“Pentagon” on The Daily Caller

Two female soldiers are suing the U.S. government over restrictions on women in combat, claiming that the policies violate their constitutional rights. (more)

President Barack Obama’s recently submitted 2013 budget proposal sharply reduces the Defense Department’s base budget by more than $5 billion, a move that Republicans argue may compromise national security. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said Obama’s proposal, which allocates more than $530 billion for that base budget, puts “short-term political considerations over our long-term national security interests.” (more)

The Pentagon has announced that it will make assignment policy changes that will result in 14,325 more positions being opened to women this spring. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the past decade women in the U.S. military have served, fought and died on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon says sex with animals would still be illegal even if Congress repeals a military rule on sodomy. (more)

The war on counterterrorism training inside the FBI shifted to a new battlefield in October — the Department of Defense — with an unclassified memo from the Joint Chiefs of Staff asking subordinate commands and agencies to explain the procedures they use to evaluate Countering Violent Extremism training. And that memo appears to lean heavily on the criticisms of Spencer Ackerman, a former JournoList member who was fired by The New Republic in 2006 and currently blogs for WIRED’s Danger Room. (more)

PENSACOLA NAVAL AIR STATION, Fla. (AP) — The Navy’s Blue Angels have been thrilling audiences for more than six decades with their acrobatic flying in fighter planes, but a new era of federal budget worries and proposed deficit cutting has some inside and outside the military raising questions about the millions it costs to produce their shows. (more)

China is dumping counterfeit electronic parts into the Pentagon’s supply chain, two senior lawmakers alleged on Monday, putting U.S. troops at risk and undercutting the American economy. (more)

The Pentagon has worried for months that a project backed by a prominent Democratic donor might interfere with military GPS. Now Congress wants to know if the White House pressured a general to change his testimony. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Memories of horror and heroism echoed Sunday across the west side of the Pentagon where, a decade ago, a hijacked airplane carrying 59 doomed passengers and crew and 36,200 pounds of jet fuel smashed into the fortress-like military headquarters, killing all aboard and 125 inside. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he kept the Pentagon open after a terrorist attack 10 years ago today to send a message. (more)

Since Regina Dugan became the director of Darpa, the Pentagon’s top research division has signed millions of dollars’ worth of contracts with her family firm, which in turn owes her at least a quarter-million dollars. It’s an arrangement that has raised eyebrows in the research community, and has now drawn the attention of the Defense Department’s internal auditors and investigators. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army improperly tested new bullet-blocking plates for body armor and cannot be certain that 5 million pieces of the critical battlefield equipment meet the standards to protect U.S. troops, the Defense Department’s inspector general found. (more)

Congress could create an off-budget “Warrior Fix” to defuse deep Pentagon spending cuts if there’s a November deadlock in the 12-member Joint Committee of Congress created by the debt ceiling deal signed into law today. (more)

ARLINGTON, Va. — A man was in custody Friday after a major security alert outside the Pentagon. (more)

ARLINGTON, Virginia (AP) — A Marine Corps reservist carrying a backpack containing what initially appeared to be bomb-making material was detained near the Pentagon early Friday, but authorities later said the suspicious items were not explosive. (more)

(Reuters) – In what officials admit is a major breach of security, a document describing design features intended to make a new Defense Department building bomb-resistant has been posted on a public government website. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — International forces intend to extend a no-fly zone to the Libyan capital of Tripoli, hundreds of miles distant from the area of recent fighting between forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and the rebels seeking to topple him, the U.S. commander in the region said Monday. (more)

If there was an indication that the days of so-called “cowboy diplomacy” are over, the Obama administration’s handling of the crisis in Libya may be just that. (more)

For the Pentagon, Senate appropriators’ 2011 defense spending measure is a mixed bag. (more)