The national and local defense industry will be able to withstand or avoid cuts expected to accompany the debt limit deal that passed the U.S. House of Representatives, analysts and lawmakers said late Monday.

But that resilience will depend, in part, on the work of a 12-member, bipartisan special joint committee, which will be empowered to make additional measured cuts late next year.

Under the compromise struck by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders to avert the nation's first-ever financial default, the near-term impact on the troops, aircraft, ships and weapons could be a cut of $350 billion from projected increases over 10 years. That's in line with the Department of Defense's comprehensive strategic review, analysts said.

However, in November, the House-Senate committee must propose up to $1.5 trillion more in deficit cuts over a decade and do so by year's end. If it deadlocks or Congress rejects its recommendations, the Obama administration would impose across-the-board spending cuts, and the Pentagon would face some $500 billion more in reductions over 10 years.

After the U.S. House of Representatives approved the debt ceiling bill by a 269-161 vote Monday night, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said he was confident two key submarine programs handled by Electric Boat in Groton for the Navy will remain intact - even if committee work is, in a worst-case scenario, derailed by year's end.

Courtney, who voted for the bill, said he was on the phone early Monday with EB officials and Adm. Kirkland H. Donald of the nuclear Navy to make sure that's the case.

The active programs here in southeastern Connecticut include the contract between EB and the Navy for two submarines a year in the Virginia class and the ramping up of the Ohio replacement program at EB offices in New London, Courtney said.

"They're going to be fine," Courtney said, both in the short-term and later on.

"When (lawmakers) are looking at near-term reductions, they're not just splitting it up by Army, Navy, Air Force," Courtney said. "They're prioritizing different programs in terms of their value to national security, and submarines are at the top of the list in terms of priority."

Loren B. Thompson, chief operating officer of the nonprofit Lexington Institute of Arlington, Va., warned, however, that if an automatic budget-cutting mechanism kicked in "where there's no differentiation between mission priorities and things we can do without, then the good will get cut with the bad."

"You have to worry that vital systems like submarines might take a hit," Thompson said.

And U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said on the floor of the Senate Monday that he was unsure how he would vote today, partly out of fear that automatic cuts - if they materialized - could be devastating to the defense industry. Lieberman is not running for re-election, but his term doesn't end until January 2013.

"If the American military is cut as much, in the worst case, as the proposal would cut it, it's - it's the beginning of the end of America as a great international power," Lieberman said. "It's the beginning of the end of this system of international security that has undergirded our prosperity and so much of the prosperity in the world."

Two industry analysts aren't as worried as Lieberman and Thompson, though.

Todd Harrison, a senior fellow of defense budget studies with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said Monday cuts to defense are not unexpected and are actually somewhat inevitable, given the nation's unprecedented deficit of more than $14 trillion.

Travis Sharp, a fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for a New American Security, added that the submarine service would likely make it through unscathed.

"My strong personal opinion is that submarines are not going to be at the top of the list for weapons cuts," said Sharp, "because they're considered the most secure part of our nuclear force. The Virginia class has performed very well, on time and on budget. As less of a problem child, it will attract less political attention."

Both Courtney and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal insisted that submarines, which they consider critical to national security, would simply require their continued vigilance and clear communication with members of the Armed Services Committee.

Blumenthal, who is leaning toward approving the bill today, is a member of that committee.

If automatic cuts were to be required, "discretion will be exercised even more prudently and energetically," Blumenthal said in a phone interview. "And I will evaluate the recommendations of the committee very closely with the potential consequences in mind."

What's more, any larger potential cuts to defense spending would not even be under consideration until 2013, said Courtney, so Congress would have a whole year to sort out how to handle such reductions.

Portions of an Associated Press story were used in this report.

p.daddona@theday.com