Defense
Defense-industry executives warned a House panel on Wednesday the nation will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs if Congress does not stop $500 billion in automatic cuts to the Pentagon. – DEFCON Hill
With Senate leadership locked in a fight over taxes, a small group of Republican and Democratic senators, local politicians and outside groups are trying to stress just how devastating a $1 trillion across-the-board budget cut would be to the nation’s economy. – Aviation Week
Defense firm Pratt & Whitney’s president told House lawmakers on Wednesday it was time for Congress to consider tax increases to stave off $500 billion in automatic defense cuts. – DEFCON Hill
U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., says there is little chance across-the-board budget cuts will be implemented in January, but he is not ruling them out. – Defense News
The House approved legislation on Wednesday that would give the Obama administration 30 days to provide details on how it will deal with a required $109 billion cut to 2013 spending, which the administration must impose under last year’s debt-ceiling agreement. – The Hill’s Floor Action Blog
Several House Democrats and Republicans started debate on a 2013 Department of Defense spending bill by protesting the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and calling on members to support amendments over the next several days aimed at reducing funding for the war. – The Hill’s Floor Action Blog
While the active-duty Air Force and the National Guard are at odds over budget cuts in Washington, the relationship seems smoother at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base, where an Air National Guard officer assigned the an active-duty 33rd Fighter Wing became the first Guard pilot to fly the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the controversial product of the Pentagon’s biggest procurement program. – AOL Defense
The war against terrorism and concerns over ballistic missile attacks are being linked to strains on U.S. Navy ships and resources, and growing concern that the service may be unable to meet operational needs. – Aviation Week
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday that Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft represents the “future of tactical aviation” for U.S. and British forces, as Britain prepares to take delivery of its first test aircraft. – Reuters
Editorial: Mr. Obama knows all this from his own Pentagon’s warnings, so why is he inviting a crack-up? The answer is that he wants to use GOP concerns about defense to bludgeon Republicans into accepting a huge tax increase. Republicans were unwise to accept the sequestration deal while leaving entitlements off the table, thus handing Mr. Obama more leverage. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
The War
Relatives of three American citizens killed in drone strikes in Yemen last year filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against four senior national security officials on Wednesday. The suit, in the Federal District Court here, opened a new chapter in the legal wrangling over the Obama administration’s use of drones in pursuit of terrorism suspects away from traditional “hot” battlefields like Afghanistan. – New York Times
Nuclear Weapons/New START
Recent incursions into U.S. air defense zones by Russian nuclear bombers earlier this month were part of exercises that violated provisions of the 2010 New START treaty, according to U.S. officials. – Washington Free Beacon
Regulatory activities intended n part to reduce the likelihood of nuclear weapon-related accidents have prevented the Los Alamos National Laboratory from carrying out studies critical to evaluating the reliability of the increasingly old plutonium fuel in U.S. nuclear armaments, a former director of the New Mexico facility told the Albuquerque Journal in comments reported on Tuesday – Global Security Newswire
United Nations
John Bolton writes: Only the most willful or obtuse U.N. official could fail to grasp the delicacy of programs in rogue capitals like Tehran and Pyongyang. It defies credulity that WIPO would expend agency funds without bothering to check with its members—especially Washington, given America’s global intellectual-property leadership. The lack of effective U.S. oversight only underlines the seriousness of the problem throughout the U.N. system. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
