congress welcome to "this week in defense news," i'm vago muradian. defense secretary leon panetta has placed flight restrictions on the f-22 fighter until the air force figures out why the plane is making pilots and maintainers sick. we talk today one expert about what comes next for the super jet and we'll get a progress report on afghanistan -- on the afghanistan war from a reporter who spent six weeks with troops in the field. but, first, house republicans have voted to add billions of dollars to the defense budget and undo the administration's military spending plans that included cuts to major weapons programs. the house wants to save the block 30 global hawk unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, keep the c-27j light transport in service, fund an additional destroyer for the navy, keep and service three additional

navy cruisers that were slated for retirement, spend $1 billion on new army equipment and keep open a tank plan in ohio that the army wanted to close. instead of welcoming the added money, defense secretary panetta blasted the move as irresponsible and wasteful and senate democrats have said they will block additional defense spending, all this is coming as worries increase over the threat of sequestration which has the pentagon facing $500 billion in additional cuts by the end of the year if congress fails to strike a deficit reduction deal. i'm now joined by nora benthail for the new american center for security which has been influential on the obama administration's defense policies and dan garae of the lexington institute who's also an adviser to republican presidential candidate mitt romney. lady and gentleman, welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> nora, let me start with you, and, dan, i would like to get your take on it also, will the house version of this budget make it through the senate in any fashion whatsoever? >> i think there's virtually no chance it'll go through in its current form. i think right now there's no likelihood that there's going to be serious movement on these

issues until after the election. a lot of this right now is political cal posturing, trying to implement campaign promises, but the house had to know that the senate would not be interested in passing the plan as is. it is sending very strong signals, though, about what the real substantive issues are and those are unlikely to be resolved most likely until after the presidential election. >> dan. >> well, there are some things here which are real issues and we never resolve in discussion, for example, the block 30 global hawks you mentioned. these are airplaning which are unmanned aircraft that have never been flown and there's literally going to be bilked and mothballed which doesn't seem to be a very wise use of funds. similarly with retirement of the cruisers, they're being retired in lieu of maintenance even though, as the house pointed out, they have 10 years or better of life left in them and we are pivot oting to the word world's largest ocean the indian. there are much more plans for strategy and future conflict, really, that aren't being

addressed, so this is the way that the armed services committee and the appropriators sort of got their point across. >> and, really, a little bit of it was the administration said that you can't change a hair on my baby's head, so congress does have to come back and sort of say, well, i actually see this a little bit differently. >> there's that. there's also questions, for example, in the area of defense industrial base. you mentioned the question about cutting or shutting down mothballing really the army tank plat. there's a question of furloughing the facility in york, pennsylvania. these are one-of-a-kind facilities and the argument that is being made by proposal of these facilities, shutting them and restarting is very administration's proposal as it sees fit. that happens all the time. i think the particular timing

of this, as i said, is more related to campaign rhetoric rather than trying to engage what the real substantive issues are. >> at the end of the day, defense secretary panetta is very adamant this stuff is not needed. that's the reason why it was cut. at some point doesn't there have to be also some recognition that actually deeper cuts may be necessary and even more hard choices will have to be made. >> yes. especially if sequestration goes through. i mean, right now it is the 4kdv f @pb& is, e+h]6b what's will only be one of the issues that congress needs to deal with, one of the fiscal issues that congress needs to deal with during that time, including issues like the expiration of the bush -- >> bush tax cuts. >> the bush tax cuts, the payroll tax. >> holiday. >> a couple of patches 6xijsbkñ alternative minimum tax, all of the fy '13 bills and the list goes on. those are just some examples. defense is probably the least important of those on the congressional agenda or close to the bottom.

