The House Armed Services Committee’s version of the defense authorization bill, which takes $18 billion from the overseas contingency operations fund and uses it for base budget expenses, is “deeply troubling and flawed for several reasons,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee on Wednesday. The approach proposed by HASC Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) “is gambling with war fighting money at a time of war,” Carter said, because it does not fund OCO for the entire fiscal year. “It buys force structure without the money to sustain it and keep it ready, effectively creating [a] hollow force structure,” and it doesn’t address the looming threat of sequestration, Carter added. “It is a step in the direction of unraveling the bipartisan budget act … and it is another road to nowhere with uncertain chances of ever becoming law,” he said.
The U.S. and Sweden signed a bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement on Dec. 5 that will strengthen military ties between them and likely lead to U.S. troops and prepositioned gear on Swedish soil. Swedish Defense minister Pal Jonson said the war in Ukraine prompted Sweden's joining NATO and he laid out…