it’s the small dramas that are most telling. So it… Keep reading →

[updated with final results] CAPITOL HILL: Bipartisan majorities in the House Armed Services Committee have steamrollered proposals to slow down the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and to permit the Pentagon to plan for base closures, but reformers at least made a respectable run at the windmill during markup of fiscal year 2014 National Defense Authorization… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The best case for sequester is still a disaster – but we’re not going to get the best case. That’s the common denominator from a range of budget options rolled out today by an extraordinary alliance of four thinktanks. Their consensus recommendations to cut military readiness, Army brigades, Navy carriers, Air Force ICBMs,… Keep reading →

What’s a few billion between friends? You can download the details below – more than 100 pages of them – but here are the bottom lines of the 2013 reprogramming requests the Pentagon has submitted to Congress: For fiscal year 2013, the administration wants “reprogramming authority” to reshuffle an extraordinary $9.6 billion between accounts in… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Air Force faces a crisis of leadership, a crisis of confidence, a crisis that must be addressed by whomever is nominated as the next secretary. The service is being battered by news story after news story. Today we learned of the suspension of 17 nuclear launch officers. The Associated Press broke the story.… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: “Speed kills.” It looks as if the Pentagon may well adopt that old highway-safety slogan as its new strategy to combat the so-called sequester, which will cut $500 billion from the defense budget over the next decade unless the White House and Congress can reach the ever-elusive “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit… Keep reading →

Way back in World War II, when my father was in the Army, everybody knew somebody in the military. More than half of eligible males were in uniform. During the Vietnam War, despite the exemptions to the draft, more than three million young men served in Southeast Asia. Today, however, after eleven years of war… Keep reading →