so there's not going to be any movement just on that, it's going to be part of this bigger debate that congress has to have about the fundamental issues it has fail today resolve for the past two years. it's catastrophic. well, does it get elevated, if you will, and become the club which one side or the other can beat everybody up with. >> well, i mean, over the past week, the sequestration situation is looking a little bit worse after speaker boehner made the point that, you know, all of the stuff that we saw in the last negotiations could possibly happen again which has some people concerned that 4kdv that we're definitely going to be .1t'>e"blmseeing at the ápáion, a month- to-month sort of extension. how would any of these work and

what sort of impact would they have? >> they don't work well, none of those options work well. what they do is they make it impossible for the department of defense to plan against them. and some of the planning that d.o.d. will have to do for the possibility of sequestration will have to start this summer, just in terms of getting prepared to execute what is currently the law of the land. so the more unsesht there is, 4v there is, the v87)?bkio[] yo ]ycs÷oñrw question of how one actually takes the cuts. item, emñ ]30e5"?p7 program the way you interpret the law or are you literally bound, hand, foot gagged and such in which case it doesn't seem like a single program will be able to function in 2013. >> my understanding is that o

and b will make that decision. >> rs0ó no, i can't imagine. >> the administration does have the flexibility to interpret that. >> you could see a suit over that and this could get interesting in lame duck or even in 2013. >> do you see any loopholes. as you guys look at this as experts, do you see any loopholes that people with ex -- can exploit to try and get around this in any way? >> the only one that comes up and it's hard to believe is oco funding, the contingent operations is not included. it goes wrjïpgner. one could l÷ of this c7(se,=9:tkhdu

budget while you try to work this out. one would go down, one would go up. >> there are some folks who look at sequestration as -- from both parties as not actually that bad. they're looking at this as in the context of a grand bargain, you let the bush tax cuts expire, you let the payroll tax holiday go ákdrm3 sequestration go through that automatically whacks defense as well as other social programs and that goes in large measure to solving some of your debt burden. is that a possibility that folks may actually look at and say we can all pinch our nose but kind of live with it? >> i think it all depending on what happens cure during the november elections. i think the likelihood of being able to put a coalition around all of that across the board is really low because the things 4v a year and a half f to states, implement the new defense strategy, maintain security across the board and modernize that military when you're taking not only $4080 some -- $480 some billion cuts but another $500 on that. so there's a really national security question in there somewhere that we ought not forget. >> let me take another few

seconds and ask you guys, you both have reports coming out 4kv >> csna has a report a÷y ä'sq.m@kd saying b9m1 more sustainable ways to do that. >> and, dan, you've got a report coming out. >> a study that could actually support what nora is talking about, hidden costs in the budget, regulatory burdens, lack of resourcing and how if we actually did something about those functions we could pay for sequestration without harming strategy programs or personnel. >> guys, thanks very much. you're welcome back. we got to have you back 22

barely a week after two air force pilots went public with their refusal to fly the f- 22 fighter over safety concerns, defense secretary leon panetta limited flights to within range of qualified airfields so pilots can land quickly if they experience problems. ever since captain jeffrey haney lost consciousness and crashed his f-22 into an alaskan mountainside in 2010, air force and lockheed martin engineers have struggled to find the cause. the air force grounded the f-22 for four months last year, but since the raptors returned to flight in september, 11 pilots and five maintainers have complain -- complained of hypooxy restrictions. rebecca grant is the president of iz ris independent research which advises the air force, navy and other agencies and

contractors, including f-22 maker lockheed martin. rebecca, welcome back. >> thank you, vago. nice to be here. >> why did secretary panetta do what he did, how unusual was his involvement in the program and when do we expect this all to be lifted? >> secretary panetta obviously wasn't satisfied with what he was saying. i think he has a big heart, he was concerned about the human element, what's really going on with the pilots who fly the f- 22, why are they standing up and saying that they're worried about being in this aircraft. and it's very unusual. i can't remember, vago, maybe you can, a time when we've seen either two pilots who were on active flying status say they don't want to fly a plane. and i can't remember seeing a sitting secretary of defense make such an operational decision about limiting a plane's flights. >> how is emitting what he has decided to do, is it a significant limitation on the aircraft or a modest one? >> he's taken a medium course,

