President Obama should consider destroying the Syrian Air Force on the ground to prevent future aerial attacks against civilians, a top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Thursday.

Sen. Robert Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), the chairman of the committee's Middle East subpanel, said the unification of Syrian opposition groups and their recent gains on the ground should encourage the United States to increase its involvement in Syria. 

“The administration should also examine and assess other ways in which the Syrian Air Force can be deterred or degraded, including the use of surface-to-surface Tomahawk missiles, to degrade the Syrian Air Force's ability to take off,” Casey said at a day-long conference of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Planes on the ground is what we're talking about here.”

The remarks come as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to officially recognize the Syrian National Coalition as the legitimate successor to Assad's government during a meeting of a U.S.-backed Friends of Syria in Morocco next week.

A recent deal reached between top U.S. and Iraqi defense officials this week ensures the Pentagon will continue to play a large role in Baghdad's ongoing effort to maintain security within the country. 

The Pentagon’s top lawyer, Jeh Johnson, is resigning at the end of the year to return to private practice.

Johnson sent a resignation letter to President Obama on Thursday announcing he would leave his position as Pentagon general counsel.

Johnson played a key role from inside the Pentagon on the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” leading a department review on the policy under then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Johnson was part of Obama’s transition team in 2008 and has served in his role at the Pentagon since 2009.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is ascending to the No. 2 Republican in the Senate next year, said Thursday he will likely leave the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“It’s more likely than not that my top two committees will be Finance and Judiciary, and I likely won’t be able to hold onto Armed Services,” Cornyn told reporters.

The reason Cornyn would have to leave Armed Services is that all three of those committees are “A” committees in the Senate, and senators are only allowed to be on two of them.

American commanders in the Pacific are keeping a close eye on North Korea amid reports that Pyongyang is preparing for a new round missile tests, to "demonstrate to the world" the country's status as a regional nuclear power. 

Afghanistan’s intelligence chief was badly wounded in a suspected suicide bombing assassination attempt in Kabul, according to reports.

Asadullah Khalid, head of National Directorate of Security, was attacked while he was at one of his guest houses in Kabul, the BBC reported.

The Taliban took credit for the attack on Khalid, a Taliban spokesman said, according to The Washington Post.

Crippling international sanctions against Iran spearheaded by the United States are increasingly creating diplomatic headaches for the Obama administration, a panel of national-security experts and former lawmakers and government officials warned in a new report Thursday.

The new report from the Iran Project, “Weighing Benefits and Costs of International Sanctions Against Iran,” comes as lawmakers are considering new sanctions on Iran's energy sector as part of House-Senate negotiations over defense legislation. It comes on the heels of a September report from the same group that weighed the pros and cons of military intervention to stop Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, which concluded that a U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities could have unintended consequences that would lead to all-out war.

“Differences with Russia, China and other countries — including India, Turkey and South Korea — have widened as more comprehensive sanctions take effect that aim to pressure Iran’s leaders by harming the civilian economy,” the report concludes. “Sanctions-related tensions among the United States and Russia and China have complicated U.S. efforts to achieve Security Council unity on international action in Libya and Syria.”

Any base there “will be an Afghan base with a U.S. component,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said.

The Topline: The defense industry does not know yet how much more the Pentagon budget will be cut when all is said and done on "the fiscal cliff."

But that didn’t stop the Aerospace Industries Association from projecting growth in 2013, despite the Pentagon budget cuts already on the books and the threat of the across-the-board cuts.

AIA CEO Marion Blakey said at the group’s annual year-end gathering Wednesday that she remained “optimistic” sequestration would still be averted, even as the AIA’s big red countdown clock flashed “27 days” behind her.

“Yes, I’m sure some of you are wondering, 'Did she factor in sequestration?' ” Blakey said. “No, guys, I didn’t. I’m an optimist, and we have to prevail.”

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