Pentagon

SAN DIEGO - In the ocean off Coronado, a Navy team has discovered a relic worthy of display in a military museum: a torpedo of the kind deployed in the late 19th century, considered a technological marvel in its day. But don't look for the primary discoverers to get a promotion or an invitation to meet the admirals at the Pentagon - although they might get an extra fish for dinner or maybe a pat on the snout. The so-called Howell torpedo was discovered by bottlenose dolphins being trained by the Navy to find undersea objects, including mines, that not even billion-dollar technology can detect.

WASHINGTON - The Army suspended the commander of its main basic training camp Tuesday for alleged adultery, the latest in a string of military officers accused of sexual misconduct. Brig. Gen. Bryan T. Roberts, a 29-year Army veteran, was suspended from his post at Ft. Jackson, S.C., while the military investigates allegations of "adultery and a physical altercation," officials said. "We don't have any evidence of any sexual assault. The allegations we have indicate a breach of order and discipline," said Col. Christian Kubik, a spokesman for the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Ft. Eustis, Va. Roberts, who is married with three children, previously led units in Iraq and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon estimated that 26,000 members of the military were sexually assaulted in unreported incidents last year - 35% more than in 2010 - a severe trend that senior officials warned could threaten recruiting and retention of women in uniform. President Obama, reacting to the startling figures Tuesday, said he had "no tolerance" for sexual crimes in the ranks and pledged to crack down on commanders who ignored the problem. Obama said he had spoken to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and ordered that officers "up and down the food chain" get the message.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon estimated that 26,000 members of the military were sexually assaulted in unreported incidents last year - 35% more than in 2010 - a severe trend that senior officials warned could threaten recruiting and retention of women in uniform. President Obama, reacting to the startling figures Tuesday, said he had "no tolerance" for sexual crimes in the ranks and pledged to crack down on commanders who ignored the problem. Obama said he had spoken to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and ordered that officers "up and down the food chain" get the message.

Shortly after Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta took office July 1, he boarded a U.S. Air Force jet and flew home to California for a three-day weekend. He has flown home five weekends since then and has spent part of a two-week vacation there. Aides say that unless he is required to stay in Washington or travel elsewhere, Panetta will spend most weekends and days off at his 12-acre walnut farm in scenic Carmel Valley, where he and his wife, Sylvia, make their home. It is common for members of Congress to fly back to their districts every weekend or so, and Panetta did so when he represented Monterey in the House from 1977 to 1993, and as CIA director, his first job in the Obama administration.

To conservatives who love the military and hate big government: The Pentagon is not a private corporation. G. DE WITT Seal Beach

In the worst terrorist attack ever against the United States, hijackers struck at the preeminent symbols of the nation's wealth and might Tuesday, flying airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and killing or injuring thousands of people. As a horrified nation watched on television, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan collapsed into flaming rubble after two Boeing 767s rammed their upper stories. A third airliner, a Boeing 757, flattened one of the Pentagon's five sides.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is beefing up its spy service to send several hundred undercover intelligence officers to overseas hot spots to steal secrets on national security threats after a decade of focusing chiefly on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move comes amid concerns that the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's spy service, needs to expand operations beyond the war zones and to work more closely with the CIA, according to a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the classified program.

The Pentagon is investigating 10 U.S. military members in a widening probe into whether an advance team of Secret Service and military personnel hired local prostitutes or engaged in other misconduct before President Obama visited Colombia for a summit last week, U.S. officials said. The Pentagon investigation is focusing on five Special Forces Army soldiers, two Marines, two Navy personnel and one member of the Air Force, a U.S. military official said.  The Navy and Air Force personnel are members of explosive detection unit, the official said,.

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans approved a sweeping package of budget cuts to food stamps, Meals on Wheels and other domestic programs -- while sparing the Pentagon -- in an election-year showcase of party priorities. Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the legislation, which is expected to stall in the Senate, but House Speaker John A. Boehner's decision to call a vote gives the GOP an opportunity to highlight its agenda and attack President Obama's efforts to reduce the deficit. The bill was approved on party lines, 218-199.

WASHINGTON - The latest chapter in the political battle over the killing of four Americans in Libya is unfolding this week, with Republicans pointing to the testimony of a State Department official as evidence that the U.S. military could have done more to disrupt the attack. Democrats, in turn, cite an independent review's findings that there were no forces available to carry out a rescue mission. House Republicans have released a partial transcript of remarks by Gregory Hicks, who was No. 2 at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli during the attack in September.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is sending about 200 troops to Jordan, the vanguard of a potential U.S. military force of 20,000 or more that could be deployed if the Obama administration decides to intervene in Syria to secure chemical weapons arsenals or to prevent the 2-year-old civil war from spilling into neighboring nations. Troops from the 1st Armored Division will establish a small headquarters near Jordan's border with Syria to help deliver humanitarian supplies for a growing flood of refugees and to plan for possible military operations, including a rapid buildup of American forces if the White House decides intervention is necessary, senior U.S. officials said.

At the height of the wars in the Middle East, AeroVironment Inc. - a drone maker based in Monrovia - soared into the public limelight. In the last decade, AeroVironment became the Pentagon's top supplier of small drones. Its financial balance sheet prospered, its drones delivered results and its technology landed on the cover of Time magazine as one of the year's best inventions in 2011. But these days, not so much. Over the last month the company's shares have plummeted more than 18% as federal spending begins to dry up and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan come to an end. It lowered its revenue guidance by nearly one-third, to $230 million to $250 million from $348 million to $370 million.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Wednesday that it was sending a mobile missile defense system to Guam as a "precautionary move," as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said North Korea posed a "real and clear danger" to the U.S. military base on the western Pacific island, as well as to allies and other U.S. territory. North Korea has named Guam and Hawaii as potential targets in bellicose statements in recent weeks, which have increased tension on the Korean peninsula and prompted a series of U.S. military moves aimed at beefing up the American presence in the region and reassuring allies that the United States will come to their aid in the event of an attack.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Navy is moving a sea-based radar platform closer to North Korea to track possible missile launches, a Pentagon official said Monday, in the latest step meant to deter the North and reassure South Korea and Japan that the U.S. is committed to their defense. The sea-based X-band radar, a self-propelled system resembling an oil rig, is heading toward the Korean peninsula from Pearl Harbor, the official said. The John S. McCain, a guided missile destroyer capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, also is being sent to the region, said another Defense Department official.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon plans to add 14 missile interceptors to a problem-plagued anti-missile system in Alaska aimed at North Korea, which has issued increasingly bellicose threats since it tested an underground nuclear device and launched a small satellite. The upgraded ground-based interceptors would augment 26 interceptors already deployed at Ft. Greely, part of a multi-layered missile defense system that includes up to five Navy Aegis cruisers with tracking radars and their own interceptors in the northern Pacific.

It's one of those stories that's just too good to check out: a pod of heavily armed dolphins escape their Ukranian military handlers and set off in search of romance. The Ukranian Defense Ministry has flatly denied a Russian news service report that three elite bottle-nosed dolphins are AWOL somewhere in the Black Sea in search of mates and may even have knives or pistols attached to their heads. Lest anyone worry that such a cetacean mutiny could occur in the ranks of the U.S. Navy, Americans can take comfort in the fact that the Pentagon is phasing out its use of dolphins and sea lions in combat.

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany - On his way home from Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had planned to stop Monday at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the U.S.-run hospital in Germany where thousands of American soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have been treated over the last decade. But the visit was canceled when Hagel's staff learned no Americans were being treated for combat wounds there now, a military official said. Only three U.S. military personnel have been killed in combat since January, and about 60 have been wounded.