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In many respects, the election-year debate over U.S. defense budgets has yet to start, for two reasons: The defense topline over the next decade is unknown, within a very wide range, and Congress, lobbyists and the rest of the Washington defense machine have yet to grasp that unprecedented changes, compromises and even sacrifices may be needed to balance the books without ending up with a “hollow force/.../”

This week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is poised to deliver a humbling assessment of America's military capabilities in a budget plan to the White House, reports The New York Times. The gist: The U.S. military of the future will no longer be able to fight two sustained ground wars at the same time. The strategic review will outline how the military can cut $450 billion from its budget, amid speculation that Congress may cut an additional $500 billion in the near future. Acknowledging an incapacity to wage two wars is not ideal, notes Andrew Krepinevich, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, but it's better than the alternative. "You may risk losing the confidence of some allies, and you may risk emboldening your adversaries," he says. "But at the end of the day, a strategy of bluffing, or asserting that you have a capability that you don’t, is probably the worst posture of all.”

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is set this week to reveal his strategy that will guide the Pentagon in cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from its budget, and with it the Obama administration’s vision of the military that the United States needs to meet 21st-century threats, according to senior officials.

The war in Iraq is officially over. The costs will go on/.../Even though the last U.S. combat troops have left Iraq, American taxpayers will face decades of additional expenses, from veterans’ health care and disability benefits to interest on the debt accumulated to finance the war.

The impact of defense spending on job creation has become a contentious flashpoint in the debate over how to reduce the nation’s debt and still maintain a strong military. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and industry leaders have stood behind estimates that cuts to military spending will ratchet up unemployment/.../

Tuesday is, quite literally, the end of the line for Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor.After fourteen years in production, the final Raptor was set to roll off the company’s assembly line in Marietta, Ga., completing the truncated run of 187 jets — just a portion of the onetime program of 750 “Advanced Tactical Fighters/…/” With a service life of 30 years and a reputation as the deadliest airborne threat since Zeus, what could possibly happen to the Raptor fleet to force the Air Force to buy more?