Gates is locked in a battle of wills with Congress to keep the Congress from putting the money for the engine in the defense authorization. He’s given high-profile speeches warning that he’ll recommend Obama veto the bill if Congress doesn’t pay him heed, and his spokesman, Geoff Morrell, reiterated on Monday that the prospective inclusion of the White House-backed ”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal doesn’t change Gates’ calculation at all.

Just now, the White House released Obama’s official position on the JSF engine and related Congress-created disruptions to the expensive program. And the veto threat is there:

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Extra Engine:  The Administration strongly objects to the addition of $485 million for the extra engine program and to associated legislative provisions that limit the obligation of overall JSF development funding to 75 percent of the amount authorized until the funds for FY 2011 have been obligated for the extra engine program, require the Secretary to ensure that each budget in the Future Years Defense Plan include, and expend, sufficient funding to continue the program, and designate the F135 and F136 engine development and procurement programs as major subprograms.  As Secretary Gates has noted, even after factoring in Congress’ additional funding, the extra engine would still require a further investment of $2.4 billion before it could be considered as a viable extra engine for the JSF program.  The Department does not believe that this cost will ever be recovered in a hypothesized competition or that the funds should be diverted from important defense needs.  The current engine is performing well with more than 13,000 ground test and 200 flight test hours.  If the final bill presented to the President includes funding or a legislative direction to continue an extra engine program, the President’s senior advisors would recommend a veto.

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program:  The Administration strongly objects to provisions of the bill which could limit the procurement of the 42 aircraft requested in the President’s FY 2011 Budget.  The onerous restrictions impose unacceptable schedule and budget risks on the JSF program.  While the Department believes the restructured development schedule is achievable, failure to achieve any one of the criteria would affect the procurement decision with significant impact on unit cost, production ramp, and TACAIR force structure.  The Department’s F-35 procurement request is in line with independent manufacturing studies, risk review recommendations, and the FY11 request reflects an optimized production.  If the final bill presented to the President contains provisions that would seriously disrupt the F-35 program, the President’s senior advisors would recommend a veto.

Sources in the Senate indicated to me last night that while the House Armed Services Committee put the $485 million for the second engine in its version of the bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee — which is still marking up its chamber’s complementary text — hasn’t included funding for the second engine. Some Democratic congressmen are looking to pass an amendment stripping out the second engine when a floor vote on the House version of the bill begins tomorrow. So it’s possible that Obama won’t have to use his veto for a bill that could include a long-desired priority of the Democratic base. (For the record, neither version of the bill contains the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” amendments right now, so that’s why Obama doesn’t mention it in his statement.)

For weeks now, Gates has done everything he can to get Congress not to put money into the bill for a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which he has repeatedly characterized as a “costly and unnecessary” engineering curiosity. He’s even made a legacy-building speech at the library honoring the patron saint of sensible defense spending, Dwight D. Eisenhower, holding out the engine as the crucible of a fight over Pentagon bloat. Again and again for the past several weeks, he’s told anyone who would listen that if the second engine is in the defense bill, he will recommend that President Obama veto the entire half-trillion-dollar bill.

None of that actually stopped the House Armed Services Committee from putting $485 million for the engine into the bill last week. My understanding is that the second engine is not currently in the Senate version of the bill that will go through committee mark-up tomorrow. But now that the White House has blessed a legislative maneuver to make the defense authorization bill the vehicle to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a signature issue for the Democratic base, is Gates standing firm on his recommendation to veto a bill containing the second F-35 engine?

“Absolutely, positively, unequivocally, yes,” says Geoff Morrell, Gates’s spokesman.

It’s possible Gates won’t have to recommend any veto and Obama won’t have to consider using one. Although it’s more likely than not that the Senate committee will put funding for the engine in the bill, sometimes miracles happen. Over in the House, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) announced today that they’re going to push their own amendment during the floor vote to block the money for the second F-35 engine.

Those measures are perhaps the best chances for the politics of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” not to run smack into the politics of Gates’s efforts to curb defense waste. The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal votes in the House and especially the Senate committee tomorrow are already extremely close, according to Hill sources and LGBT repeal advocates. Who knows how a potential veto recommendation from Gates on a different issue would impact members’ calculations.

Perhaps only two things here are clear. First, the congressional fight over repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” isn’t the congressional fight that Gates wanted the defense authorization to be about, even if he did issue reluctant support for the move earlier today. And second, it’s possible that Obama will be put in the difficult position of having to choose between a core priority for his much-snubbed supporters in the LGBT community and a core priority for his defense secretary.

As reported here, the House Armed Services Committee finished marking up the fiscal 2011 Defense authorization last week, and intruded on a lot of administration priorities. Something I didn’t focus on, but Gates certainly did: The committee again authorized funding for a second engine on the Joint Strike Fighter, something the past two administrations have opposed as unnecessary and costly. And they did it right after Gates gave a major speech warning Congress about the “political will” necessary for a restrained, sustainable defense budget. Like not even two weeks afterward. It’s a slap in the face. Politico is right to observe that Gates is more solicitous of Capitol Hill than his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld — a pretty low bar to clear —  but the budget fight is the central characteristic of his relationship with legislators at the moment.

So the morning after the markup, Gates comes into a Pentagon press conference and starts to regulate. “We will strongly resist efforts to impose programs and changes on the department that the military does not want, cannot afford, and that takes dollars from programs and endeavors the military services do need,” he said, reminding everyone in the room and on the Hill of his longstanding recommendation that President Obama veto the bill if it funds the second JSF engine and an Air Force transport plane Gates is trying to kill.

