Eight years into a war that Joint Chiefs chair Adm. Mike Mullen acknowledged has been under-resourced from the beginning, a real debate is finally underway in Washington as to how many more U.S. troops and resources should be sent to Afghanistan. Last week, Sen. Levin called for surging the Afghan army. This week, Sens. McCain, Lieberman and Graham call for significantly boosting U.S. troop numbers.

Eight years after the Pentagon was hit by a terrorist-hijacked airliner, about 300 relatives of the 184 who died in the fiery crash braved a cool and rainy Washington morning to hear President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen pay tribute to those who were directly affected by the tragic events of the day.

We broke the news earlier this week that the Saudis are close to finalizing a deal to buy an additional 72 Boeing Strike Eagles. The buy will likely be the F-15SG configuration which is now being built for Singapore, industry sources tell us. An advanced version of the F-15E, it is the most modern and capable F-15 in production and comes with an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) and a third generation Lockheed Martin SNIPER targeting pod.

In the soon-to-be immortal words of Sen. Daniel Inouye: “Nothing ever dies” on Capitol Hill. That was Inouye’s response Thursday afternoon when a reporter asked the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman if the split buy for a tanker was dead. Pressed, the senator who often speaks like a seer, finally admitted that the split buy did appear to be really dead for this session of Congress since it was not even a subject for conference discussions.

What if the entire U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is based on a flawed premise? That’s exactly what a number of experts fear is the case as recent presidential elections there have resulted in a Karzai victory accompanied by widespread allegations of voter fraud.

Covering highly classified spy satellite systems always entails a great deal of cryptic language, sometimes incomprehensible hints from well-meaning sources and small bits of real information about these hugely important and expensive systems. Today we have a perfect example of a spy satellite story. At the end of today’s Senate Appropriations defense markup I rushed up to Sen. Kit Bond, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a subcommittee chairman on the appropriations panel.

UDATED: With Links to Sen. Inouye’s Markup Comments and Bill Summaries.
The Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee unexpectedly dropped funding for the F136, the second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. Sen. Daniel Inouye, the powerful subcommittee’s chairman, had indicated before the August recess that he would support the second engine and his panel has always funded it in the past. But today’s markup of the defense spending bill contained no F136 money. But there were strong indications that Inouye may well have beaten a very tactical retreat, perhaps earning him something from the Obama administration in return for leaving the F136 money out of the bill.

As the Obama Administration shapes the acquisition approach of the Department of Defense for the years to come, hard choices will be taken. Among the key drivers will be Afghanistan, Iraq and the operation and shape of power projection forces. Finally, how the administration approaches the re-shaping of US expeditionary and power projection forces will have a fundamental impact on the US posture.

Saudi Arabia is close to placing an order for as many as 72 Boeing F-15 fighter jets, industry and defense sources tell us. Growing security concerns over Gulf neighbor and perennial troublemaker Iran are pushing the Saudis to upgrade their air fleet with a particular emphasis on precision strike aircraft.

The latest contract award for FMTV — worth roughly $2 billion — was declared a stunning upset when it was awarded and it looks as if BAE Systems and Navistar, the stunned ones, weren’t willing to accept the results. Once the protest was filed Oshkosh received a stop-work order from the Army. The good news here is that Oshkosh won’t actually start production until the middle of next year and won’t go to full production until 2011. So the chances of production being harmed are moderately low.

Some have asked why the Soviets were able to build a large and effective Afghan Army during their war in Afghanistan, yet the U.S. military appears unable to do the same? Truth of the matter is, the Afghan Army of the 1980s was a mess, weakened by mass desertions, its numbers propped up by forced conscription and riddled with mujahideen agents.

Amid rumors in the Pentagon and industry that General Electric had to shut down its Joint Strike Fighter test engine because of extreme vibration, the company came out swinging today, saying anybody who suggested this “is a bald faced liar.” GE’s F-136 spokesman, Rick Kennedy, said that “what we have learned is, we improperly installed the sensors. There are no systemic or vibratory problems with the engine.”

At Thursday’s Pentagon press conference, neither SecDef Gates nor JCS chair Mullen would discuss what was in Afghan commander Gen. McChrystal’s recently submitted strategic review. But the nation’s top military advisers did send a clear message: any request for more troops will follow the proper chain of command; behind the scenes lobbying for more, or fewer, troops will not be tolerated.

Less than a month after President Obama signed the Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act into law, the National Reconnaissance Office acted with almost blinding speed and issued a memo detailing its adamant stand against the possible appearance of any corporate conflicts of interest. NRO officials and a former senior intelligence official offered staunch defenses of the agency’s actions.

LCS. Huge cost overruns (OK– the Navy changed the requirements, but still). CVN 78 has EMALS issues and is struggling to contain cost growth that the Congressional Budget Office estimates may lead to a ship costing $900 million more than the Navy expects. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus knows he faces serious problems meeting the Navy’s goal of a 313 ship fleet and has promised an “intense” focus on acquisition reform. But wait; there’s more! Norm Polmar offers the view that one Navy ship — DDG 1000 — is now on track and on budget.

The acquisition reform legislation passed by Congress is forcing major defense companies to sell subsidiaries so they don’t fall afoul of new restrictions forbidding manufacturers from owning companies that advise the government about acquisitions. The most glaring example appears to be the pending sale by Northrop Grumman of TASC, a company with some 5,000 employees who provide the military and, especially, the intelligence community with technical advice on acquisitions and operations.

It’s official. Jamie McIntyre, who used to cover the military for CNN, has joined the Military​.com team with his own site, Line of Departure. I knew Jamie from my days covering NATO at Defense News and we shared a few flights with then-Defense Secretary William Cohen. He’s a rock solid reporter who will bring a deep source book and a unique perspective on how the military is faring and how relations between the media and the military shape both enterprises. Move out!

General Electric has had to take its second F-136 engine off line and inspect it after a piece of testing equipment broke free and was gobbled up by the giant engine less than a week ago. “It’s still up on the test stand but it’s not running,” said Rick Kennedy, spokesman for GE Aviation. The test equipment rattled loose and the company is bore scoping the engine to inspect the turbines and other equipment to see how much damage was done and assess the way ahead.