Wings Over Iraq

Not long after Adm. William H. McRaven led the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, he was put in charge of the nation’s entire contingent of Special Operations forces, and set to work revamping them to face a widening array of new threats as America’s combat role in the Middle East and southwest Asia winds down. – New York Times

The U.S. Army’s top civilian pushed back against critics who say the service’s next-generation combat vehicle is the wrong choice to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. – DOD Buzz

While the service itself struggles to define its future role, a new Army-sponsored report from the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies here is offering its own answers, answers that push not only civilian policymakers but the Army’s own leaders outside their comfort zone. – AOL Defense

It’s the Army versus the Marine-turned-congressman from California. At issue is a long-simmering dispute over an advanced computer system deemed essential to the war effort in Afghanistan that has boiled over in the House Armed Services Committee. – Politico

The US Air Force is looking at equipping its Reaper unmanned aircraft with a British-developed, man-in-the-loop missile better able to reduce collateral damage than the current weapons carried by the machine, according to sources. – Defense News

The War

The look at those who hunted Osama bin Laden begins with the sisterhood — a collection of female CIA analysts who became somewhat obsessed with al Qaeda and its leader. – Washington Times

44 is renewing efforts to deport a number of terror detainees housed at the Guantánamo Bay military prison back to their home countries as part of the White House’s push to shut down the facility. – DEFCON Hill

44 as Commander in Chief wants to use the means that the 43 era gave him to fight terrorism, but he also wants to pretend for political reasons that he’s somehow different. This pose isn’t protecting him from criticism on the left, and increasingly it is creating an opening for the misrepresentations of a Rand Paul to undermine the tools the U.S. still needs to avoid more Boston marathon bombings.  – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Binladenism continues to excite a small but not insignificant minority of Muslims. We will be living with this ideology for many years to come until it is finally consigned to “history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies,” as 43 eloquently put it in a speech to Congress 10 days after 9/11. – CNN

The Pentagon has in recent days stepped up planning for potential military intervention in the Syrian civil war, specifically because of growing evidence the regime may have used chemical weapons, CNN has learned. – CNN’s Security Clearance
Gen. Joseph Hoar (USMC, Ret.) writes: It’s time for America’s partners and allies in the Gulf to play a leading role in the broader region by not only providing humanitarian relief but the substantial investment Jordan and its people require. The Syrian crisis is only getting worse and Jordan needs all the friends it can get right now. – Foreign Policy
Liberals are increasingly facing a conundrum as the Pentagon experiences the deepest cuts in a generation: The significant reductions in military spending that they have long sought are also taking a huge bite out of economic growth. – Washington Post

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are looking to see if they can get traction with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to pare down the Pentagon’s duplication problem. – DEFCON Hill

In the two weeks since the White House submitted its pre-sequester fiscal 2014 budget request to Congress, defense giants BAE Systems and General Dynamics have organized large groups of their suppliers to storm Capitol Hill to put a human face on the potential cuts to acquisition accounts that the defense industry most fears. – Defense News

What homemade roadside bombs could do to Army and Marine ground vehicles was the ugly surprise of the last decade. What sophisticated long-range missiles could do to Navy aircraft carriers could be the ugly surprise of the next. – AOL Defense

Ten days after arriving in Singapore for her maiden deployment, the Freedom is dead in the water, awaiting repairs to her propulsion system, according to Navy officials at Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. – The E-Ring

We’re from the government, and we’re here to help. Except when we won’t. That was the message the Pentagon’s chief for industrial base and manufacturing policy, Brett Lambert, conveyed April 25 during a speech sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. – Defense News

The Army is working with the Marine Corps as it considers a new service weapon for soldiers, but the commandant says it remains to be seen whether Marines will be equipped with new weapons, too. – Military Times

The U.S. Navy’s Science and Technology community is deploying prototypes of electromagnetic rail guns, solid-state laser weapons and underwater unmanned vehicles in operational units with sailors and Marines, senior service leaders said April. – DOD Buzz

