The House Armed Services Committee starts a marathon wrangle on the Pentagon budget, complete with dueling Dickens & Shakespeare quotes, with a detour to debate paint schemes for Air Force One and renaming a key intelligence position.

The Trump Pentagon budget is “dead on arrival,” a top defense House Democrat says. And a Republican colleague rips budget gimmicks in the 2020 request.

What does one of the most influential defense lawmakers on the Hill, Rob Wittman, think about the Trump Administration plan to cut the number of aircraft carriers from 11 to 10?

Two top congressmen joined Virginia’s Sen. Kaine in rejecting the Pentagon’s proposal to retire the USS Truman two decades early.

Congress is evaluating the proposal to issue a $24 billion contract for the Navy’s next two carriers, as the service looks at months of work to fix ongoing problems with the Ford-class’s first ship.

With KC-46s stacking up on the apron, the Air Force and Boeing have been at an impasse for months over whether the service would accept delivery of the troubled tanker. Rep. Rob Wittman has one bit of advice for Boeing: “Simply to Boeing: Get it Done. Get it done.”

The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) John Richardson made a major organizational announcement with major strategic implications when he announced the Navy would re-establish the Second Fleet, which covers the Atlantic. But that would, so far, only mean adding 250 people to the command. Without making larger strategic changes, that is not enough. To respond appropriately to Russian naval… Keep reading →

Wait — doesn’t this omnibus fund 14 new ships for the Navy, compared to 13 in the National Defense Authorization Act and just eight in President Trump’s request? Yes, but not all ships are created equal, Wittman said.

The Navy hasn’t done a two-carrier deal since the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, when the Nimitz-class carriers being built, the state of the industrial base, the size of the budget, and the statutes governing shipbuilding were all very different. So how would it work today?

Legislators will probably loosen some rules on federal spending to help the Pentagon cope with Congress’s failure to pass funding bills until six months into the fiscal year. Budget dysfunction has gotten so bad it’s forcing even the famously strict appropriations committees to loosen the reins after years of resistance.