When the United States military flew and rode into Iraq they decisively defeated the conventional forces led by Saddam Hussein. It was the peace that we began to lose, crippled by a fractured interagency process that had sort of forgotten there would be stuff to do once the other side was defeated. Two senior House lawmakers have introduced a bill they hope will fix this and other interagency problems.

One of the most sensitive military topics in America remains the growing divide between ordinary Americans and those who serve and fight for their country. Defense Secretary Robert Gates addressed it head –on last night at Duke University, noting the fiscal, physical and emotional costs. He called on “the wise and honest” at great universities such as Duke to serve, noting that if they do not come forward, “who then can we count on to protect and sustain the greatness of this country in the 21st century?”

The top members of the House Armed Services Committee signaled today that they will not accept cuts to the overall defense budget, arguing that a nation at war cannot afford them. And a senior member of the committee from Virginia threatened to issue subpoenas if Congress does not get data and documents from the Pentagon very soon about the underlying reasons for the closure of Joint Forces Command.

Hard as it may be to believe, a court case that traces its roots back to the time when Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary will be considered by the Supreme Court. The case involves the A-12 fighter program, for which the government says Boeing and General Dynamics owe it almost $3 billion. The A-12 began with a 1988 contract to build the Avenger aircraft. The Navy cancelled the contract three years later and said the companies owed it $1.35 billion.

Knowing that their friends at Pratt & Whitney would find out soon enough, the General Electric-Rolls Royce team announced this afternoon that one of their F136 engines had to be shut down after a problem led to airfoil damage. Here’s what GE said in an email to reporters: “Approximately three hours into a mechanical check-out on September 23 at the GE Aviation facility in Evendale, Ohio, an F136 development engine experienced an anomaly at near maximum fan speed. Engine #008 was shut down in a controlled manner. Initial inspection revealed damage to airfoils in the front fan and compressor area. The engine is currently being disassembled for a thorough investigation.”

In an exchange that may come back to haunt the Pentagon, Sen. Jim Webb pressed Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn today to give him and the Senate Armed Services Committee data to justify the proposed closure of Joint Forces Command. Noting that Lynn had been a staff member to Sen. Ted Kennedy, Webb asked him to think how he would have responded if his boss had, as happened to Webb, gotten a call from the deputy defense secretary about a major base closing just 15 minutes before it was publicly announced. Lynn tried to brush Webb aside, saying: “I appreciate that you do not feel we have shared as much information as you would like, but I think the core issue here is a disagreement over the recommendation.”

With Defense Secretary Robert Gates probably leaving in February — and having reaffirmed his intent to depart — the administration has apparently begun to approach candidates for the job. We hear one of the top contenders, Sen. Jack Reed, senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was approached and declined. So, where does that leave the list of possible defense secretaries? John Hamre, we hear, might well accept the job if it is offered to him. And there’s Paul Kaminski and a certain senior Democratic female named Clinton.

You’re a terrorist, dining with your paramour in a comfortable desert hideaway and one of your terrorist lieutenants calls with an operations update. Bored, your paramour rings her mother to complain about Abdul al Qaeda’s overweening focus on work. About 15 minutes later you hear a noise, look out the window and the next thing you know, you’re dead. That is a plausible scenario for the near future if the National Reconnaissance Office and its intelligence colleagues are able to further refine the accuracy of geolocation data and combine it with signals intelligence to allow such strikes.

Three sources with access to senior Air Force officials say Air Combat Command’s Gen. William Fraser is the odds-on choice to replace Gen. Norton Schwartz as Air Force Chief of Staff. Fraser can operate in two of the service’s three domains, space and air, and he knows the often exquisitely complicated and sensitive issues surrounding the Air Force’s relationship with the intelligence community.

Britain’s Defense Minister, Liam Fox, has written a letter to Sen. Carl Levin telling him that he worries the U.S. may drop the second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, a decision that may end up “costing the US and her partners much more in the long term.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Obama have pledged to veto any bill supporting the F136 engine, a pledge repeated by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs earlier this week.

The Army Vice Chief of Staff said program terminations and trims loom as a result of the portfolio reviews ordered earlier this year by Army Secretary John McHugh. Gen. Peter Chiarelli also said that the service had expanded the use of the reviews into the ever-dangerous and complex waters of force structure, including the current modular structure of the Army.

UPDATED: Lockheed, Pentagon Agree On LRIP 4 Deal; Price Is Below $5 billion
After something like seven months of bare-knuckled negotiations, Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon have agreed on a price in a fixed price incentive contract for the fourth lot of low rate of initial production F-35s. “We have reached an agreement with the government on the fourth production lot of F-35s that brings us to 63 production aircraft on contract for five services in three countries,” Lockheed spokeswoman Jennifer Whitlow said in a prepared statement.

The vote was not very close — 56–43 –and most of the wrangling appeared to be tied directly to the upcoming elections, not the merits of the defense policy bill. Technically, Sen. John McCain — helped by other GOP members — filibustered the bill and the vote was about whether the Senate would rise up and cast 60 votes for a cloture vote, to choke off debate. But one could draw the conclusion that for third time Sen. Harry Reid has imperiled the defense authorization bill’s chances of passage.

Speaking a few hours before the Senate is due to vote on the defense authorization bill, battleground of the debate over repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the man nominated for Marine Commandant said he worries that repeal could affect “cohesion.”

Gen. James Amos, the first Marine aviator nominated as leader of the Corps, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he would not recommend repeal of the law barring homosexuals from openly serving in the military.

A surprisingly bounteous desert stretches across the horizon, bound by craggy peaks. Bright yellow flowers dot the landscape, highlighted by the green scrub growing around them. Huge, parti-colored grasshoppers lumber along, mating in the ground cover. Three M-ATVs rumble down a track toward the building on whose roof we’re standing. The sharp crack of AK-47 rounds ring out from the barrel of a Taliban marksman at the edge of the roof.

A few days ago we heard about an email from a friend of a friend, stationed in Iraq. For obvious reasons we can’t identify the soldier. He’s Army and he’s in what was called, until the Obama administration officially declared an end to Operation Iraqi Freedom combat operations, a Heavy Brigade Combat Team. Read on to see what he says was an almost magical change as the “last” combat troops pulled out late last month:

The Joint Strike Fighter program has more than $6.5 billion in unspent money — “more than the budgets of many entire federal agencies” — and the first two production planes are a year late and the costs keep climbing, problems that the Senate Appropriations Committee says are symptomatic of Pentagon management problems. The panel said it considered cutting all funding for the country’s biggest defense program.

After the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee voted to whack spending for the F136 during its markup earlier this week we didn’t hear much from the normally voluble folks at General Electric and Rolls Royce. Today, they and their supporters came right back into the game.

It was supposed to be just a way-cool, gee-whiz skateboard for extreme sports. But then, nothing says extreme like combat. So when folks at the Naval Postgraduate School in California saw Ben Gulak’s motorized, tank-treaded skateboard they asked him to come out and test it for possible military applications. “It was really cool,” Gulak told DoD Buzz, “because the NPS guys were already using an autonomous robot vehicle but it … had difficulty going over really rough terrain.”