More results...
In this Help Net Security interview, Paul J. Mocarski, VP & CISO at Sammons Financial Group, discusses how insurance carriers are adapting their cybersecurity strategies. He explains how ongoing threat assessments, AI-driven automation, and third-…
The heads of several military professional organizations came together to beg Congress to open the government.
SecDef Hegseth’s message to defense-industry executives: Move faster and invest more, or we just might make you. President Trump’s Pentagon chief spoke for more than an hour to a packed auditorium at the National War College on Friday, a gathering Hegseth himself described as an opportunity to look those very executives “in the eye.”
Chief takeaways: Hegseth unveiled a slew of policy changes intended to replace his department’s Cold War-era acquisition processes with ones that value speed over rigid requirements. But perhaps most notably, he told defense companies to put more of their own money into developing military technology, or take their business elsewhere, Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reported from Fort McNair in southwest Washington, D.C.
SecDef: “We commit to doing our part, but industry also needs to be willing to invest their own dollars to meet the long-term demand signals provided to them. Industry must use capital expenditures to upgrade facilities, upskill their workforce, and expand capacity. If they don’t, we are prepared to fully employ and leverage the many authorities provided to the president which ensure that the department can secure from industry anything and everything that is required to fight and win our nation’s wars,” Hegseth said, and vowed to his audience, “We’re going to make defense contracting competitive again.”
The speech drew largely from a draft memo about the changes that circulated last week. More about that, here.
Expert reax: “Their first response is going to be hiring a whole ton of K Street people to lobby Congress to point out the problems with this process, which is, we’re going to take a lot more risk and a lot more things will fail,” said Steve Blank, a professor and co-founder of Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation.
Professor Blank called the speech a death knell for the Pentagon’s existing acquisition system. “The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed,” he said, and added that he expects major defense contractors to push back against the new efforts.
However, the speech seemed well received among defense tech founders, executives, and investors, Williams reports. “It is a vindication of our thesis that America needs an acquisition system focused on meritocracy and transparency,” one attendee said. Read more, here.
Related reading: Sen. Elizabeth Warren “challenges [the] defense industry on right-to-repair opposition as funding talks continue,” Reuters reported Monday.
And more broadly across the Defense Department, “Hegseth Is Purging Military Leaders With Little Explanation,” three New York Times correspondents reported Friday. That includes about two dozen generals and admirals in just nine months. “The utter unpredictability of Mr. Hegseth’s moves, as described in interviews with 20 current and former military officials, has created an atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust that has forced senior officers to take sides and, at times, pitted them against one another,” the reporters write.
Coverage continues below…
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. The Associated Press reports that on this day in 1898, an estimated “2,000 white supremacists killed dozens of African Americans, burned Black-owned businesses and forced the mayor, police chief and aldermen to resign at gunpoint, before installing their own mayor and city council in what became known as the ‘Wilmington Coup.’”
Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll wants the service to buy one million small drones over a two- to three-year period, Reuters reported Friday, calling the development a “major ramp-up” for the Army’s acquisition plans.
Notable: The Army “acquires only about 50,000 drones annually today,” which helps indicate the scale of Driscoll’s challenge. For some added perspective, “Ukraine and Russia each produce roughly 4 million drones a year,” Reuters writes.
Driscoll: “We expect to purchase at least a million drones within the next two to three years. And we expect that at the end of one or two years from today, we will know that in a moment of conflict, we will be able to activate a supply chain that is robust enough and deep enough” to expand based on the threat.
ICYMI: The Army launched a drone-centric pilot program called “SkyFoundry,” which is intended to accelerate work with private industry. “This concept will stimulate the U.S. drone industry, support American manufacturing, increase access to rare earth materials, produce low-cost components and ultimately deliver drones for immediate needs to the Army,” a service spokesman told Military Times, reporting Friday as well.
“Some drones will be expendable as if they’re munitions, others will be durable, but not meant to last forever,” the spokesman said. Read more, here.
