VICENZA, Italy (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta joined the U.S. gun control debate on Thursday when he told troops at a military base in Italy that only soldiers needed armor-piercing bullets or assault weapons.

Asked by a soldier what President Barack Obama would do to protect U.S. school children from gun violence without infringing Americans’ right to own guns, Panetta said action was needed after the attack on a Connecticut school in December in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults.

VICENZA, Italy (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Leon Panetta joined the gun control debate on Thursday when he told troops at a military base in Italy that only soldiers needed armor-piercing bullets or assault weapons.

Asked by a soldier what President Barack Obama would do to protect school children from gun violence without infringing Americans’ right to own guns, Panetta said action was needed after the attack on a Connecticut school in December in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults.

ROME (Reuters) – The United States takes the French fight with al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Mali “very seriously” but must evaluate French military needs and the legal basis for U.S. action before providing aid, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Wednesday.

Panetta, speaking to reporters in Rome, said the United States already was providing information to Paris to help French forces in their effort to disrupt the advance of Islamist groups in Mali until the ECOWAS grouping of African nations can put troops on the ground.

MADRID (Reuters) – The United States is still assessing what military aid to give France in its fight against al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Mali but has no plans to send U.S. troops, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Tuesday.

“We are discussing in Washington some of the requests that have been made to determine exactly what assistance we can provide,” Panetta told a news conference in Madrid with Spanish Defense Minister Pedro Morenes.

LISBON, Jan 14 (Reuters) – The United States is sharing
information with French forces battling al Qaeda-affiliated
militants in Mali and is considering providing logistics,
surveillance and airlift capability as well, U.S. defense
officials said on Monday.

“We have made a commitment that al Qaeda is not going to
find anyplace to hide,” U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told
reporters on his plane as he began a week-long tour of European
capitals.

MILITARY AIRCRAFT (Reuters) – The United States is sharing information with French forces battling al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Mali and is also considering providing logistics, surveillance and airlift capability, U.S. defense officials said on Monday.

“We have a responsibility to go after al Qaeda wherever they are,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters heading with him on a week-long tour of European capitals.

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta and Afghan President Hamid Karzai discussed on Thursday
the “last chapter” in building a sovereign Afghanistan that can
provide its own security, including the nature of U.S.
involvement after combat troops withdraw in 2014.

Panetta said he and Karzai made “very good progress” on the
issues they discussed, but he declined to say whether they had
agreed on the size of any residual U.S. force that would remain
in Afghanistan to do counterterrorism operations and training
once combat troops withdraw.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday he had ordered the U.S. military services to freeze civilian hiring, delay maintenance work and reduce other spending as fears grow the Pentagon will likely face another huge budget cut in March.

Speaking at a Pentagon news conference, Panetta acknowledged for the first time that across-the-board cuts he had said would be “devastating” to national security were increasingly possible and “we simply cannot sit back now and not be prepared for the worst.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Almost all of the Pentagon’s nearly 800,000 civilian employees would likely have to be placed on unpaid leave for a month this year if automatic defense spending cuts go into effect in March as now planned, a top defense budget analyst said on Wednesday.

Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think-tank, predicted the across-the-board spending cuts, which were delayed until March 1 under a law passed on New Year’s Day, were more likely than before.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The New Year’s Day law that delayed across-the-board cuts in U.S. defense spending by two months also trimmed the size of the reduction for the 2013 fiscal year by about $17 billion, the Pentagon’s chief financial officer said on Monday.

Defense Department Comptroller Robert Hale said the cuts that would be required in March if Congress is unable to agree on a compromise alternative would be roughly $45 billion under the new law, versus about $62 billion earlier.