WASHINGTON: “We still even today hold out hope that there will be a solution, that Congress can solve this.” That’s the word, as startling as it is, from the Navy’s senior spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby, on the day before the automatic cuts called sequestration are scheduled to kick in. But as Kirby, the Chief… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: In a remarkably non-partisan moment amidst the current strife over budget cuts and Chuck Hagel, Ronald Reagan’s Navy Secretary and George W. Bush’s Chief of Naval Operations told a Republican-helmed committee that the Navy’s real problem was not the Obama administration’s budget but decades of creeping bureaucracy that have eaten every budget’s buying power.… Keep reading →

UPDATED: With Obama Statement WASHINGTON: Regardless of how sequestration happens, Chuck Hagel will have the honor of serving as the Defense Secretary who presides over the beginning of the major drawdown that will be the single defining characteristic of the American military for much of the next decade. The Senate just approved Hagel by a… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: With the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration set to start taking effect March 1st, we’re going to see a lot of interesting last-minute plays to stop them. It’s almost certain none of them will work. But Rep. Randy Forbes’s bill introduced this morning, H.R. 773, at least offers the virtue of simplicity: At… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Tomorrow morning, overshadowed by sequestration, the House Armed Services Committee will hold a rare full-committee hearing on a topic that would normally be high-profile, even explosive: whether to give the Defense Department, and especially its elite special operators, broader legal authority to work with foreign forces worldwide, from Colombia to Mali to the Philippines.… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Apparently realizing that its year-long campaign to stop the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration by focusing on the severe impact on national security has not been effective, the Aerospace Industries Association tried to broaden its appeal Monday by joining with a coalition of non-defense organizations and trying to shift the focus to “entitlements.”… Keep reading →

Chuck #Hagelnomination will come to vote tomorrow @ 2:30pm. Sen. Carl Levin, #SASC chairman, intends to hold vote right after. @colinclarkaol

Richard Whittle, in addition to being a regular contributor to Breaking Defense, is a senior scholar at the Wilson Center. He is writing a book on the Predator, the first armed drone. In an earlier incarnation, Rick once accompanied the late congressman Charlie Wilson to Pakistan for a visit to the Afghan mujahedeen. The Editor… Keep reading →

NEW YORK: “It is utterly unconscionable — utterly unconscionable — that Congress will allow sequestration to go on.” Those are the words of Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s head of acquisition, speaking to an audience of several hundred New York financial types. Kendall is just back from a trip to Afghanistan and he had heard from… Keep reading →

[UPDATED with details on carriers] THE CAPITOL: With the Obama Pentagon excoriating federal lawmakers for their apparent inability to avoid sequestration or to pass a defense spending bill, and the Navy going down to one carrier in the Persian Gulf for lack of funds, GOP lawmakers today defended the latest Republican proposal to stop the… Keep reading →