Analysis: As drones proliferate across the Army, Defense One’s Tom Novelly asks, will a new approach to flight school help the service’s pilots transition?
Background: The Army has said it will will cut 6,500 of its 30,000 active-duty aviation-community soldiers over the next two years, mostly by removing one aerial cavalry squadron from each active-duty combat aviation brigade, as part of the effort to build “a leaner, more lethal force.”
The rub: Current Army aviators are trying their best to stay optimistic, but fear that decades-worth of experience will be lost in the culling. But the Army doesn’t just want fewer pilots, it wants better-qualified ones; and it’s looking to the defense industry for a solution.
That includes turning its longtime entry-level helicopter education into a new contractor-owned and -operated model called Flight School Next. Officials and contractors said the new model will offer a simplified approach to training, develop better aviator skills, and save money by taking helicopters, instructors, and maintenance out of the service’s hands. Continue reading, here.
Related reading: “UK sends defence equipment to help Belgium deal with disruptive drones,” Reuters reported Sunday from London.
In the Pacific region, the U.S. Army is amid a rapid modernization effort called Transformation in Contact, and several of the units created or chosen to test new technology and concepts are part of U.S. Army Pacific, Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad reported Friday from the AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference in Honolulu.
According to USARPAC’s commander, the greatest risk the Army has in the Indo-Pacific region is “being late” when a crisis or conflict emerges, out of position, not fast enough, “or even worse, doing nothing at all,” Gen. Ronald Clark told the conference audience. “So as leaders, we have to become comfortable with failing fast, iterating quickly, and developing better solutions,” he said. Read the rest, here.
And in new podcasts, a former senior director at the National Security Council joined us to discuss what the new film “A House of Dynamite” got right and wrong on U.S. missile defense and nuclear command and control. Jon Wolfsthal, director of Global Risk at the Federation of American Scientists, shared some of his experiences as special assistant to President Obama, where he was responsible for things like nuclear arms control and policy at the NSC. Find that conversation on our website, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And ICYMI ahead of Veterans Day, we recently spoke with historian David Nasaw who just published a new history of American World War II veterans and their often tortured journeys back to normalcy in his book, “The Wounded Generation.” You can find that conversation on our website as well, here.
Developing: The Senate on Sunday took a first step toward ending the longest-ever government shutdown, clearing a procedural hurdle to approve a package that would keep agencies funded through at least January and walk back thousands of federal employee layoffs.
The agreement would approve full-year appropriations for the Veterans Affairs Department, Agriculture Department and the legislative branch. All other agencies would operate at their fiscal 2025 levels under a continuing resolution that would expire after Jan. 30, Eric Katz of Government Executive reports.
Next: The Senate must still take additional votes to send the measure to the House, though the bill could wind up on President Trump’s desk later this week. Read more, here.
Happening today: A federal judge is set to hear a legal challenge to West Virginia National Guard troops’ deployment to Washington, D.C., in August. That deployment came in response to the president’s orders when he offered false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify soldiers on the streets amid his takeover of the D.C. police force.
Quick summary of the case: “A civic organization called the West Virginia Citizen Action Group says in a lawsuit that Gov. Patrick Morrisey exceeded his authority by deploying up to 300 Guard members to Washington, D.C.,” AP reports. “Under state law, the group argues, the governor may deploy the National Guard out of state only for certain purposes, such as responding to a natural disaster or another state’s emergency request.” For his part, “Morrisey’s office has argued the deployment was authorized under federal law.”
Related: “In an encrypted group chat, National Guard members question Trump deployments,” NPR reported Monday.
And lastly: A federal judge is stepping down after warning this Trump administration poses an “existential threat to democracy” because, in part, he warns the president is “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment,” District Court Judge Mark Wolf wrote in an op-ed published Sunday at The Atlantic.
Why speak out? “I hope to be a spokesperson for embattled judges who, consistent with the code of conduct, feel they cannot speak candidly to the American people,” he told the New York Times this weekend.