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) writes: The FY2014 NDAA must maintain the initiative in the battle space, and by doing so we must never allow our forces to enter a fight with anything less than overwhelming superiority. Congress must not allow their training, readiness, and equipment status to degrade beyond repair or oversee a 21st century hollowing-out of the force. – RealClearDefense

The War

Democratic and Republican lawmakers are turning up the heat on 44 over his use of armed unmanned aircraft to kill al-Qaida members — but absent are widespread calls for banning drone strikes. – Defense News

A total of 166 inmates remain at the [Guantanamo] prison more than a decade since its opening…At least 89 are Yemeni, many of whom were captured more than a decade ago. – Reuters

Cybersecurity

The U.S. service academies are ramping up efforts to groom a new breed of cyberspace warriors to confront increasing threats to the nation’s military and civilian computer networks that control everything from electrical power grids to the banking system. – Associated Press

US Air Force Secretary Michael Donley will step down June 21, ending a nearly five-year run as the top civilian official in the service. – Defense News

The F-35 program executive officer is “moderately confident” that the stealthy fighter’s prime contractor can deliver two iterations of software crucial to ending the development program on time, allowing for an F-35B operational debut as soon as 2015. – Aviation Week

The Pentagon on Thursday downplayed a comment by one of its officials that he is not totally confident in the ability of the $396 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, built by Lockheed Martin Corp, to survive a cyber attack. – Reuters

Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams. But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, “No thanks.” – Associated Press

Vice-Admiral David Buss and Rear Admirals William Moran and Thomas Moore write: Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and their embarked air wings enable the United States to act as a key guarantor of peace and stability around the world. Having the ability to operate without a “permission slip” for basing and over-flight access, while generating the range of effects necessary to deter potential adversaries, is more than just a symbol of power. It is the essence of power. – Foreign Policy

The War

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Friday night that he supports making a classified Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture and enhanced interrogation more available to the public. – Roll Call

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are suffering from a lack of “true leadership” going back to the 9/11 attacks and are devastatingly exposed in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, according to a top Senate Republican. – DEFCON Hill

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said “information sharing failed” ahead of the Boston Marathon bombings and warned that stove-piping between intelligence agencies remained a problem. – Hill Tube

Cybersecurity

The White House has backed away from its push for mandatory cybersecurity standards in favor of an approach that would combine voluntary measures with incentives for companies to comply with them. – Washington Post

The head of the F-35 Joint Program Office told Congress that the program is continuing to improve, in part because of turnover at primary contractor Lockheed Martin. – Defense News

The United States’ top military officer said Thursday that his troops were ready to act if North Korea turned its increasingly bellicose rhetoric into action. – AFP

The War

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which hasn’t had a director in seven years, has been at the heart of two searing events over the past two weeks — the investigations of the Boston Marathon bombing and the explosion that leveled a fertilizer plant and part of a town in central Texas. – Washington Post

Some analysts are asking whether the 2009 edict and others that followed have dampened law enforcement’s appetite to thoroughly investigate terrorism suspects for fear of offending higher-ups or the American Muslim lobby. – Washington Times

Had the rudimentary explosive devices used in last week’s bombing in Boston contained radioactive material, the city could have faced a far longer and more troubling recovery, counterterrorism officials said on Thursday. – Global Security Newswire

Cybersecurity

The Department of Defense has added thousands of additional cyber experts since US Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander created a plan to massively grow the ranks of the work force, but the agency is still thousands of people short, a DoD official said Thursday. – Defense News

Foreign Armies East

China omitted a reference to its no-first-use strategic nuclear weapons doctrine in a recently published government white paper, indicating Beijing shifted the policy as part of its large-scale nuclear arms buildup. – Washington Free Beacon

Israel said on Friday it was phasing out white phosphorus smokescreen munitions whose use during its 2008-2009 offensive in the heavily populated Gaza Strip drew war crimes allegations – Reuters

