Lockheed Martin, with just a five-week headstart, has completed 60 percent of LCS 3, compared to Austal, whose LCS 4 is only 26 percent complete. We hear Lockheed recently attached the bow to the rest of the ship. Given how close the competition is between Lockheed and the Amero-Australian shipbuilder, the bigger company’s ability to produce ships with greater speed and fewer delays might raises questions in the minds of U.S. Navy officials about Austal’s ability to regularly deliver ships.

Those of us who hoped for an LCS contract announcement during the dolrdrums of late August must sigh and twiddle our thumbs for a bit. The two bids are apparently so close that the Navy has come back to the two companies and asked for more information. Although the Navy has repeatedly told the world an award would be made this summer it now looks as if it will be made sometime before the beginning of 2011, according to a service statement,” Cmdr. Victor Chen said in a statement.

Washington’s most respected election analyst, Charlie Cook, is now calling the House for the Republicans. And he’s predicting not just a close race, which had been the call of most analysts until now, but is predicting a so-called “wave” election, one where the party in power is swept away.

The United Kingdom began its hunt for military savings the weekend after the Farnborough Air Show and the search has ranged throughout the defense establishment. One of Britain’s most precious capabilities, the one that gave rise to the famed Special Air Services regiment, is its Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols. Most of this capability resides within the 21 Special Air Services regiment known as the Artists. There are rumors that the British may consolidate one of its three squadrons, which happened once before.

The rumor mill is racing with reports that Gen. Hoss Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will soon leave his post and be replaced by Gen. Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff. Schwartz’s ascension has Air Force sources beaming. It has been some time since an Air Force officer has been blessed with promotion to the innermost command circle. “I’m happy [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates is expressing some confidence in my poor, beleaguered Air Force.

The talk on Capitol Hill is that major interagency reform — a new look at the interagency legislation and executive orders undergirding US national security — may be the hottest and hardest to address of the recommendations of the independent QDR panel led by Bill Perry and Stephen Hadley. The panel called for a substantial revamp of the national security structure, saying it was created during the Cold War and was best suited to that era, not to today.They also called on Congress to fix its own house and reduce the overlapping jurisdictions that slow and complicate everyone’s ability to act.

The NRO charter has taken a crucial step, having been finalized for approval by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the next Director of National Intelligence. The NSC got a copy last week. For members of the intel community, the most important part of all this may not be that the document is moving to approval but that language in the draft was changed to “clarify” the extent of the NRO’s reach.

At a time when international partners are skittish about rising costs for the Joint Strike Fighter program and allies have complained about access to program information, not a single Joint Strike fighter will head to the Farnborough Air Show and no one from the JPO will attend the show. We confirmed the JSF and Joint Program Office rumors late this afternoon with a Pentagon spokeswoman. Separately, we hear the head of Pentagon acquisition, Ash Carter, may attend the show though we have been unable to confirm this.

The first really clear indication that serious planning was underway to strike at Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons site came a month ago when British news outlets reported that Saudi Arabia had given Israel permission to cross its airspace en route to Iranian targets.

Yesterday, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States said publicly that his country was willing to live with the consequences of a strike against Iran. Now Sen. Lieberman says in Israel that the U.S. will use military action “if it must.”

Our colleague Manu Sood, editor of the Indian defense website 8ak​.com covers the impending $10 billion deal for the Indian Air Force’s new multi-role aircraft. While it’s too soon to predict a likely winner for India’s huge competition for 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA), the first indicators should be out as early as the next week when the technical evaluation committee’s report comes out. This deal for 126 fighters may cost $10 billion, but there exist huge price variances between the offered fighters of varying capability. And it is not yet clear if the number of fighters is fixed or the budget figure is.

Over the last few hours calls have gone out from the head of Pentagon acquisition to senior defense industry types to stand by for a Monday morning briefing on cost cutting or efficiency measures, setting off a frenzy of speculation and concern. We hear Ash Carter will make a major announcement about acquisition processes that afternoon.

Flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, and Gen. David Petraeus in the Rose Garden, a somber American president announced the resignation of his top commander in Afghanistan and made clear he will tolerate no more dissension among his national security team. Obama made very clear that his “team of rivals” must stand together from now on: “I’ve just told my national security team that now is the time for all of us to come together.”

The one thing left unsaid during all the McChrystal discussion so far is whether the team leading the U.S. effort — McChrystal, Richard Holbrooke, Karl Eikenberry, HIllary Clinton and Jim Jones — is still functioning well or whether McChrystal and others on the team need changing. These people were deliberately built as a “team of rivals,” guaranteeing a healthy diversity of opinion, says retired Army general Jim Dubik who led the crucial effort training Iraqi security forces during the surge. That friction is helpful as long as the team functions well enough to achieve unity of purpose and coherency in action.

UPDATED: CNN Reporting Gen. Offers Resignation; No Word From White House

So far, reaction from around the Beltway on Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s comments as reported by Rolling Stone magazine is split down the middle. Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, didn’t voice direct support for the general but he cautioned against “a premature Washington feeding frenzy.”

The Navy wants to buy capital ships. The Marines want to buy amphibious ships. The proliferation of low-cost, precision anti-ship missiles into the arsenals of potential enemies means large deck amphibious ships are becoming “wasting assets” in the eyes of many Navy leaders. The Marines and the Navy are at loggerheads, at a time when every dollars in the defense budget is up for grabs.

The Marines are not getting one of the Pentagon’s visionary and blunt-spoken leaders as commandant. Instead, the Corps will be led by Gen. James Amos, an aviator currently serving as assistant commandant. His nomination would mark a break with Marine tradition since he may be the first career aviator named commandant and the first assistant named to the top post in many years.

The government has taken the rare action of cutting a unit of L-3 off from all new business while it investigates alleged misuse of an email system and has threatened the broader company, saying it is “considering” suspending the parent subsidiary as well. A source with long experience of black contracting, and who knows L-3 reasonably well, characterized the suspension as “a very serious matter” for both the government and the company. This source said that such suspensions usually occur “because the contracting agency does not feel they have gotten the attn of the company’s senior leadership.”

Final tally: 193–231. In the end the vote on the amendment stripping F136 funding from the defense policy bill was not as close as it might have been, but for the leadership of the House Armed Services Committee and General Electric and Rolls Royce it was close enough. This vote must be seen as an important defeat for the White House and for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who repeatedly said he would urge the president to veto a bill containing funding or approval for the F136.

An important congressional supporter of the second engine for the Joint Strike fighter is “pessimistic” about the coming House floor vote on whether the engine should be funded in the House defense authorization bill. The reason for the supporter’s pessimism is simple: the majority of House lawmakers know little about defense issues and the issues surrounding the F135, made by Pratt, and the F136, made by General Electric and Rolls Royce, are highly complex. So the vote will rest largely on coalitions, the interests of major donors and constituents and horse trading — not on the merits of the issue. The House vote on an amendment killing the F136 General Electric/Rolls Royce alternate engine program is expected Thursday.

One of the defense world’s favorite parlor games is guessing when a Defense Secretary will depart and why. The departure of Robert Gates will be particularly signficant as it will clear the way for the Obama administration’s first real pick to lead the Pentagon. The latest intel we’ve got on Robert Gates’ departure, from a well-placed source, puts it in “early next year.”