“The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out,” Wolf wrote in his essay, stressing for his readers, “Silence, for me, is now intolerable.” He added in a warning to Times readers, “Americans proudly say that we live in the longest-lived democracy in the world. But that should teach us that all the others failed.” Read more in his essay (gift link), here.
Additional reading:
Reminder: Tomorrow is Veterans Day, and we tip our hat to those who served. So enjoy the federal holiday for those marking the occasion. And we’ll see you again on Wednesday!
]]>
In this Help Net Security interview, Andrea Succi, Group CISO at Ferrari Group, discusses how cybersecurity is integrated into every aspect of the logistics industry. He explains why protecting data can be as critical as securing physical assets and ho…
“The cost of failure is too damn high,” Gen. Ronald Clark says.
A veteran of the National Security Council shares what the 2025 movie got right and wrong when it comes to U.S. missile defense and nuclear command and control.
The United States military says it destroyed another alleged drug-trafficking boat in the waters off Latin America on Thursday. “The vessel was trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean and was struck in international waters. No U.S. forces were harmed in the strike, and three male narco-terrorists—who were aboard the vessel—were killed,” Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth announced on social media, accompanied by a 20-second video of the violence, which legal experts and critics describe as “extrajudicial killings.”
This means the U.S. military has killed more than 60 people in at least 17 strikes, according to information shared by Hegseth and President Trump dating to when these strikes began in early September. (Want more information on each of the prior 16 strikes? Just Security has that covered, here.)
Due process? As we’ve noted before, Hegseth did not provide evidence to support the claim that those in the boat were trafficking drugs, where they were headed, nor—on a more trivial level—how the secretary’s subordinates determined the gender of those on the vessel before the attack.
However, the Associated Press looked into “the identities of four of the men—and pieced together details about at least five others” killed by U.S. troops, reporting Friday from Venezuela. “One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on $100 a month. Another was a career criminal. A third was a former military cadet. And a fourth was a down-on-his-luck bus driver.”
“Most of the nine men were crewing such craft for the first or second time, making at least $500 per trip…One was a well-known local crime boss who contracted out his smuggling services to traffickers,” AP’s Regina Garcia Cana writes. “We talked with several people in multiple communities who knew the men at different stages of their lives. We used social media posts and publicly available information to corroborate some of the information,” she said in a brief, separate report about her investigative process.
New: The U.S. military began operating an AC-130J Ghostrider attack plane out of El Salvador in mid-October, the New York Times reported Thursday. “It is operated by the Air Force Special Operations Command, a unit that carries out sensitive missions for the military.”
But that’s not all: “The New York Times also identified a Navy [P-8A Poseidon] reconnaissance plane and a rarely seen, unmarked Air Force [C-40 Clipper] jet at the airport,” located in the Cooperative Security Location Comalapa, a small American military outpost at El Salvador’s main airport. More, here.
Update: When it comes to Venezuela, the White House told Congress it “doesn’t have a legal justification that would support attacks against any land targets right now,” and that “the US is not currently planning to launch strikes inside Venezuela” at the moment, CNN reported Thursday.
Notable: The White House’s legal framework “includes a list of 24 different cartels and criminal organizations based around Latin America it says the administration is authorized to target, according to one of the sources familiar with the document. But the Trump administration is seeking a separate legal opinion from the Justice Department that would provide a justification for launching strikes against land targets without needing to ask Congress to authorize military force,” according to five CNN reporters.
By the way, Senate Republicans on Thursday voted down legislation that would have limited White House attacks inside Venezuela. “The joint resolution, which was introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) last month, was quelled in a 49-51 Senate vote,” The Hill reports.
Some Republicans wanted to have it both ways: Indiana’s Todd Young voted against the measure, then said afterward that his vote was “not an endorsement of the Administration’s current course in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.” North Carolina’s Thom Tillis acted similarly Thursday, voting against the measure, then later telling reporters “he still has doubts about the campaign,” according to AP. Tillis also “pointed out that it was expensive to change the deployment location for an aircraft carrier and questioned whether those funds could be better used at the U.S.-Mexico border to stop fentanyl trafficking.”
