Defense News reports that “Congress again is hung up on a budget, but lawmakers have left town to fight the midterm elections, leaving the Pentagon to wait and see what happens in one budget year before it can nail down the next. Meanwhile, there’s work to do, and the US Navy has several major decision points coming up — questions that need to be decided regardless what Congress ultimately comes up with.”  

“At the top of the decision list sit three programs: the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS); the Small Surface Combatant (SSC) and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). A decision on how to skew UCLASS — toward surveillance or strike — had been expected by the end of summer. But with Pentagon officials unable to reach a consensus, it has been punted off into a murky future.”