Echoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, leaders of the Army, Navy and Marines outlined the devastation that an additional $500 billion in automatic cuts through sequestration would have on the military at budget hearings this week.

While congressional defense hawks and others attempt to overturn $500 billion in automatic defense cuts slated to go into effect starting next January, the threat alone of sequestration is casting a “huge shadow of doubt” over defense industries, their workers and the military, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Thursday.

For communities trying to handicap the chances that Congress will grant the Pentagon’s request for one or two base closure rounds, one argument working against a new BRAC round is that at a time when DOD desperately needs to find ways to slash the budget here and now, why would the administration propose an undertaking that would seem to cost money in the short term, with the prospect of savings likely to occur only further down the road.

San Angelo Rep. Mike Conaway said he doesn't support the 2013 round of base realignment and closure — BRAC — proposed in the Pentagon's new budget. And it's too soon for him to take a position on the 2015 BRAC round floated in the same defense budget, Conaway, a Republican from Midland, said Wednesday outside a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill.

San Antonio’s City Council unanimously approved a resolution of intent on Thursday for a plan that could result in 139 acres of city-owned land located just west of Kelly Field being conveyed to Lackland Air Force Base

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta Feb. 15 urged Congress to undo an automatic $500 billion cut to defense spending due to go into effect next year, and made his case for two new rounds of military base realignments and closures.