Pentagon: Too Big To Win (Video)

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Next US defense chief will not gut military: Pentagon

Robert Gates' Armed Services Farewell Ceremony
© AFP/Getty Images Chip Somodevilla

AFP

Incoming US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is determined to avoid gutting the American military despite the prospect of difficult budget decisions looming, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday.

"He (Panetta) believes that it is a false choice between fiscal responsibility and national security," spokesman Douglas Wilson told reporters.

Amid mounting fiscal pressure, the defense budget "will be an important item on his agenda," Wilson said.

"He will take that very seriously. He knows there are difficult decisions to be made," he said.

Panetta "has said publicly, and he will say again, that he intends that there will be no hollow force on his watch."

US lawmakers pass $690 billion Pentagon bill

The US House of Representatives passed a
$690 billion Pentagon budget Thursday
© AFP/DOD/File

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US House of Representatives passed a $690 billion Pentagon budget Thursday that bars American ground forces in Libya and limits the Obama administration's powers on handling Guantanamo detainees.

Lawmakers voted 322-96 in favor of the budget plan which met the Defense Department's request for $119 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also placed restrictions on President Barack Obama's authority to reduce the US nuclear weapons stockpile under the new START treaty with Russia, prompting a White House veto threat earlier this week.

Drones Spray, Track the Unwilling in Air Force Plan

Wiki Commons Image

By Adam Rawnsley
WIRED

Here’s how the U.S. Air Force wants to hunt the next generation of its enemies: A tiny drone sneaks up to a suspect, paints him with an unnoticed powder or goo that allows American forces to follow him everywhere he goes — until they train a missile on him.

On Tuesday, the Air Force issued a call for help making a miniature drone that could covertly drop a mysterious and unspecified tracking “dust” onto people, allowing them to be tracked from a distance. The proposal says its useful for all kinds of random things, from identifying friendly forces and civilians to tracking wildlife. But the motive behind a covert drone tagger likely has less to do with sneaking up on spotted owls and more to do with painting a target on the backs of tomorrow’s terrorists.

Effectively tracking foes has become a high priority — and deeply secret — research effort for the Pentagon, which has struggled at times to sort out insurgent from innocent in places like Afghanistan. The Navy has a $450 million contract with Herndon, Virginia’s Blackbird Technologies, Inc. to produce tiny beacons to make terrorists trackable. The Defense Department has been pouring serious cash — $210 million that they’ll admit to — to find advanced new ways to do this so-called “Tagging, Tracking and Locating” work, as Danger Room co-founder Sharon Weinberger noted inPopular Science last year.

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Pentagon awards jet fuel contract to secretive company

Andrew Higgens and Walter Pincus
The Washington Post

In a move that could anger a vital ally in the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon on Wednesday awarded a major jet fuel contract to Mina Corp., a secretive company that has declined to reveal its ownership but has nonetheless become a trusted partner with the U.S. military.

The contract, which may be worth more than $600 million, covers supplies for a U.S. Air Force base in Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished former Soviet republic where public anger over alleged corruption in jet fuel deals has helped topple two presidents in the past five years. All American troops entering and leaving Afghanistan pass through the American base outside the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. The base is also home to aero-tankers that refuel U.S. aircraft operating over Afghanistan.

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