But if you’re a legislator, maybe you have a different calculus in mind. You need to get re-elected. Your constituents need jobs. You need to be seen as providing them with jobs. Defense-sector manufacturing and support jobs are good jobs, with high wages and federal benefits. So what if some defense secretary is moaning about wasteful defense spending? Your district isn’t going to care. And besides — isn’t Gates on his way out the door this year, anyway?

Then comes this exchange with a reporter in last week’s press conference. Here’s the transcript:

Q Will you stay here through next year to see that ’012 budget through? Because what you’re proposing can be rope-a-doped if there’s a perception you’re leaving at the end of the year. Rope-a-dope means they could, you know, resist –

SEC. GATES: I know what rope-a-dope means. (Laughter, laughs.) I’ve been in — I started in the government 44 years ago. I know exactly what that means. (Laughter.)

ADM. MULLEN: (Laughs.)

Q A serious question, though.

Do you now anticipate staying here through the end of ’011 to see the ’012 budget through?

SEC. GATES: We’ll see.

Maybe that legislator’s calculus changes now that Gates might stick around to see his priorities enforced. After all, she could be blamed for busting up the gargantuan defense budget, opposing the military and not delivering jobs. It’s an election year.

The Force is strong with this one.

Gates went on the attack against Pentagon “business as usual” yesterday:

“If we can’t get this right, what on earth can we get right?” Mr. Gates said in an acerbic, sometimes withering speech to the Economic Club of Chicago. “It is time to draw the line on doing defense business as usual.” From his point of view, that means overbuying weapons for wars the nation is unlikely to fight.

Parts of the plane are built in more 40 states, so it’s no surprise that even progressive senators from Massachusetts like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry don’t want to close the production line during a massive recession. What’s noteworthy is that Lockheed Martin, the principal F-22 manufacturer, doesn’t appear to be fighting the cut so hard. Lockheed also has a huge piece of the Joint Strike Fighter, Gates’ preferred replacement (to oversimplify things a bit) for the F-22, so it makes money either way. More Gates:

[T]he F-22, designed for cold-war aerial combat, has become the poster plane for each side. Mr. Gates argued to the economic club that it was a “niche, silver-bullet solution” for only a few potential situations, specifically “the defeat of a highly advanced enemy fighter fleet,” and that the cheaper F-35, which is to start production in 2012, is a more versatile fighter. The F-22’s supporters say it not only provides jobs but also ensures American dominance of the skies.

Anyway: the vote on the F-22 is expected to come soon.

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What about Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ reversal of the Pentagon’s doctrinal focus of winning what’s called ‘two major theater wars?’: “Absolutely critical,” Mullen says. “For me it’s all about balance. It’s not about moving the pendulum all the way from one side to the other.

Is there a fighter jet shortfall? “Probably depends on who’s plans you’re talking about … I’m comfortable in the investment.” Specifically endorses “closing out the F-22 and investing in the Joint Strike Fighter” which can, of course, be used by the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. “I’m not unaware” of the concerns about a fighter-jet shortfall, “I don’t think it’s extreme as some of the numbers I’ve seen. … I really believe the future is in the Joint Strike Fighter.”

What other major weapons platforms and systems are going to be cut? Lots of nervous laughter. Mullen just endorses Gates’ “extraordinary” defense budget for 2010 instead. “I can’t be predictive about the future … but we did a very thorough review … that will continue,” he says, including looking at tactical-lift capability and amphibious-warfare capability for the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review. But the “large majority” of cuts have probably been made for the foreseeable future.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? “I’m not a policy guy.” He says Obama’s “strategic intent is to change this policy and this will take a change in the law.” Not really saying much. “We have a force that’s under extraordinary stress … Should this occur, it needs to be done in a way that recognizes that stress.” What? The stress on the force militates for eliminating DADT so, you know, more people can serve. Mullen seems to be saying that gays are ooky and the military will be careful in implementing any repeal of the gay-servicemember ban. Someone should forward him this Abu Muqawama post so he sees that this isn’t an issue that today’s enlisted personnel and junior-mid-career officers care about.

More often it rewards those who arrive on the battlefield “the fustest with the mostest,” as Civil War Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest once put it. If Mr. Gates has his way, U.S. forces will find it increasingly hard to meet the Forrest standard.

Um.

Beyond that, Schmitt and Donnelly argue for a continuation of most of the programs Gates is cutting, and do so through some curious omissions and outright misstatements. The alternative to the F-22 Raptor jet is  apparently “the 660 F-15s flying today, but which are literally falling apart at the seams from age and use” — not the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that Gates and the generals are actually advocating as a replacement. Stopping the Army’s Future Combat Systems vehicle-modernization program means “future generations of soldiers will conduct mounted operations in the M1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles designed in the 1970s,” even though Gates said on Monday that he’s going to “reevaluate the requirements, technology and approach and then re-launch the Army’s vehicle modernization program.” And Gates is somehow “cap[ping] the size of the U.S. ground force,” even though Gates is seeking an extra $11 billion to expand the Army and Marine Corps. (I suppose, to be charitable, they could mean they want an even larger ground force, but that’s hardly clear from the op-ed, which implies that Gates is resisting the very expansion he’s funding.)

Basically, Donnelly and Schmitt’s real beef is that Gates’ budget gets rid of the dry rot in the Pentagon and presumes that the military can’t fund all things for all conceivable threats. As Gates put it:

It is important to remember that every Defense dollar spent to overinsure against a remote or diminishing risk or, in effect, to run up the score in capability where the United States is already dominant is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take.

American dominance is not so fragile that trading planes is going to eliminate it. But I guess taking advice from Klan leaders leads to all sorts of paranoia.

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