WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Senate panel voted on Thursday to authorize $631.4 billion in defense spending for the 2013 fiscal year, blocking plans to cut the Air Force and ordering offsetting reductions in Pentagon civilian personnel to stay within the president’s budget limits.

The Senate Armed Services Committee approved a defense policy bill that would authorize a base Pentagon budget of $525.8 billion along with $88.2 billion for the Afghanistan war and other overseas operations. The panel also authorized $17.3 billion for Energy Department nuclear weapons programs.

The measure – the National Defense Authorization Act – is expected to go to the full Senate in June at the earliest. After passage there, it would have to be reconciled with the version approved last week by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives before going to Obama for his signature.

“We’re within the president’s budget, $631.4 billion, unlike the House of Representatives, which is about $4 billion over the president’s budget request,” said Carl Levin, the chairman of the Democratic-controlled panel.

The authorization bill sets spending limits but does not actually appropriate funds. The Senate Appropriations Committee had not yet completed its spending plan for the 2013 defense budget, so the funding available to the Pentagon is not clear.

Levin said the panel had rejected most of the portion of the president’s budget that called for reductions in the Air Force and Air National Guard. But the committee did permit elimination of some transport aircraft, he said.

The Air Force had sought to cut seven tactical air squadrons and 130 transport aircraft, along with 11,600 personnel as part of the Pentagon’s efforts to reduce projected spending over the next decade by $487 billion as ordered by Congress last year.

WASHINGTON, May 23 (Reuters) – Washington’s failure to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention puts the U.S. military at increasing risk of confrontation with rising powers like China, U.S. officials said on Wednesday as the Obama administration began a new push to join the 30-year-old treaty.

Senior defense officials told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that without the treaty, the U.S. military is forced to base rights of navigation around the globe on customary international law, or long-standing practice, wh i ch is subject to differing interpretations.

“If we do not ratify over time, what would happen is that we put ourselves at risk of confrontation with others who are interpreting customary international law to their own benefit,” said General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“If we are not a party to this treaty and can’t deal with it at the (negotiating) table, then we have to deal with it at sea with our naval power,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said. “And once that happens, you clearly increase the risk of confrontation.”

The 1982 treaty, which has been ratified by more than 160 countries, establishes 12-nautical-mile (22-km) territorial seas around coastal countries but ensures rights of navigation and overflight by other states. Twice in the past decade, the treaty was voted out of committee but never made it to a vote by the full U.S. Senate.

Opponents of the treaty are concerned it would cede U.S. sovereignty to an international organization that would have the power to collect royalties on oil and mineral exploitation and use the funds to help poorer countries.

Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the panel the convention would bring huge economic and military benefits to the country. But the issue quickly ran into the same objections that have stymied its passage since the mid-1990s.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Navy surveillance vessel stumbled into a nerve-racking confrontation with five Chinese ships in 2009 while conducting ocean mapping operations in the South China Sea.

Chinese ships bent on enforcing Beijing’s expansive view of its rights under the Law of the Sea Treaty tried to snare the USNS Impeccable’s towed sonars with a grappling hook, U.S. officials said.

Some of the vessels darted into the Impeccable’s path, forcing the unarmed civilian crew to take emergency evasive action to avoid collision, they said.

When the United States protested the dangerous actions and insisted that China was asserting maritime rights far in excess of those conferred by the 1982 treaty, Beijing’s response was right to the point.

“They had a perfect reply,” said Myron Nordquist, associate director of the Center for Oceans Law and Policy at the University of Virginia. “Who is the U.S. to come and tell us to abide by a treaty to which you are not a party?”

Thirty years after the global community negotiated the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Obama administration, backed by senior military officials and business leaders, is making a new push to win U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty.

Supporters say the agreement would vastly expand U.S. control of resource-rich maritime regions off the coastal United States and give the military firmer footing to assert rights of navigation and overflight around the world.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Republican-led House of Representatives voted on Friday to authorize $642.5 billion in defense spending next year, defying a White House veto threat by adding several billion dollars to President Barack Obama’s Pentagon budget request.

The House approved the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which added nearly $4 billion to the president’s spending plan, in a 299-120 vote just days after moving to shield the defense budget from further cuts by slashing social programs.

