[Updated Friday 12/21] CAPITOL HILL: It looks like the country’s getting a defense bill for Christmas, with provisions on everything from boosting cybersecurity to sanctioning Iran to loosening export controls on satellites. In what passes for high efficiency in Congress these days, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees completed their conference on the National… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: As the military plans to cut thousands of troops and the military experiments with opening combat training to women, the American Civil Liberties Union has joined four female servicemembers — two in the reserves (one Army, one Marine Corps), one in the Air National Guard, and one on active duty in the Marines —… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Krepinevich Says Marines Boast Lots Of Good Senior Leaders The Marine Corps, which always prides itself on being the leanest of the U.S. armed services and having the lowest officer-to-enlisted ratio, now has five four-star generals, the nation’s highest military rank. That is quite a load of brass for a service that never had… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The military is in for another eight years of tight budgets, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos predicted today. The good news is that the relationship between the four Joint Chiefs who craft their budgets and their chairman is “better than it ever has been.” In his public remarks, the commandant hammered home the… Keep reading →

[updated 3:45 pm with Todd Harrison’s analysis] CAPITOL HILL: Last month’s congressionally mandated OMB report on the impact of sequestration omitted an obscure provision that would slice another $10.1 billion from Defense Department programs in 2013. Because of that the Pentagon would have to cut $60.6 billion instead of $50.5 billion, a 20 percent increase.… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The defense spending bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee today keeps Block 30 Global Hawk drones flying, instead of letting them be warehoused as the Air Force had planned, a congressional source confirmed to Breaking Defense. That is arguably the final flourish on Congress’s utter rejection of the Air Force’s proposed cuts in… 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 →

Pete Hegseth, an Army National Guard infantry officer who has served tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, is a member of Concerned Veterans for America. Is it time for major cuts in U.S. defense spending? According to at least one recent poll, a staggering 76 percent of Americans surveyed believe the answer is “yes.”… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The United States is still the world’s indispensable nation and we’ll probably avoid sequestration, albeit by the skin of our teeth. That’s the modestly reassuring message from the unlikely duo of Michèle Flournoy, who recently left her job as under secretary of defense for policy, and Dov Zakheim, Pentagon comptroller under George W. Bush.… Keep reading →