The top Pentagon official overseeing the defense of the United States believes light-attack aircraft could play a beneficial role in the homeland defense mission.

The Coast Guard will do its best to bring in assets that were formerly part of the Deepwater acquisition program on budget, according to commandant Adm. Robert Papp, but the four-star conceded that factors beyond the service's control may inflate costs.

The Commandant of the Coast Guard says that he may have short-term solutions to the shortage of ice breakers in the service's fleet, but has yet to discuss with the White House whether to extend the lives of the existing icebreakers or build new ones from scratch.

The Pentagon has assigned the Air Force as the lead service in charge of civil aviation intelligence, and has directed Air Force Secretary Michael Donley to stand up a new intel analysis center by 2013, in order to carry out that mission, according to Defense Department documents.

Air National Guard officials project that they could lose the equivalent of four squadrons of F-16s before 2017 as those aircraft reach the end of their service lives, according to a recently released Government Accountability Office report.

The Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Administration are working on a plan to integrate unmanned drones into the national airspace by relying on ground-based, sense-and-avoid technology among other solutions, according to DOD sources.

Cost baselines for four of the assets in the Coast Guard's ill-fated acquisition program -- including its largest planned buy, the Offshore Patrol Cutter -- have not been re-examined since the service took over the project from Integrated Coast Guard Systems three years ago, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The Coast Guard has announced its schedule moving forward with the Offshore Patrol Cutter, which is expected to make up the largest portion of its acquisition budget.

The Pentagon's acquisition executive has established a standing advisory panel to regularly assess the vulnerability of U.S. military weapons to attack from an electromagnetic pulse designed to cripple microcircuits and electronic systems.

The Air Force has asked Congress to shift $12.5 million in its budget so it can begin integrating transponders as part of the Federal Aviation Administration's Next Generation Air Transportation System into its aircraft.

Former Pentagon homeland defense chief Paul McHale is seeking support from an independent panel assessing the Quadrennial Defense Review to address his concerns about the potential downsizing of certain military forces designed to respond to weapons-of-mass-destruction attacks on U.S. soil.

The Pentagon's policy shop has quietly restored a homeland defense position charged with maintaining the continuity of government and operations programs in the event of a major catastrophe.

Navy advisers have begun reviewing the tough challenge of detecting small, stealthy vessels capable of smuggling drugs, people and weapons, but only after thorny issues concerning highly classified data significantly delayed the project, according to officials and documents.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has created a high-level panel, co-chaired by the Pentagon's policy shop and the Joint Staff, to oversee plans for managing the aftermath of any attack on U.S. soil involving weapons of mass destruction.

The Coast Guard came under fire last week from lawmakers who said it was being too slow to respond to small businesses with ideas that could help with the Gulf Coast oil spill response, even as the service sorts through hundreds of responses to a broad agency announcement it published earlier this month asking for new technologies to deal with the crisis.

The Pentagon is asking for congressional permission to add $88.8 million to allow the Missile Defense Agency to complete building ballistic missile defense interceptor silos in Alaska by the end of fiscal year 2011, according to a Defense Department budget document.

The Missile Defense Agency program manager for Ground-based Midcourse Defense last year tasked the Defense Contract Management Agency to assess what the impact would be on the industrial base if Ground-Based Interceptor construction was interrupted.

A Washington think tank is recommending drastic changes in the structure of the Coast Guard to counter decades of expanding missions and declining budgets, the consequences of which Coast Guard advocates and ex-officers say have again been demonstrated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the southern coast, and the service's limited resources for handling the crisis.

Amidst several national crises, including the Gulf oil spill and escalating security measures at the U.S.-Mexican border, the Army National Guard remains without a director after then-New York Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Joseph Taluto withdrew from the nomination process earlier this year.

Senate authorizers are seeking to block the Pentagon from downsizing certain military forces designed to respond to weapons-of-mass-destruction attacks on U.S. soil.