On an anniversary known for military showmanship, North Korean generals on Thursday declared that their forces were ready to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles and kamikazelike nuclear attacks at the United States if threatened. – New York Times

The Israeli military said it shot down a drone on Thursday, five nautical miles off the coast of its northern port of Haifa, after tracking it for an hour as it flew south along the Lebanese coast. – New York Times

U.S. commanders have laid out a range of possible options for military involvement in Syria, but they have made it clear that any action would likely be either with NATO backing or with a coalition of nations similar to the NATO-led overthrow of Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. – Associated Press

The top commander of the Marine Corps blasted what he called “neo-isolationism” at a congressional hearing Wednesday morning. – Washington Free Beacon

Pentagon is moving to fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities on the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), after computer systems that control the $440 million USS Freedom were hacked by a “red team” of network penetration testers, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday. – Washington Times

A top House Republican is pushing for a massive increase in Navy shipbuilding that would bump spending to levels last seen in the mid-1980s. – DEFCON 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. – AOL Defense

Congress appears likely to reject the administration’s request for more military base closures — for a second year — as Republican and Democratic senators on Wednesday rejected the Pentagon’s claim the plan makes fiscal sense. – DEFCON Hill

The U.S. Air Force is pursuing next-generation aircraft such as the F-35 fighter jet and new long-range bomber despite the threat of automatic budget cuts, the service’s top civilian said. – DOD Buzz

Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) may receive a U.S. order in June for as many as 60 F-35 jets, consolidating the sixth and seven production contracts for the costliest weapons system, according to the Pentagon’s program manager – Bloomberg

Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall says the cost-per-flying-hour estimate for the F-35A recently provided by the stealthy fighter’s program executive officer to The Netherlands is lower than the official figure that will go next month to Congress. – Aviation Week

The Marine Corps has begun deploying its new crisis-response force for Africa to an air base in Spain, and is now looking to develop a second force for use in the Caribbean Sea and Central and South America, said Commandant Gen. Jim Amos. – Military Times

Military families and their advocates are battling an  administration proposal to limit troops’ pay raises to 1 percent in 2014, the lowest increase in half a century. – USA Today

Numbers make up the majority of what the Navy’s 2007 Maritime Strategy calls ‘credible combat power.’ A Navy in decline in peacetime is less ready to fight and is potentially more likely to be required to – RealClearDefense

The War

[B]oth military officials and lawyers for the detainees agree about the underlying cause of the turmoil [at Guantanamo]: a growing sense among many prisoners, some of whom have been held without trial for more than 11 years, that they will never go home. – New York Times

Militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki continues to speak through sermons posted online, and U.S. officials are investigating whether his words may have influenced Boston bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. – CNN

Lawmakers want to increase the powers of the CIA to track “lone wolf” terrorists, like the two brothers suspected as being responsible for last week’s Boston bombing, but they are wary of treading on the jurisdiction of domestic law enforcement. – DEFCON Hill

Reporters for the Associated Press won a Pulitzer Prize last year for a series of articles critical of the NYPD’s surveillance program. But the NYPD credits the program with helping to thwart as many as 16 terrorist attacks on the city since 9/11. That sort of police work isn’t singled out for prizes, but maybe it will inspire police in other American cities—wondering about stopping their own version of the Tsarnaevs—to take a fresh look at how New York does it. – Wall Street Journal

Foreign Armies East

The top US military officer told China’s leaders on Wednesday that Washington is committed to defending Japan, as Beijing and Tokyo engage in intensified rhetoric over a territorial row. – AFP

China said on Wednesday that “provocative actions” would not sway it from defending its territory, after Japan confirmed it would conduct military drills with the United States amid tension between Beijing and Tokyo over disputed islands. – Reuters

Israel’s Defense Ministry is maneuvering to blunt the force-damaging effects of proposed, government-wide spending cuts that threaten to slash the nation’s shekel-based defense budget by nearly 10 percent through 2014. – Defense News