The vote on Friday sets up a confrontation over defense spending with the White House, which has warned of a presidential veto, and the Democratic-controlled Senate, which has yet to approve its version of the measure.

The authorization bill lets Congress set defense policy and authorize spending limits but it does not actually appropriate funds. The panel that actually controls the purse strings – the House Appropriations Committee – this week approved similar but slightly lower spending levels for defense.

The measure approved on Friday authorized a base defense budget of $554 billion, including Pentagon spending as well as nuclear defense activities of the Energy Department. The House authorized $88.5 billion for the Afghanistan war and other overseas operations.

The bill would delay or reverse many of the cuts sought by the Pentagon as part of efforts to reduce defense spending by $487 billion over the next decade. Congress ordered the spending cuts last year in an effort to rein in the government’s trillion dollar deficits.

In addition to setting spending levels, the authorization bill reaffirmed the president’s power to indefinitely detain suspected terrorists arrested in the United States and transfer them to military custody.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – War-weary lawmakers nudged President Barack Obama to speed the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan on Thursday but Republicans blocked a big debate on the issue ahead of a NATO summit to chart the way forward in the decade-long conflict.

The clash over Afghanistan came as lawmakers in the House of Representatives debated an annual policy bill that would authorize $642.5 billion in defense spending for the 2013 fiscal year beginning in October, including $88.5 billion for the Afghan war and other overseas operations.

The National Defense Authorization Act has drawn a veto threat from the White House because it would overturn many cuts sought by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in order to achieve congressional budget targets set last year with the goal of cutting $478 billion in projected military spending in the next decade.

While the authorization act sets spending limits, it does not actually appropriate funds for defense. The panel that controls the purse strings passed a bill on Thursday that added about $3 billion to the Pentagon’s spending request and also provided funds for programs the Defense Department tried to cut.

The House Appropriations Committee voted to eliminate one high-profile expenditure, however. It cut Pentagon sponsorship of motor sports, fishing and wrestling events.

The department spent about $96 million last year to sponsor sporting events, including $20 million on a single NASCAR race, as part of its marketing effort to recruit volunteers, one official said.

“Twenty million for one NASCAR race? Have we lost our minds?” said Representative Jack Kingston, a leader in the effort to cut the funds.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – War-weary lawmakers nudged President Barack Obama to speed the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan on Thursday but Republicans blocked a big debate on the issue ahead of a NATO summit to chart the way forward in the decade-long conflict.

The clash over Afghanistan came as lawmakers in the House of Representatives debated an annual policy bill that would authorize $642.5 billion in defense spending for the 2013 fiscal year beginning in October, including $88.5 billion for the Afghan war and other overseas operations.

The National Defense Authorization Act has drawn a veto threat from the White House because it would overturn many cuts sought by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in order to achieve congressional budget targets set last year with the goal of cutting $478 billion in projected military spending in the next decade.

While the authorization act sets spending limits, it does not actually appropriate funds for defense. The panel that controls the purse strings passed a bill on Thursday that added about $3 billion to the Pentagon’s spending request and also provided funds for programs the Defense Department tried to cut.

The House Appropriations Committee voted to eliminate one high-profile expenditure, however. It cut Pentagon sponsorship of motor sports, fishing and wrestling events.

The department spent about $96 million last year to sponsor sporting events, including $20 million on a single NASCAR race, as part of its marketing effort to recruit volunteers, one official said.

“Twenty million for one NASCAR race? Have we lost our minds?” said Representative Jack Kingston, a leader in the effort to cut the funds.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lawmakers moved toward a confrontation over the government’s power to detain suspected terrorists on Wednesday as the Republican-led House of Representatives began debate on a defense policy bill the White House has threatened to veto.

Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, sought to amend the law to guarantee people arrested in the United States on terrorism charges could not be detained indefinitely without trial or transferred to military custody.

Other lawmakers, concerned that Smith’s proposals went too far, sought to defuse the issue by proposing amendments that would clarify the rights of citizens to challenge their detention in court.

The amendments are being proposed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill that sets defense policy and authorizes spending levels for the Pentagon.

This year’s bill proposes a $554 billion base budget for the Defense Department, nearly $4 billion over what President Barack Obama has proposed.

It seeks to overturn many of the cuts proposed by the Pentagon as part of efforts to reduce defense spending by $487 billion over the next decade, prompting a White House veto threat on Tuesday.

