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WASHINGTON: Rarely have such pretty slides told such an ugly story. While Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno tries to talk up "The Force of Tomorrow," Army briefing documents obtained today by AOL Defense lay out the near-term impact of sequestration, the Continuing Resolution, and unresolved overseas contingency operations needs: an enormous $18 billion shortfall for the service that will be borne almost entirely by federal workers and military readiness. You can see the slides by clicking "download this document" (up and to the left) and read the detailed talking points here, but the highlights are harrowing enough: Training:...

Just days before he leaves office, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is recommending military pay be limited, effectively decreasing troop salaries next year. Panetta will recommend to Congress that military salaries be limited to a 1% increase in 2014. The Pentagon has calculated that the Labor Department's 2014 Employment Cost Index is expected to be above 1% but wants to still cut back on pay because of "budget uncertainties," a department official told CNN. In 2013, a 1.7% increase was approved, based on the index, which has been the basis for military pay for the last several years. Three Pentagon officials...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says it would “really be a shameful and irresponsible act” for Congress to allow sequestration to happen. “We have to prepare for it, because, you know, there are members up on the Capitol Hill that are saying, ‘Oh no, we're gonna stand back and let sequester happen,’” Panetta said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s "Meet the Press." “Let me tell you: If sequester happens, it is gonna badly damage the readiness of the United States of America. We have the most powerful military force on the face of the earth right now.” If sequester...

The commander of U.S. Special Operations Command said Tuesday that his unit’s budget would lose $1 billion this year as a result of the defense budget stalemate in Washington. During an annual National Defense Industrial Association conference for special operators, Navy Adm. William McRaven noted that the Defense Department is operating on a continuing resolution, which limits spending to 2012 levels, even as automatic, across-the-board spending cuts called sequestration are set to begin March 1. “The continuing resolution … in all honesty puts a greater constraint on us than sequester

Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon has begun laying off 46,000 contract and temporary civilian employees in an effort to cut back on military spending, the No. 2 Pentagon official said on Friday. Full time civilian employees, which number in the hundreds of thousands, also will be furloughed for one day a week for 22 weeks, Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in an interview with wire service reporters. His comments were confirmed by a Pentagon spokesman.

In an effort to cut defense spending, the Obama Administration plans to cut health benefits for active duty and retired military personnel and their families while not touching the benefits enjoyed by unionized civilian defense workers. The move, congressional aides suggested, is to force those individuals into Obamacare, Bill Gertz reported at the Washington Beacon. Gertz added: The proposed increases in health care payments by service members, which must be approved by Congress, are part of the Pentagon’s $487 billion cut in spending. It seeks to save $1.8 billion from the Tricare medical system in the fiscal 2013 budget, and...

Republicans, and many Democrats, are upset by the prospect of so-called sequestration cuts to the nation's defense budget. Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is so alarmed that the day before the Senate took up what became the "fiscal cliff" agreement, he called a key Republican lawmaker, Sen. Lindsey Graham, to express deep concern that the cuts might go into effect. As it turned out, Congress put them off for two months. Sequestration would force the government to reduce discretionary spending by about $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Roughly half of that, or $600 billion, would come from defense --...

Is Obama Always Faithful to our Marines? The current political winds in Washington, DC, have dictated that less will be spent on the various Branches of the Armed Forces of the Unites States. Case in point: the Commander-in-Chief has decided to fire 20,000 of our U.S. Marines. In an article published by San Diego, California's North County Times, ironically on Thanksgiving Day, Military Affairs reporter Gretel C. Kovach cites; "The Corps is shrinking by 20,000 Marines, to 182,100." The North County Times also cited that America's premier fighting force is; "scraping to repair or replace battle-worn equipment." In spite of...

With no time to recover from a thorough election day whooping, Republicans in a lame duck Congress are facing an even worse budgetary nightmare than last year. And they only have two months to negotiate a solution with President Obama. Last time, as the Chair the Balanced Budget Amendment campaign, fellow conservatives and I were urging Republicans to tie the unavoidable increase in the debt ceiling to a balanced budget amendment. Because it also prohibited tax increases, the amendment would have required balance to be achieved through necessary cuts throughout the federal government. But in the end, politicians did what...

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate rose from 7.8% to 7.9% for October. The number of unemployed in the US rose from 12,088,000 in September to 12,258,000 in October. An increase of 170,000. The good news is that non farm payrolls increased by +171,000. Bear in mind that these numbers are misleading because Lockheed announced layoffs of 123,000, but was asked by the Obama Administration to delay the layoffs until after the election. So, add 123,000 to the number of unemployed and deduct 123,000 from the NFP jobs created of 171,000. So, the actual increase in...

HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah (CBS St. Louis) — Boeing successfully tests a new missile that can take out electronic targets with little collateral damage. The aerospace company tested the microwave missile last week on a two-story building on the Utah Test and Training Range where computers and electronic systems were turned on to gauge the effects of the missile’s radio waves, according to a Boeing press release. The missile, known as CHAMP (Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project), fired a burst of High Powered Microwaves at the building, successfully knocking out the electronic systems and computers, and even taking out...

A year before Mitt Romney picked him as a running mate, Paul Ryan gave a speech in which he discussed the promise and peril of the Arab Spring. "It's too soon to tell whether these revolutions will result in governments that respect the rights of their citizens or in one form of autocracy ... supplanting another," he said. "While we work to assure the former, American policy should be realistic about our ability to avert the latter." More generally, Ryan said, "American policy should be tempered by a healthy humility about the extent of our power to control events in...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ari.) blasted President Obama for his “snarky cheap shots” at Mitt Romney during Monday night’s debate, calling them “unpresidential.” “The president had his snarky cheap shot remarks which are both unpresidential and not likeable,” McCain told "Fox and Friends" on Tuesday morning. In particular, McCain pointed to one of the most talked about moments from the third and final presidential debate, in which Obama sarcastically responded to Romney’s criticism of the proposed $1 trillion in defense cuts from last year’s Budget Control Act and sequestration. Romney accused Obama of allowing the military to be cut to historically...

Sequestration will not happen. President Barack Obama made this assertion Monday night during the third and final presidential debate in Boca Raton, Fla. "The sequester is not something that I proposed," Obama said, of the $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts set to kick in on Jan. 2. "It's something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen. The budget that we're talking about is not reducing our military spending. It's maintaining it." Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney used the debate to outline their different approaches to reducing federal spending. "We're going to cut about 5 percent of the...

House Democrats opened Wednesday’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing by attacking Republicans for cuts to embassy security funding — cuts that only happened thanks to overwhelming support from House Democrats, INCLUDING House Oversight Committee Ranking Democratic member Rep. Elijah Cummings. In fact, more House Democrats – 149 of them — voted for the cuts than did House Republicans, of which 147 voted for them.

Mitt Romney's effort to overtake President Obama in the crucial swing state of Virginia may depend on how effective he is at convincing voters he can limit the economic damage from pending defense cuts. The Republican presidential candidate will give a foreign policy address at the Virginia Military Institute on Monday, looking to highlight what he calls President Obama's "taking a meat cleaver to the military." Under a deal between the Obama administration and Congress to raise the nation's borrowing capacity last year, leaders agreed to implement $1.2 trillion in automatic, across-the-board reductions over the next decade if a broader...

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin heeded a request from the White House today — one with political overtones — and announced it will not issue layoff notices to thousands of employees just days before the November presidential election. Lockheed, one of the biggest employers in the key battleground state of Virginia, previously warned it would have to issue notices to employees, required by law, due to looming defense cuts set to begin to take effect after Jan. 2 because of the failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — the so-called Super-committee, which was created to find a way...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The White House on Friday told government contractors worried about fiscal cliff spending cuts to hold off on warning employees about possible layoffs. The government said it would cover legal costs if contractors are forced to slash their payrolls because of the looming $109 billion in automatic cuts next year and are alleged to have violated the WARN Act. .... Defense contractors in particular have warned for months that the upcoming sequester would cost jobs in their industry. And Lockheed Martin's CEO has said publicly he may be forced to issue notice this fall of possible...

The Middle East is ablaze again, literally, and Israel is sending strong signals that it intends to attack Iran's nuclear complex with or without U.S. assistance. It would be nice to stay out of this latest round of regional violence -- most Americans have had their fill of foreign entanglements for the time being -- but sometimes circumstances don't afford us that luxury. If Iran responds to an Israeli air strike by trying to close the Strait of Hormuz, Washington will need to act. Imagine, though, that the crisis came after across-the-board spending cuts triggered on January 2, pursuant to...

In 1989, the year President Ronald Reagan left office and the Berlin Wall came down, total spending by the Department of Defense equaled $468.7 billion in constant 2005 dollars, according to the Office of Management and Budget. In 2005, when President George W. Bush started his second term, and the U.S. was at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq, DOD spent $473.4 billion in constant 2005 dollars. This year, under President Barack Obama, DOD will spend $582.5 billion in constant 2005 dollars. In inflation-adjusted dollars, Obama is spending 23 percent more on defense than Bush did when the United States...