Defense Spending

In a political victory for the Obama administration -- and a surprising defeat for some lawmakers in both parties -- the Senate voted Tuesday to halt further production of the Air Force's F-22 Raptor fighter jets. The 58-40 vote on an amendment to the $680-billion defense authorization bill called for stripping out the $1.75 billion set aside for construction of seven more of the jets. The F-22, which has not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan, has come under particular scrutiny for its price tag.

In an intensifying dispute over weapons priorities, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Thursday privately rebuked a four-star general for suggesting the Air Force intended to buy twice as many sophisticated F-22 Raptor aircraft as the Bush administration had approved, according to Air Force officials. One senior defense official called the remarks by Gen.

The top two officials of the Air Force on Friday disowned comments made earlier this week by a four-star general who implied the service was at odds with the Bush administration over purchases of sophisticated new F-22 fighters. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, and Michael W. Wynne, the Air Force secretary and top civilian official, said the general's remarks "misrepresent the position of the U.S.

Does Osama bin Laden have a secret submarine fleet nobody told us about? Does Al Qaeda have advanced fighter jets parked on runways atop the mountains of South Waziristan? Why, then, does the U.S. Department of Defense, in the midst of two wars and a "generational struggle" with radical Islamist terrorism, want to spend $92 billion to buy 30 Virginia-class attack submarines, $65 billion for 184 advanced F-22 fighter jets and $29 billion for seven behemoth DDG-1000 destroyers?

The House on Thursday approved a new GI Bill, with a significant expansion of veterans' education benefits, as part of a war-spending measure that will pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next year and also provide aid for the jobless.

Election day may signal bad news ahead for Southern California's biggest private employers -- aerospace giants Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp. -- no matter who wins today. With a financial crisis pinching federal coffers and deep cuts in federal spending looming, multibillion-dollar weapons purchases could take a serious hit.

For months, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has criticized the Pentagon's spending priorities but has done little to change them, choosing instead to leave the most difficult decisions to the next administration. With the announcement by President-elect Barack Obama last week that Gates will remain in his job in the new administration, the Defense chief has been given broad new power to reshape how the Pentagon selects, designs and builds new weapons systems.

With its armed forces severely strained by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Britain must commit itself to major new defense expenditures if it intends to remain one of the world's premier military powers, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday. The growing toll on the British military in the anti-terrorism fight, with reports of troops occasionally running low on ammunition, struggling with jammed weapons and going for weeks without hot meals, has put the nation at a crossroads.

By the time the Vietnam war ended in 1975, it had become America's longest war, shadowed the legacies of four presidents, killed 58,000 Americans along with many thousands more Vietnamese, and cost the U.S. more than $660 billion in today's dollars.