Smith, joined by a bipartisan group that included Republican presidential contender Ron Paul, warned that laws passed since the September 11, 2001, attacks had eroded constitutional guarantees against unreasonable detention.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama threatened on Tuesday to veto a defense policy bill in the House of Representatives that would authorize higher Pentagon spending and tie his hands on national security issues from nuclear arms reductions to handling war detainees.

In a move that set the White House on a collision course with lawmakers in the Republican-led House, the administration warned that the National Defense Authorization Act being debated by the House this week hampers the Pentagon’s new defense strategy and infringes on the president’s powers as commander.

“If the cumulative effects of the bill impede the ability of the administration to execute the new defense strategy and to properly direct scarce resources, the president’s senior advisers would recommend … that he veto the bill,” the White House said in a statement of administration policy.

It was the second time in less than a week that the administration has expressed displeasure over provisions of the measure, which would add nearly $4 billion to Obama’s defense-spending request and undo many of the cuts the Pentagon proposed in an effort to meet cost-reduction targets set by Congress.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned at a news conference last Thursday that the House was courting gridlock by trying to increase defense spending to about $554 billion while slashing social programs for the poor and needy in an effort to prevent a new round of defense cuts.

Representative Buck McKeon, head of the House Armed Services Committee, responded sharply in a letter, saying Panetta himself had said that efforts to trim $487 billion from projected Pentagon spending over the next decade had taken the Defense Department “right to the razor’s edge.”

The Defense Department was directed to make the spending cuts as part of the administration’s efforts bring its trillion-dollar budget deficit under control. The Pentagon will be hit by another $500 billion in cuts over the next decade beginning in January unless Congress acts to avert them.

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – The Pentagon announced on Tuesday new safety precautions for its F-22 fighter jets - including limiting how far they can fly away from airstrips - after pilots experienced symptoms of oxygen deprivation aboard the advanced stealth aircraft.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes the new precautions on the F-22s, built by Lockheed Martin Corp, are sufficient to guarantee safety. But the Pentagon did not rule out again grounding the aircraft, if necessary.

Panetta “will be receiving regular updates, and all options remain on the table going forward,” said Pentagon spokesman George Little.

The F-22s were grounded for over five months last year because of the same issue. But concern over the jet’s safety has again taken the spotlight after CBS’s “60 Minutes” program aired a report this month in which two pilots said they had stopped flying the fighter due to safety concerns.

In the short term, the Pentagon said the decision to limit the distance that jets can fly from landing strips means that other aircraft instead of the F-22 will need to perform long-duration airspace-control flights in Alaska.

The Air Force will also expedite installation in the jets of an automatic backup oxygen system, with the first systems being fitted before the end of the year.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the first reported hypoxia-related event occurred in April 2008, with a total of 12 reported between then and January 2011.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A top Republican lawmaker on defense issues on Friday rejected Pentagon chief Leon Panetta’s criticism of budget maneuvering in Congress, underscoring the difficulty of finding a compromise on security spending at a time of sharp political polarization.

Representative Buck McKeon, chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, told Panetta in a letter that he was “clearly operating under some misconceptions” about a defense policy bill passed this week that authorized $554 billion in defense spending for the 2013 fiscal year.

McKeon said the House panel added nearly $4 billion in additional funding to the Pentagon’s budget request because Panetta told them spending cuts ordered by Congress had taken the Defense Department “right to the razor’s edge.”

McKeon’s letter came a day after Panetta warned at a news conference that efforts to protect the defense budget at the expense of other programs was likely to create gridlock in Congress that could block efforts to avert a big automatic cut in the defense budget in January.

The Pentagon currently is under orders to trim $487 billion from projected defense spending over the next decade as President Barack Obama’s administration attempts to curb its trillion-dollar budget deficits.

Under a measure approved by Congress last year, the Pentagon is facing an additional $500 billion in automatic cuts over a decade beginning in January under a process known as sequestration. The cuts are being imposed because Congress failed to agree on other measures to reduce federal spending.

Lawmakers are headed toward a confrontation over the across-the-board cuts. Republicans hope to avert them by reducing spending on social programs. Democrats say that while some cuts are necessary, new tax revenues also are needed, a move rejected by Republicans.