John Warner, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, looms as one of the canniest and most rational defense experts on Capitol Hill for the last two decades. His inclusion as co-chair of the independent panel charged with overseeing the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review would have provided the nation with a keen eye to ensure that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and company did not get away with too many fudged or badly reasoned decisions. Sadly, that is not to be. That may leave the panel behind the power curve, as the Heritage Foundation’s Mackenzie Eaglen told us.

The second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter needs a fancy lug nut redesigned and should be back up on the test stand by the end of the year, a GE spokesman says. The program has been dogged by rumors that it faced a potentially significant redesign of its combustor but the real problem lies with a lug that attaches the diffuser to the cumbustor, GE spokesman Rick Kennedy said Tuesday morning.“The actual combustor will not have to be redesigned,” he said.

Rumors flew last week that GE faced the prospect of having to redesign its cumbustor and that the engine is in such deep doo doo that it would be off the test stand for at least six months. Then Loren Thompson, uber-source for many defense reporters, put out an item this morning summarizing the rumors and now Congress wants answers — right away.

The veil will be partially lifted next week but almost nobody outside a small group in the Army knows what the service’s new Ground Combat Vehicle will look like or what it will be expected to do. So we surveyed industry leaders at AUSA to get their best guesses.

In a largely supportive and generous speech, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the annual gathering of the Association of the US Army that he continued to support the Army’s modernization plans but reminded the service that it must find uses for the MRAPs bought for Iraq and Afghanistan.

House Republicans mounted a spirited critique of the Obama administration’s new European missile defense plan, saying the intelligence does not support the administration’s claims of a change in the threat. GOP members also claimed the new plan would not sufficiently contain the threat from Iran.

Northrop Grumman is really, really worried that Boeing will get the march on them in the tanker competition because its KC-X pricing data was revealed during the last go-round. But last week’s congressional briefing appears to indicate the Pentagon gives short shrift to Northrop’s concerns.

Expect fireworks from a pair of meetings yesterday and Wednesday about the future of what was one of Americas most closely guarded secret weapons, the National Reconnaissance Office. A tiger team is meeting to discuss what could be an enormous expansion of the NRO’s power, from its current focus on building and operating highly classified imaging and radar satellites to building and operating all US military and intelligence space and ISR assets

UPDATED: GE/RR Will Offer Detailed Fixed Price Proposal Friday or Monday
The war for the Joint Strike Fighter’s engine money has developed a new front: when is a fixed price offer actually a fixed price offer. We spoke with a source over the weekend who read us some emails which were apparently from Pentagon officials claiming that General Electric and Rolls Royce, makers of the F136, had not actually made the government a fixed price offer.

While Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ new missile defense plan has been slammed by Republicans for either giving in to the Russians, abandoning our allies or focusing on the wrong threat, there are other questions that need answering.

UDATED: With Gates, Congressional Staff Comments

Land-based SM-3 is the biggest winner from the administration’s decision to change its approach to defending allies against Iranian missiles. One of the other considerations in the administration’s decision may be a bold effort to reassure Israel that the US is taking the Iranian threat to both Israeli and US forces in the region more seriously. Senior Pentagon leaders have made very clear they are working feverishly behind the scenes to stop Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

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.

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.”

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!

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made very few visits to defense plants what with two wars on, a tight budget and many soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines to visit. Suddenly, at the end of a very quiet August, Gates’ office sends out a notice today to reporters saying he’s going Monday to Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter factory in Fort Worth. It’s a big program and needs big defenders.

File this one under QDR rumors, although senior OSD officials thought about cutting a carrier from the very beginning of the QDR. Now, sources tell us that OSD may actually chop an additional carrier from the Navy’s battle fleet, a move that would take the force down to nine carriers from the current total of 11.

Rumor alert — we’ve got few details yet but a source with access to Joint Strike Fighter officials says Marine Maj. Gen. David Heinz, PEO for the program, was recently called onto the carpet by Defense Secretary Gates. The message: stop talking about problems with the Pratt & Whitney engine and how second engine programs have proved themselves in the past. “They have hammered Heinz to say nothing more about this,” our source says.

The QDR is pretty much finished and the major decisions made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on April 6 are likely to comprise most of the review’s major decisions. “It appears to be essentially over:” that’s the judgment of a Pentagon official with detailed knowledge of the review. “There appears to be no appetite for anything bolder than the 6 April decisions,” this source said.

Pratt & Whitney’s lobbyists have been working hard all through this congressional session to finally put the kibosh on the GE/Rolls Royce program to build a competing engine for the F-35. As part of that battle, we now have a near perfect mid-summer story about a video criticizing the second engine and just who really paid for it.

Another senior cyber official has resigned and I hear few encouraging noises from the cyber warriors I speak with at the Pentagon in the wake of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ decision to create a cyber command. They worry that fundamental policy issues have still not been addressed, leaving the military uncertain what actions it can reasonably expect to take in the event of conflict. Much of this worry derives from the fairly timid report issued by the administration about how it would handle offensive and defense cyber issues. Kevin Coleman has the rest of the story.