A House subcommittee has rejected the Marine Corps' plan to pay for extra personnel with supplemental funding as the service draws down to an end strength of 182,100. The House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee made the recommendation in its mark of the fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill, according to materials released today.

More than 170 members of the House of Representatives have signed a bipartisan letter sent to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asking that he work with Congress to sustain Abrams tank production in the fiscal year 2013 budget.

The Air Force today is scheduled to seek permission from the Pentagon's acquisition executive to issue a solicitation for the $3 billion Space Fence program, a move that would formally launch the final phase of a competition between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to build a new ground-based radar network designed to exponentially improve the military’s ability to track orbiting objects.

The closure of a key Pakistani trade route poses a major challenge for the Marine Corps, who must find another way to move ground equipment out of Afghanistan by the 2014 deadline, a top Marine Corps official told reporters today.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense has opted to adjust some of the Air Force's proposed force-structure changes and keep two-dozen C-130s in the Air National Guard, a decision made after two months of sustained pressure from Congress and state governors.

The Navy has awarded a $262.3 million contract to Northrop Grumman to build eight MQ-8C unmanned helicopters -- essentially MQ-8B Fire Scouts with Bell 407 airframes -- just a few months after the Office of the Secretary of Defense approved the idea, the Pentagon announced late yesterday.

The Pentagon has lined up a second batch of fiscal year 2012 security assistance programs drawn up with the State Department to train and equip foreign forces in 10 nations, including an $18.8 million project to bolster Ugandan and Burundi counterterrorism capabilities to fight al-Shabaab -- the Somalia-based arm of al-Qaeda, according to a Defense Department spokesman.

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD -- A key next-generation radio system meant for airborne, maritime and fixed-station units is going through a restructuring, and an acquisition decision memorandum for the program will be released "shortly," according to Mark Compton, deputy joint program executive officer for JTRS.

The Army chief of staff has formally declared that his service does not have any unfunded requirements beyond the fiscal year budget request, joining his Navy and Marine Corps counterparts in passing up an opportunity to provide wish lists traditionally used by Congress to pad the Pentagon's budget.

The Army is drafting a plan to accelerate the acquisition of the Armored Multipurpose Vehicle, eying the release of a request for proposals as much as a year earlier than previously planned in a bid to expedite the modernization of the M113 fleet for the service's heavy brigade combat teams, according to service sources.

The Pentagon estimates the cost to develop and acquire the KC-46A aerial refueling fleet will be $276 million more than forecast last fall, nudging the projected price tag for the development and procurement of 179 aircraft up less than 1 percent, to $51.9 billion, according to a report provided to Congress last month.

The Pentagon should streamline its requirements and acquisition processes and enhance the involvement of the service chiefs in acquisition matters, the Defense Business Board says.

The price tag for the Joint Strike Fighter's fourth production run could be $534 million higher than originally expected, a 12.5 percent increase propelled by an estimated $289 million in additional costs to correct deficiencies uncovered during F-35 flight testing, according to the Defense Department.

The Missile Defense Agency plans to conduct an intercept test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system regardless of whether the latest version of the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle is ready or not.

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD -- The Navy will cut back on traditional surface warfare ships operating near Latin America, Africa and Europe as the service shifts its focus to the Asia-Pacific region in the coming years, with Littoral Combat Ships and Joint High Speed Vessels taking their place, Navy Under Secretary Robert Work said here today.

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD -- The MQ-8B Fire Scout program manager said today that the unmanned helicopter can be flown if a commander deems it operationally necessary, though no mission-related flights have occurred since two aircraft crashed earlier this year.

The Pentagon on Friday announced a $258 million contract to buy two additional F-35 aircraft using money found during an end-of-fiscal-year-budget review, a sum nearly equal to the Defense Department's $263 million reprogramming request last summer denied by Congress that aimed to siphon funds from other Navy and Air Force accounts to finance F-35 cost growth.

The Miniature Air-Launched Decoy-Jammer's prime contractor, Raytheon, confirmed this week that the Air Force has ordered the company to stop work on the MALD-J's second increment after it was canceled in the fiscal year 2013 budget request.

Hawker Beechcraft wants the Air Force to consider raising the safety standards of the ejection system on the 20 light attack aircraft that it plans to supply to Afghanistan while it refashions a request for proposals for that procurement contract.

The Air Force has announced its intent to release a formal request for proposals next week to bring on a second contractor for the Family of Beyond-Line-of-Sight Terminals program. Simultaneously, the service is renegotiating the terms of its existing FAB-T contract with original contractor Boeing, and the company hopes to conclude those negotiations, which will create a firm-fixed-price incentive structure, in the near future.