US-Morocco war games, cancelled by Rabat over a Washington-backed plan for the UN’s Western Sahara mission, have resumed on a smaller scale after a compromise was reached, the US embassy said Wednesday. – AFP

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel arrived in Riyadh on Tuesday to seal a major arms deal that will provide the Saudi kingdom with sophisticated missiles for its American-made fighter jets. – Defense News

The Army’s top officer proposed a 8,000 to 9,000-man force to remain in Afghanistan after all U.S. and allied combat forces withdraw from the country next year. – DEFCON 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 by other means – AOL Defense

Top US Army leadership told lawmakers Tuesday that they’ll need three more years of supplemental war funding after the final US troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan to pay for massive postwar equipment reset activities. – Defense News

The U.S. Army is grappling with an unexpected funding shortfall that’s “significantly” hurting its ability to prepare for war, the service’s top civilian and top officer said. – DOD Buzz

Air Force Secretary Mike Donley told reporters [yesterday] morning that the budget and strategy talks are “two separate discussions trucking along in parallel.” – AOL Defense

Rebuffed by Congress in an attempt to inactivate nine warships as a cost-cutting measure, the US Navy is set to try again – in 2015. – Defense News

Senior Army officials warned Tuesday they may have to cut more than 100,000 additional soldiers over the next decade unless automatic spending reductions forcing the military services to slash their budgets are stopped. – Associated Press

[L]awmakers are forcing the services to keep ships, aircraft, military bases, retiree benefits and other programs that defense leaders insist they don’t want, can’t afford or simply won’t be able to use. – Associated Press

Sequestration is being allowed to harm American national security severely because the attention of policymakers and elites is elsewhere. The United States is putting itself, its allies, and the world order that serves America so well at great risk in a fit of absentmindedness. It is past time to start paying attention again to the consequences of this policy on our security. – NRO

NATO

U.S. and British drones will maintain operations over Afghanistan long after most international ground troops have left the country after 2014, NATO’s most senior air officer in country said Tuesday. – Washington Times

Pakistan must crack down on militants who use the country as a sanctuary to launch attacks in Afghanistan, the head of NATO said on Tuesday, before a U.S.-chaired meeting that will try to ease friction between the neighbors. – Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged NATO members on Tuesday to prepare for the possible use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime, while Russia’s foreign minister accused the West of politicizing the search for such weapons, comparing it to the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. – CNN’s Security Clearance

The War

A bipartisan panel of senators held a spirited and unusually public debate Tuesday afternoon about the legality and unintended consequences of America’s targeted killings overseas, a forum convened amid growing calls for stronger oversight of the government’s use of armed drones outside conventional battlefields. – Washington Post

The  administration’s use of unmanned aircraft to kill members of some Islamic extremist groups appears to violate the measure that authorized the US war on al-Qaida, experts said Tuesday. – Defense News

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said he is considering holding hearings to examine the issues surrounding military detention and the war on terror in the wake of last week’s Boston Marathon bombing. – DEFCON Hill

A former personal secretary to Osama bin Laden was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday, for the second time, for participating in a conspiracy to kill Americans that included the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. – Reuters

Foreign Armies East

Bahrain security forces thwarted attacks and found caches of weapons including 1,000 petrol bombs in the run-up to last weekend’s Formula One race, state media said as protests and sectarian tensions continued to simmer in the island kingdom. – Reuters

India has complained that a Chinese military patrol crossed the disputed Himalayan border between the two countries last week and is encamped several kilometres inside territory normally controlled by India. – Financial Times

China’s military is continuing to mobilize military forces along the North Korean border despite official denials as Pyongyang appears set for a missile test launch this week, according to U.S. officials. – Washington Free Beacon

China will build a second, larger aircraft carrier capable of carrying more fighter jets, the official Xinhua news service reported late Tuesday, quoting a senior officer with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy. – Reuters

Ethiopia will withdraw its troops from Somalia soon, its prime minister said on Tuesday, voicing frustration with the Mogadishu government and African Union peacekeeping forces that are also battling Islamist militants there. – Reuters
Missile Defense

