Reports are saying the U.S. defense secretary has "some degree of varying confidence" that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons.

A group of more than two dozen lawmakers who are military veterans sent a letter to President Obama Wednesday urging him to personally get involved in the problems at the Veterans Affairs Department.

The 26 lawmakers wrote that Obama should step in to address the VA’s disability claims backlog.

“The VA is clearly on the wrong track,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, headed by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.).

The administration has begun to roll out regulations representing the largest overhaul of federal export controls in U.S. history.

The Topline: If Pentagon officials hoped to convince lawmakers to accept a new round of base closures this year, it’s not likely they were encouraged by Wednesday’s Senate Armed Services hearing.

Like the hearing on base closures in the House last month, the heads of the Readiness subcommittee stated their opposition at the outset, and they did not sway throughout.

Pentagon witnesses made their best cases for the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC). They gave thoughtful answers and acknowledged skepticism as they were peppered with questions.

But this was a case where it didn’t appear to matter what was said — minds were not changing.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) plan to replace this year’s sequester with money saved from drawing down the wars “undermines national security,” the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a statement that Reid’s sequester replacement proposal was “budget cowardice on the backs of our warfighters.”

“What he is proposing is not about saving money from the troop drawdown in Afghanistan; it’s about further hollowing out our military,” Inhofe said.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers involved in the Boston bombings, was put on a terrorism watch list at the request of the CIA nearly a year before last week's deadly attacks. 

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said it’s too soon to have hearings.

“I don’t think the majority of the members can be convinced at this point,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said. 

A top House Republican is pushing for a massive increase in Navy shipbuilding that would bump spending to levels last seen in the mid-1980s.

Rep Randy Forbes (R-Va.), who is chairman of the sea power subpanel of the House Armed Services Committee, said his goal in the 2014 budget deliberations is to rebuild the Navy’s fleet, not just preserve it.

"We are entering the decade of sea power ... [so] what is the risk to the United States" if naval power continues to fall by the wayside, Forbes asked during a hearing.

Forbes’s move sets the stage for a battle over the Armed Services panel’s spending plan for fiscal year 2014.