so he's restricted the flight so that if there's an incident the pilot has to be able to get back to an approved landing site. but that leaves a lot of areas. i think it's very important, vago, that he did not pull back the deployment of the f-22 raptor to its middle east base. he says, fine, let's go ahead and fly them there. what i think they don't want to see is long over-water flights and anything out of the ordinary. but it's a medium course. >> this has been under study for a long time. the air force has seen this problem, but over the past two years, there's been intensive efforts to try and figure it out. what are some of the things we've thought it was that wasn't and where do investigators think this problem lies? >> right. the problem took shape about two years ago in the spring of 2010. at that time the raptor had flown 100,000 hours, that's a mark of system maturity, but there had been 14 hypooxy- related incidents. when the air force looked at those, they couldn't find root cause for them and that's what

led them to form scientific advisory study team led by retired general gregory martin. they started two summers ago, back in the summer of 2010. remember the haney crash, the tragedy in alaska didn't occur until november of that year. so the air force and experts across the nation have been working pretty hard for the last two years to figure out what is going on with the an war oxygen generating system. >> is that what we think is the culprit? >> yes, it seems to be there. the question is that's not just one little system. there's a lot that goes into that. you've flown a high-performance aircraft and remember what it's like to put on the helmet, the mask, you've got the connections between the mask and the oxygen generation system, all of those have been picked apart and looked at very thoroughly. the real problem, vago, is the data is very sparse. we're talking about less than 25 incidents across more than 110,000 hours of flight. so there are literally highly experienced f-22 pilots who

have never had the hypooxy symptoms and don't know anyone who's had the hypoxy symptoms. >> so the short answer is we don't know if this will be listed. this could end up being a prolonged thing until the air force figures out definitively what the problem is. >> this goes back to 2010 where two generals were outbriefed with the study. they said bluntly we don't know what the root cause is. the air force decided last fall to go ahead and fly the aircraft. they put some additional safety measures on. also they've given the pilots some more instrumentation in the cockpit. what they need to do now is fly and try to figure it out as they fly the aircraft. >> this aircraft has -- and the air force has always said a tremendous deurnt value because of its unique category and unique capabilities. does this give a black eye to that, does it undermine the f- 22's value? >> no in my opinion.

it's a good question about the deteurns value, but the f-22 retains that strong deterrent value. for one thing, we're not on a wartime footing in the pacific theater, for example. believe me, if there were a need to have the f-22 up in combat, they would go right ahead and do it. these restrictions don't in any way destract >> rebecca, thanks very much. coming up j7pi(ñnnext, wh troops crtsñ-g;%=in afghanistan say about the war and their afghan allies

our next guest is one of the çft4vyñocrack reporters th sister publication marine corps times. dan lamont is just back from six weeks embedded with marines in afghanistan. while dan was in afghanistan, president obama signed a deal with afghan president hamid karzai to keep u.s. troops in the country through 2024. obama's strategy which will be the key topic at this week's nato summit?

chicago depends largely on how well u.s. and allied troops work with afghan forces and ñgo the afghans' ability to take a bigger leadership roll -- role in providing for their security. w the marines, dan got a look with how the marines are working now with newly trained afghan forces. dan, welcome back to the show. >> thanks for having me. >> there's a debate in washington whether afghan and making progress in fighting the taliban, especially as american forces are beginning their drawdown. you were there, is there lasting process that's being made against the taliban? >> the easy thing to say is there's definitely progress w8zo being made. whether it's lasting, i think it's kind of hard to say ctorig now. and to a large extent, that also is on the afghan forces that at some point are going tom be in the lead everywhere. >> so it's not even that clear that as we're drawing down, we're maintaining that level -- and as afghans build up, we're maintaining that level of control that everyone says is a safe level to transition.

