Defense Communities 360 Headlines

A solicitation from the Army’s Energy Initiatives Task Force to build a 15-megawatt solar plant at Fort Detrick, Md., generated about 100 inquiries and pushed the deadline to respond to the request for proposals back one month to March 28. “This is the first RFP project that’s put out by the Energy Initiatives Task Force,” Army spokesman Dave Foster told the Frederick News Post. “They want to be sure they get it right.”

President Obama on Friday said he would accept a continuing resolution to keep the government open beyond March 27 that does not offset the sequester, making it unlikely that either party will threaten a government shutdown over the measure. The stopgap bill funding the last six months of fiscal 2013 would need to provide $1.043 trillion in federal spending, the cap set in the August 2011 agreement to raise the debt ceiling, Obama said …

Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter sent letters to the governors of 10 states slated to endure the harshest impacts from sequestration, alerting them to the direct and indirect consequences $40-plus billion in across-the-board spending reductions will heap on their states’ military installations. The 10 states projected to suffer the most are California, Virginia, Texas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Alabama, and Washington. All states will be affected, but those 10 will bear the largest brunt …

President Obama signed an order Friday night to carry out the $85 billion sequester of fiscal 2013 spending, making official the across-the-board spending cuts that are widely projected to undercut military readiness. Along with the order, the Office of Management and Budget submitted a report to Congress detailing the cuts for each agency. Over the course of the entire fiscal year, the sequester requires a 7.8 percent reduction in discretionary defense spending, or $43 billion …

In his first press conference as defense secretary held on the day sequestration initially went into effect, Chuck Hagel bluntly outlined the consequences for each of the services. “The Navy will gradually stand down at least four wings. The first wing will stand down in April. Effective immediately, Air Force flying hours will be cut back. This will have a major impact on training and readiness …

The Defense Department will ask Congress to hold BRAC rounds in 2015 and 2017 as part of its fiscal 2014 budget request, according to comments made by defense officials at a meeting this week of the Council of Governors. Last month then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta revealed to reporters that the department would request a new round of base closures, but didn’t specify whether the department would ask for two rounds as it did last year. “We will have to because … you can’t have a huge infrastructure supporting a reduced force,” Panetta said at the time. Congress roundly rejected last year’s proposal for base closure rounds in 2013 and 2015. Read the story in Politico.

With Chuck Hagel sworn in as the new defense secretary, the Obama administration is expected to start nominating candidates to fill up to two service secretary posts and several vacancies within the office of the secretary of defense. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, who has served since late in the George W. Bush administration, is expected to step down this spring …

Following the defeat in the Senate of competing plans to address the sequester, senators from both parties continue to consider alternate ways to afford federal agencies some flexibility when they carry out $85 billion of automatic spending reductions going into effect today. On Thursday, a Republican proposal that would have provided agencies greater flexibility to carry out the cuts received only 38 votes, far short of the 60 needed to advance the measure …

Early indications are that Senate Democrats won’t turn the March 27 deadline for passing a new stopgap funding measure into a showdown with their counterparts over restoring, or at least mitigating, $85 billion in across-the-board cuts set to be imposed today. Since the deal at the beginning of the year to avert the fiscal cliff was reached, many lawmakers have been pointing to the negotiations over the next fiscal 2013 continuing resolution as the best opportunity to address the sequester …

Congress left town Thursday without dealing with sequestration, triggering the imposition of spending cuts of $43 billion on the Pentagon starting today, about 8 percent of the military’s budget. Under budget law, President Obama must sign an order by 11:59 p.m. Friday to begin a total of $85 billion in spending reductions across all agencies’ fiscal 2013 budgets. The law also requires the Office of Management and Budget to prepare a detailed report by today on the agency-by-agency impact of the cuts …