Can the Defense Department succeed in future budget battles without some of its most articulate friends? We're about to find out.

Since what former Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the "spigot" of unlimited defense spending was abruptly shut off, secretaries have come and gone. But Gates, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel and Ash Carter could count on several influential inside-the-beltway voices in their fight to return the spigot to full stream.

That could be changing.

In a column last spring, I observed that "Pentagon brass, industry executives and hawk­ish lawmakers have predicted a debilitating budget-induced crash every year since [2009]. Yet the sky hasn't come crashing down."

It's a stance I regularly talk through with respected defense budget analysts. Each has consistently agreed with parts of that argument.

But they often pointed to evidence, however vague, cited by the aforementioned defense secretaries and other leaders about the damaging effects of not getting every single penny DoD requests each year.

No longer.

"DoD has been able to muddle through even with the spending caps," said Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former Republican Senate aide. "I still believe more resources are needed. ... But the plain fact is they have been able to muddle through."

Then, during a recent chat, she dropped the hammer: "If the Pentagon can muddle through another year, then they've lost credibility on the effects of all of this."

That should give DoD leaders heartburn. If you've lost the defense budget analyst from a conservative think tank who describes herself as a hard-core, true- blue believer that the topline is too low to meet all the DoD's readiness and deferred modernization needs, you're likely running out of friends willing to put their credibility on the line by making your case.

Eaglen's not alone.

"We're not going to see the previous problems. There aren't going to be furloughs and training cancellations," Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments recently told Military Times' Leo Shane.

The House and Senate approved budget plans with nearly $40 billion extra for the Pentagon via its war account. Harrison is a numbers guy. So he realizes actual numbers are greater than vague rhetorical warnings.

"Yes, there are some restrictions," he said. "But if you have $35 billion more there, you can find ways to appropriate money for other things. It's a shell game."

Harrison also has been critical on the "Defense News with Vago Muradian" TV show of what he sees as DoD's inarticulate budget arguments.

What's more, pro-DoD insiders increasingly report a collective sense among armed services officials that the caps are having a dangerous effect largely because they are unable to fund everything on their wish lists.

Pentagon officials suddenly have a problem. And senior staffers on the Hill surely will notice.

Eaglen now sounds a lot like Gordon Adams, a longtime advocate of smaller defense budgets, or liberal Senate Budget Ranking Member Bernie Sanders.

"All hope is lost for support from people like me," Eaglen said, "if the Pentagon manages to muddle through again just fine at lower budgets."

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