>> i think that is hard to say. there's security bubbles now that y sangra was the wild west two years ago, even last summer. they have certain areas of that than they did at this point, but they're still taking an awful lot of attacks. if you were to remove the marines from the equation, it's hard to say how it would play out. >> what does the drawdown that's happening today from what it did look like six months ago? >> they have rolled up hundreds of bases across helmand province alone, areas marines were in, some are not, some have been turned over to the afghans, some of them have just been bulldozedded, so marines more and more are started to be pulled back into bigger operating bases, andë43]÷oby t of the summer, especially, i think they're going to serve to an ñlmx:

i think there are many areas if we had continued down the pathway would have, that marines would have eventually assaulted, rolled up and set up shop, and there are raids and surveillance in a lot of those areas that i don't think we'll ever see any kind of, like, large footprint in some of those kind of outer lying areas. >> the defense leader vs been telling us that one of the reasons why that's possible is because the afghan forces are picking up their game and they're getting better. they're getting a lot of operational experience and the got is better. but afghan forces have long been criticized as being corrupt, incompetent, illitterrate. marines tend to be a very tough judge of both friends and foes. 43]ñotakes -- what's the marine take on their afghan allies? >> very is still a large improvement over what i saw in afghanistan two years ago when i ç$lkúmçwas on one hand i

marines complementing the afghans for being courageous, for trading fire with the taliban all day as one lieutenant put it. on the other hand there ?dcqñwe concerns and complaints about the afghan police in some of those areas being corrupt, being abusive to some of the civilians in the area, so i think it's kind of hard to say. i mean, to an extent i think it depends on the commanders of those afghan units. >> so is there a concern -- i mean, green on blue attacks where uniformed afghans are turning their weapons on americans have been on the increase, there have been 22 incidents in this year. to what extent does that shape how marines cooperate with their afghan allies? >> i think it's always in the back of their mind. especially when, you know, i n1wstaying on >n little bases with them. to an extent, i felt relatively comfortable that the marines

were happy to be working with i guess. but i guess on the other side you always have that level of trust who you don't. so i think -- it's one of those binery things. >> yeah. >> you've got them until you don't. >> we're staying until 2024. briefly what do marines think of staying in afghanistan in some capacity to 2024? file, i think it's very much a question mark. in particular because that ;ó;há announcement came with so many fuzzy details, you know, what kind of footprint, how big, what kind of advising role. there are always going to be marines who want to be in those roles, they're always going to thing. but in terms of, you know, strategically i especially on the ground there's a big shrug of the shoulders in terms of, well, we'll get through this deployment and we'll worry

>> dan, thanks

after britain abandoned the jump jet version of the f- 35 joint strike fighter in favor of a catapult launch naval variant in 2010, critics, myself included, said that higher costs would force london to change back. that prediction came true. earlier this month britain returned to the short takeoff and vertical landing jsf rather than pay $3 billion to retrofit catapults and arresting gear onto one of its two new big deck aircraft carriers now under construction. the other would have been finished without modification to be sold or mothballed. the royal navy can now save money on ship construction and operations while retaining the option to field a second aircraft carrier later, if needed. that's great news, not just for the royal navy, but other

operators, including the u.s. marine corps, italy, spain and even india and japan stand to benefit from the decision. for years opponents of the jet have portrayed it as too expensive, too limited and unworkable. first flight tests have proven the plane works fine. second, when you consider the stoabl variant costs about the same as other jfs models but requires fewer people to operate, can operate from smaller platforms, delivers equal or better performance than any existing naval fighter with stealth and better electronics, its overall value is unsurpassed. that's the compelling argument that brought britain back to the stoblejsf and will surely attract others. thanks for joining us for "this week in defense news." i'm vago muradian. you can watch this program online at defensenewstv.com or e-mail me. and before we go, a very happy 100th birthday to marine corps aviation. i'll be back next week at the same time. until then, have a great week.