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But F/A-18 workers were spared. “The aircraft has been a good insurance policy for the Navy,” said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “The F/A-18 will be in demand for as long as there are problems with the F-35 program. And if you look how that program has gone over the last several years, there’s no telling how long that will be.”

Egypt has long been a valued customer of the U.S. defense industry. But at least in the near term, the dynamic isn’t likely to change any more than for other business in the nation, which has largely ground to a halt because of the ongoing unrest, said Eric Edelman, a distinguished fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “I would expect that everything would, for the moment, stay on course. There’s no reason [for it] not to,” said Edelman, a former Pentagon undersecretary for policy. He added that recent discussions between Egyptian military leaders and Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen were probably to “reassure” the Egyptian military.

Ambassador Eric S. Edelman, Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has been named a Knight of the French National Order of the Legion of Honour for special contributions to the advancement of the defense relationship between France and the United States during his career in the U.S. Foreign Service and as the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. The order is the highest decoration in France and the first order of merit established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802.

The drop from the Pentagon’s fiscal 2011 war-spending request of $159 billion reflects President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce troop levels in the war zones and stricter White House rules on what costs can be included in the war budget, said the officials, who asked that their names not be used because the budget has not been formally released. “That’s the largest year-to-year decrease in total war funding since” the Afghan war began, Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst for the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, said in an e-mail. “The bigger question here is what does this indicate in terms of strategy?” Harrison said. “With a year-to-year reduction in war funding of this magnitude, it appears to signal an intent to continue the withdrawal from Iraq and to begin reducing troops levels in Afghanistan during fiscal 2012,” he said.

The Air Force’s current bomber force lacks the capabilities to penetrate contested airspace and strike targets in future air campaigns, according to Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based bipartisan think tank. “Pentagon planners viewed long-range strike as a first day capability that would be needed to help rapidly halt invading enemy forces,” he told ISN Insights. “After that, short-range tactical aircraft flying from nearby bases in relatively permissive operating environments could carry out the majority of strike missions.”

Making the bomber nuclear capable will only raise the development price tag “a handful of percentage points,” according to retired Air Force colonel Mark Gunzinger, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “That seems like a pretty wise investment . . . considering that this aircraft could be around 30-40 years,” he said in a Jan. 18 telephone interview. “To build in that kind of mission flexibility makes great sense both from a strategic perspective as well as a fiscal perspective.”