OVERNIGHT DEFENSE: OMB exempts personnel ahead of sequester hearing

Another administration guidance this week — from the Labor
Department, telling defense contractors that it’s “inappropriate” to issue
blanket layoff notices to employees due to sequestration — will only add to the
list of grievances House Republican are likely to air.

McKeon said Monday that the guidance was “politically
motivated,” and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) went a step further on
the floor Tuesday. 

{mosads}“The president doesn’t want people reading about pink slips
in the weeks before his election, so the White House is telling people to keep
the effects of these cuts secret — don’t tell anybody, he says, keep it a
secret — until, of course, after the election,” McConnell said.

While the guidance from OMB on military personnel could
provide some hope for additional substance coming out of Wednesday’s hearing, a
likelier bet is for lots of fireworks. 

Republicans slam
personnel exemption: Fresh off their sequestration road trip, Sens. John
McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) criticized
President Obama Tuesday for preventing military pay from getting hit with the
sequestration cuts. In a joint statement, the lawmakers argued that exempting
military personnel was more harmful to the military’s readiness and will result
in a “hollow force.”

“Today’s announcement by the president abrogates difficult
decision-making in favor of scoring cheap political points, and will further
undermine the readiness of our all-volunteer force,” the senators said.

McCain often issues joint statements, and his most frequent
partners on foreign policy issues tend to be Graham and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). On
sequestration, expect to see Ayotte’s name coming up again and again in the No.
3 spot. 

DOD gets what it
wants from Senate: The Defense Department couldn’t ask for much more
from defense appropriators in the Senate, after subcommittee members approved a
$604.4 billion Pentagon budget for fiscal 2013. The Senate draft of the
spending bill passed by the subpanel on Tuesday is identical to the topline of
the $604.5 billion request DOD sent to Capitol Hill in February. The full
Senate Appropriations Committee will take up the bill on Thursday. 

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Navy shipbuilding and the department’s growing
fleet of unmanned aircraft were the big winners in the defense subcommittee’s
bill. But lawmakers did veto a Navy effort to retire a large portion of its
current fleet to pay for the new vessels in the service’s shipbuilding plan.
The seven cruisers and two amphibious ships Navy leaders wanted to scrap are
back in, at the direction of defense appropriators. But they were not as kind
to other service initiatives.

Subpanel members took the budget axe to the Air Force’s
massive force restructuring strategy, putting the program on hold for FY ’13.
They also hammered key Army communications and unmanned drone accounts,
stripping federal dollars from the service’s Joint Tactical Radio and MQ-1 Grey
Eagle aerial drone. 

Case closed on F-22
oxygen problems: The Air Force on Tuesday declared that it had solved
the case on why its pilots were suffering from dangerous bouts of oxygen deprivation while flying the service’s most advanced fighter jet, the F-22
Raptor. And according to top service leaders, it had nothing to do with the jet
itself.

The problems were caused by malfunctions with the oxygen delivery
system built into a vest worn by Raptor pilots, Maj. Gen. Charles Lyon,
director of operations at Air Combat Command, told reporters on Tuesday. 

The vest, designed to inflate when pilots
experienced dramatic g-forces while flying at excessive speeds or altitudes,
would inflate even when those thresholds were not met. In those cases, the
pressure from the inflating vest would cause pilots to suffer symptoms of
hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, Lyon explained. 

“If anybody doesn’t
believe me, go home tonight and put something really tight on your chest and
breathe for a while and see what it does to you. You will get some symptoms
after a while,” the two-star general said. Air Force officials have since
stopped using the faulty vests and are working to fix them.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

— Panetta downplays
Egypt rift

— Supply-line deal a step
forward

— OMB will begin
consulting on sequester

— Administration orders new Iran
sanctions

— Ahmadinejad mocks
Romney

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