WASHINGTON: While the Army can keep troops headed for Afghanistan trained up and ready to go, the ongoing budget gridlock threatens its ability to prepare for crises around the world — from North Korea to Syria – conflicts that would require a very different kind of training than the counterinsurgency tactics the force has focused on… 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. 

WASHINGTON: Here’s something to raise your hackles, or to Spider Man fans, set your spidey sense tingling. Air Force Secretary Mike Donley told reporters this morning that the budget and strategy talks are “two separate discussions trucking along in parallel.” “The tension between the need to do something to address the deficit and the strategic… 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 →

CAPITOL HILL: The commandant of the Marines told Congress today that his service could not handle even one major war if Congress doesn’t undo the $500 billion, 10-year cut to defense spending known as sequestration. The Navy, for its part, would have only one aircraft carrier ready to “surge” in a crisis instead of two… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Readers won’t often read about Reductions In Force in Breaking Defense because they usually aren’t strategically significant, but the latest Air Force announcement that 1,000 civilians face lower pay, new jobs or may lose their jobs is indicative of the service’s dire budget straits — before sequestration. Congress, which has been hearing rumors… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Congress seems increasingly resigned to sequestration cuts and base closures, ideas which once met fierce rejection on Capitol Hill. That’s the counterintuitive takeaway from Chuck Hagel’s first hearing as Defense Secretary on the 2014 budget request, one largely overtaken by events. The weary notes that legislators struck on the budget probably had something to… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: The Navy would get the largest budget share among the three military services in the 2014 budget submitted Wednesday, but would still see a drop in total funding from what Congress provided for this year in the final version of the continuing resolution. The $155.8 billion requested for the Navy Department in the president’s… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: “Army Has Biggest Problem.” That’s it. Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale’s official briefing slides for today’s big budget roll-out couldn’t be blunter. Hale has made this point before, but in case anyone imagined Congress rescued the Army when it passed a belated 2013 spending bill last month, the budget presentation today made clear the biggest… Keep reading →

David Berteau at the Center for Strategic and International Studies has penned a wise and pungent analysis of the fairly ridiculous defense budget unveiled today. He’s coined an excellent term to describe it — the Lost Year. Below you will find a somewhat shortened version of his piece, written with Ryan Crotty. Let’s hope Congress… Keep reading →