Russia is studying changes to the U.S. missile defense program, but still wants guarantees that the system would not be used against Russia, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday. – Reuters

The congressional defense committees are getting into the meat of their annual budget hearings this week, with more than a dozen hearings scheduled. – DEFCON Hill

The Navy last weekend christened a high-speed catamaran that will join a growing fleet of shallow-draft troop carrier and supply vessels that the Defense Department envisions as the future of riverine operations. – DOD Buzz

The Pentagon’s withholding of payments from Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) over flaws in a business system used to track costs and schedules for its F-35 fighter has increased to $130 million. – Bloomberg

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) writes: We have to keep the faith with all those currently serving and all those who have served so that our military continues to attract the best and brightest because our veterans and retirees are the best recruiters we have. – RealClearDefense

The top US military officer said Monday that Washington’s armed presence in the Asia-Pacific was meant to contribute to regional stability as he met his Chinese counterpart on a rare visit. – AFP

With budgets coming and staying down, only structural solutions promise savings of the magnitude necessary to meet challenges such as sequestration. Unfortunately, so far, Washington is signaling that it is still unready for these types of dramatic changes. – AOL Defense

The War

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Monday announced the arrest of two men who are accused of planning to derail a passenger train in an Al Qaeda-linked plot. – New York Times

44…has jettisoned the clash-of-civilizations rhetoric favored by 43 — even as he’s embraced or ramped up many of the same anti-terror methods…Those two seemingly contradictory strategies are bound by a single motive: 44 wanted to go after terrorists without allowing the War on Terror to devour a second presidency, hoping to put it on the back burner behind domestic issues, the economy and his top foreign policy priority of rebuilding America’s image around the world. – Politico

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Monday called for Congress to examine the laws governing the FBI’s ability to track Muslim extremist activity within the United States to give the agency more investigative teeth. – The Hill

The role street cameras played in catching the alleged Boston Marathon bombers is stoking debate about how much more, or less, privacy should be sacrificed for security against terrorists. – The Hill

The number inmates participating in a hunger strike at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has risen sharply in the past few weeks to include more than half of those held at the military-run facility. – CNN’s Security Clearance

The FBI was ordered by Congress to carry out an external review of its efforts to combat domestic radicalization less than a month before two ethnic-Chechen terrorists bombed the Boston marathon. – Washington Free Beacon

The Boston Marathon bombing was a horrific crime, but it offered many lessons for law enforcement and for the country. Some…of the lessons were new ones. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and his department set a social-media standard for security emergencies that will benefit law-enforcement agencies everywhere, and the people they serve. – Wall Street Journal

Though a combination of skill and luck, we’ve done well at preventing the next 9/11. Preventing the next Boston massacre might not be as easy. – Washington Post

Missile Defense

Enhancing U.S. missile defenses in response to North Korea’s nuclear missile program would appear to be warranted, but it alone is likely to prove insufficient.  The United States should consider enhancing its ability to strike North Korea, including its leadership and its ballistic missile launch infrastructure. – Shadow Government

After months of dire warnings and political theater, the first sequestration-era Pentagon budget plan has landed on Capitol Hill like a feather floating onto a soft mattress. – Defense News

The U.S. and allies backing the Syrian opposition agreed to coordinate military aid to rebel forces, in a bid to curb weapons shipments from Arab states to Islamic extremists. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

The Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress for permission to shift billions of dollars within its already reduced fiscal 2013 budget primarily to pay for increased war costs, but is still looking for ways to fill a $15 billion operating shortfall. – Defense News

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper publicly backed the Defense Department’s new intelligence agency on Thursday, quashing any potential rivalry between the Pentagon and Langley. – DEFCON Hill

What must surely be wrong is to divorce defense policy, including spending decisions, from strategy — that is, to make budgetary decisions that sacrifice important capabilities wholly without regard for strategic considerations. That is what Washington has been doing for the past four years. – NRO

