DLA Piper hosted an elegant two-course breakfast briefing at the Willard InterContinental last week. The audience was a collection of clients, Hill aides, lawyers, diplomats and reporters. The fare was unabashedly political.

And that was the point.

The event featured former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and ex-Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), who work at DLA, analyzing the presidential and Congressional elections with Purple Strategies founders Alex Castellanos and Steve McMahon. It was simply a more polished and public version of what other K Street firms are doing privately for the interests they represent.

Handicapping races and dispensing other political wisdom helps a firm’s clients figure out how to dole out campaign donations and position for legislative victories after Election Day. But it can sometimes put K Streeters in the position of making recommendations that conflict with what their own parties may want.

“I’m trying to give them an unbiased take. It affects my job,” said defense lobbyist Michael Herson, who runs American Defense International. “I can’t look at the Hill with rose-colored glasses.”

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Lobbying for the top defense contractors remained mostly flat in the first three months of 2012 compared to last year despite the threat of sequestration that could hit the Pentagon budget with an additional $500 billion in across-the-board spending cuts.

Spending on lobbying by 20 of the top defense and aerospace contractors in 2012 decreased a slight 2.4 percent compared to the companies’ first-quarter 2011 spending, an analysis of lobbying disclosure records found.

The flatline suggests that many in the defense industry are waiting until after the November election — or even until the next Congress — to make a lobbying push on sequestration, even as leaders in the industry, the Pentagon and Congress all say that the automatic cuts in sequestration should be addressed now.

Sequestration was set into motion in November when the congressional supercommittee tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction failed.

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Lobbyists are making sure to schedule their vacations before the November election in anticipation of a frenzied congressional session at the end of the year.

Many on K Street are living in fear of the lame-duck session that will begin when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill after ballots are cast. Big-ticket items — including the expiring Bush tax rates, budget sequestration and an increase in the debt ceiling — will have to be dealt with by Dec. 31.

Votes on those politically tough issues are unlikely during campaign season, so lobbyists are preparing for November and December to be their busiest work period of 2012.

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The year 2012 is shaping up to be a big year for the United States as far as increased national security threats are concerned. No, I’m not talking about Iraq or Afghanistan. I’m talking about the almost constant and ever increasing threats to U.S. national security from Iran, North Korea and China.

When you consider former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ words of wisdom that the U.S. has never “gotten it right” when it comes to predicting the next conflict, one thing’s for sure – the U.S. has to have the right national security strategy in place and it can’t afford to gamble.

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Defense contractors Lockheed Martin Corp., General Dynamics Corp and Raytheon Co. spent a combined $33.4 million on lobbying in Washington last year, a 10 percent increase from 2010, as Congress and the Obama administration weighed cuts in the Pentagon budget.

A review of lobbying disclosures filed with the Senate by a Jan. 20 deadline showed Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense company, led such spending last year with $15 million for lobbying, a 19 percent increase.

Pentagon contractors face an era of limited government spending after an impasse on how to cut the federal budget left open the prospect of $1 trillion in defense cuts over a decade. Even with future cuts looming, defense companies focused their lobbying last year on protecting contracts and programs from immediate cuts, according to Michael Herson, president of American Defense International, a defense lobbying and business- development firm in Washington.

“The contractors were focused on their programs in fiscal year 2012 — that was the more certain problem at hand,” Herson said in an interview yesterday.

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(Bloomberg) — After a year consumed by talk of deep budget cuts, defense companies and their lobbying firms will disclose this week how much they spent trying to protect vulnerable weapons programs.

The fourth-quarter disclosure reports, due on Jan. 20, will tote up how much contractors spent lobbying to avert defense cuts as a congressional “supercommittee” tried — and failed – - to cut future spending by $1.2 trillion over a decade.

That failure triggered automatic cuts to most defense programs, which, when combined with already planned cuts, would reduce future spending plans by almost $1 trillion over the next decade unless Congress overturns the plan.

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Brazilian-based aircraft manufacturer Embraer SA won an important victory in late December, when the U.S. Air Force picked one of its planes to equip Afghanistan’s military.

But Embraer’s foothold in the U.S. defense market is now in question: rival Hawker Beechcraft Corp. is fighting in court to keep the Air Force from moving forward with the project. Defense analysts and observers say the legal tussle over the warplanes underscores how difficult it can be for foreign-based firms to crack the U.S. military market.

At stake is a contract worth $355 million to Embraer and its Nevada-based partner, lead contractor Sierra Nevada Corp., to deliver a fleet of 20 Embraer Super Tucano single-engine, turboprop planes that will fly training missions for Afghanistan’s nascent air force and attack insurgents on the ground.

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Builders of naval vessels led by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. and makers of surveillance aircraft such as Northrop Grumman Corp. may benefit once President Barack Obama’s new military strategy is translated into dollars.

The strategy presented by Obama and military leaders at the Pentagon yesterday emphasizes “the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said at a news conference. Specifics won’t come until Obama presents his budget proposal next month, the first step in an effort to cut Pentagon spending by almost $490 billion through 2021.

The approach is likely to place a premium on naval power and drones, radar, tactical missiles and aircraft in order to thwart any effort by nations such as China or Iran to deny U.S. access to strategic regions including the South China Sea or the Persian Gulf, according to Jim McAleese of McAleese & Associates, a government-contracts consultant in Sterling, Virginia.

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