Missile Defense

Russia and the United States remain at odds over U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield in Europe following talks in Moscow this week with President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, a senior aide to President Vladimir Putin said on Friday. – Reuters

The War

[W]hen the lawyers for Mr. Abu Ghaith asked a judge recently to increase the frequency of his family phone calls to three from one a month, jail officials and prosecutors vigorously opposed the request. – New York Times

Prison officials opened the [Guantanamo] prison to journalists from The Associated Press and three other news organizations this week, portraying the atmosphere as tense but under control at this detention center that has been open for 11 years and now holds 166 men, most without charge. – Associated Press

Cybersecurity

The U.S. military is increasing its budget for cyber-warfare and expanding its offensive capabilities, including the ability to blind an enemy’s radar or shut down its command systems in the event of war, according to two defense officials. – USA Today

Editorial: The question is whether the Administration wants to do something to increase cybersecurity, or if it would rather sit back and blame the House if there’s a future attack. An overwhelming bipartisan majority wants to do something. Tell us again, who’s to blame for the dysfunction in Washington? – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

Foreign Armies East

North Korea has moved two short-range missile launchers to its east coast in an indication that it is pushing ahead with preparations for a test launching, a South Korean news agency reported on Sunday. – Reuters

China will send its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, on a voyage on the high seas for the first time within a year, the state-run news agency Xinhua said on Friday. – Reuters

Several dozen Chinese soldiers have set up a remote camp some 10 km (6 miles) inside territory claimed by India in the high altitude Himalayan desert of Ladakh, Indian police sources said, in a possible return to border tension between the Asian giants. – Reuters
The Taliban fighters who blew up a half-dozen U.S. Marine fighter jets on a sprawling NATO base last fall were able to walk easily onto the encampment because patrols of the perimeter had been scaled back and watchtowers left unmanned, according to senior military officials. – Washington Post

Israel’s air force is on track to developing drones that within four to five decades would carry out nearly every battlefield operation executed today by piloted aircraft, a high-ranking Israeli officer told The Associated Press Sunday. – Associated Press

Flying hours for the conventional-take-off-and-landing F-35A model will likely cost 10 percent more than that of an F-16, according to a government estimate. – Defense News

The chairman and top Democrat on the Seapower panel of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Randy Forbes and Rep. Mike McIntyre, are about to send Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel a terribly polite note asking the Navy to produce the [shipbuilding] plan before Wednesday, when the subcommittee will hold its hearing on the services’ budget. – AOL Defense

The U.S. Navy is conducting an assessment of whether the Bell/Boeing MV-22 can operate as a potential Carrier Onboard Delivery (COD) vehicle in advance of kicking off a program to either replace or modernize the C-2A Greyhounds now performing that role. – Aviation Week

Ban Ki-moon became the first U.N. secretary general to visit the Pentagon Thursday, holding talks with U.S. military leaders on the crisis over North Korea and a planned peacekeeping mission in Mali. – AFP

Instead of being Cold War weapons, the question now asked of the F-22 was a different one: how many can you send? It is important to remember that all current 21st Century technology was built on the vision and commitment of bipartisan 20th Century politicians. We need a similar commitment now by Republicans and Democrats to band together and build the capabilities we need for the next two decades of the 21st century. – AOL Defense

The War

Sequestration’s full impact on the intelligence community and U.S. national security will not truly be felt by Americans until the next terrorist attack happens or the next bomb goes off. – DEFCON Hill

Missile Defense

Russian officials said on Thursday the United States had not done enough to address their concerns about an anti-missile shield it is deploying in Europe, indicating U.S. moves to scale down its plans will bring no quick breakthrough. – Reuters

Nuclear Weapons

The U.S. Defense Department is weighing the feasibility of extending the service life of the nation’s aging Minuteman 3 ICBMs versus replacing them in coming decades with brand new nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. – Global Security Newswire

Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Bob Corker (R-TN) write: As the gap between what was promised for modernization and what is provided continues to grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve the responsive nuclear infrastructure that even the president acknowledges is essential for nuclear reductions and the continuing credibility of our nuclear deterrent. – Foreign Policy

Cybersecurity

The House passed a cybersecurity bill Thursday aimed at encouraging greater sharing of threat data between the private sector and the federal government, but the White House has said it will veto the legislation if it does not include stronger privacy protections. – Washington Post

The top U.S. military official on Wednesday said he is not fully confident that armed intervention could secure Syria’s entire chemical arsenal. – Global Security Newswire

U.S. troops are to redeploy from Morocco after Rabat canceled annual war games in the kingdom, the U.S. Army said Wednesday, amid sharp disagreement over plans for a U.N. mission in the Western Sahara. – AFP

Pentagon is sending about 200 troops to Jordan, the vanguard of a potential U.S. military force of 20,000 or more that could be deployed if the Obama administration decides to intervene in Syria to secure chemical weapons arsenals or to prevent the 2-year-old civil war from spilling into neighboring nations. – Los Angeles Times

Top Defense Department leaders are drafting a slate of battle plans for President Obama, should the White House decide to use military force to end the two-year civil war in Syria. – DEFCON Hill

An influential Senate Democrat on Wednesday said Congress should pass a plan that would void pending cuts to the Pentagon’s 2014 budget if Washington fails this year to craft a “grand bargain” fiscal deal. – Defense News

Pentagon has requested $220.3 million in 2014 to bolster Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system despite broader cuts to U.S. military spending, according to budget documents. – AFP

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other Republican senators told Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Wednesday to detail how the Pentagon would cut $52 billion from its 2014 budget under sequestration. – DEFCON Hill

Angry at the Pentagon’s new 2014 spending plan, the nation’s largest association of military officers took its case to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, pressing lawmakers to oppose the Obama administration’s latest proposals to rein in military personnel costs. – Politico

With the Congressional budget season swinging fully into gear, one key lawmaker is zeroing in on a shift from providing a land-oriented defense posture to one relying more on seapower. – Defense News

The Defense Department’s plans to slow military pay growth and increase Tricare fees may have become less objectionable to Congress in a time of tight budgets. – Military Times

Lawmakers were skeptical of the Defense Department’s estimate to begin the process of shuttering military bases around the country under a Base Realignment and Closure Commission, known as BRAC. – DoD Buzz

Special operations forces are reevaluating the standards for admission into their elite ranks in order to determine if women can join, the top special operations commander testified on Wednesday afternoon. – Washington Free Beacon

Congress has asked the Army to explain why it has officially taken delivery of at least seven AH-64E Apache Guardian helicopters that don’t have transmissions installed yet, AOL Defense has learned – AOL Defense

The United States is footing more of the bill for overseas bases in Germany, Japan and South Korea even as the military reduces the number of American troops in Europe and strategically repositions forces in Asia, a congressional report says. – Associated Press

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) writes: [T]he president must set aside political posturing and finally get serious about working with Congress to find a lasting solution to the many challenges facing our military. Our men and women in uniform deserve nothing less. – The Hill

Missile Defense

44 is using U.S. missile defense assets as a “bargaining chip” with world powers, putting the United States at risk for a long-range strike by North Korea or Iran, says one House lawmaker. – DEFCON Hill

The War

Now, across the globe cities as disparate as New York, London, Madrid, Bali and Mumbai have doubled down. They’ve all learned that “you cannot stop all of these events, but you can stop a lot of them,” says Philip Schaenman, an executive at System Planning Corp., an Arlington, Va.-based national-security and public-safety firm. “You can reduce the number, the severity and the aftermath of events.” – Wall Street Journal

The United States has spent billions of dollars to prevent terrorists from obtaining a weapon of mass destruction even as this week’s bombings in Boston further show that a nuclear weapon or lethal bioagent is not necessary for causing significant harm. – Global Security Newswire