Democrats dissent: “You cannot bomb your way out of a drug crisis,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., told reporters, while Virginia’s Tim Kaine, who co-authored the legislation voted down Thursday, said, “We should not be going to war without a vote of Congress.”
Bigger picture: Why Venezuela? Four writers at The Atlantic took a stab at the question, featuring input from anonymous White House sources and Ryan Berg, an expert on the region who now works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. According to Berg, “Trump instinctively understands that if the U.S. is not the top dog in the Western Hemisphere, it can’t be an effective global power.” A senior administration official added, “If the goal is increasingly to have U.S.-aligned leaders, or at a minimum leaders that are not actively aligned with China, Russia, and Iran, then Venezuela sticks out like a sore thumb.”
Trump himself said six years ago in Miami, “When Venezuela is free, and Cuba is free, and Nicaragua is free, this will become the first free hemisphere in all of human history.”
Also notable: “Trump has a history of deploying deception in his dealings with foreign adversaries,” the four reporters caution, and note that “In June, the White House announced that he would give Tehran two additional weeks to engage in diplomacy about its nuclear program; three days later, Trump sent warplanes far into Iranian airspace to bomb atomic facilities. He may be employing a similar tactic with Venezuela.” Continue reading, here.
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Thomas Novelly and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1983, NATO began its large-scale Able Archer 83 exercises, which the Soviets interpreted as possible opening moves in a nuclear war with the alliance.
Today, 2 pm ET: Hegseth’s “Arsenal of Freedom” speech at the National Defense University. A Pentagon press release said it would be livestreamed at war.gov, but as of press time, the “Live Events” page had nothing scheduled. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams is heading to NDU to cover it; look for her story later today.
ICYMI: Experts, officials, industry reacted to a six-page draft of a memo expected to be released after the speech. And here’s a draft list of industry CEOs slated to attend.
Related: Defense tech companies will weather the shutdown. But what happens next? “From DOGE’s initial descent to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, defense contractors are weathering policy changes at different rates during the first leg of the second Trump administration. But while larger companies are thriving, smaller companies—the very ones the White House and Pentagon want to court—have a bumpier ride,” Williams reports off recent earning calls and more.
Commentary: As it seeks to improve acquisition, the Pentagon should do more with MOSA—that is, modular open systems architecture. “The law already requires MOSA to be used in major warfighting programs ‘to the maximum extent practicable’ and Secretary Hegseth’s own Systems Engineering and Architecture office has been pushing the approach since February,” writes Andy Green, who leads the Mission Systems division of HII, the nation’s largest warship builder. “It is direction that, if enforced, could do more to speed acquisitions and cut costs than any process reform under consideration.” Read his argument, here.
Pentagon policy shop shifts story on pause in Ukraine aid again. “A senior advisor and former deputy to the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy told senators on Thursday that his office ‘neither ordered nor even recommended a pause to any weapons shipments to Ukraine’ over the summer, contrary to the press reporting from the time, but also in contrast to testimony from his colleague on Tuesday and statements from the Pentagon on July 2,” writes Defense One’s Meghann Myers, here.
ICMYI: It’s been a rough week for would-be Pentagon policymakers on the Hill. On Tuesday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said the office was producing a “Pigpen-like mess.”
Developing: A federal judge is set to rule later today on Trump’s order to send National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, which the president has claimed is a “war-ravaged” city due to persistent but largely peaceful protests outside an immigration detention facility at the southern end of the city.
Why it matters: The judge’s decision “could be the first to permanently block Trump from using troops to quell protests against federal immigration authorities, which he is also attempting to do in Democrat-led Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington D.C.,” Reuters reports, and notes, “The case could ultimately go to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
For a bit more background on the case, Oregon Public Broadcasting has this from Sunday.
Update: The cost to dispatch about 200 Texas Guard troops to Chicago (against the wishes of state officials) could rise above $12 million by December, the San Antonio Express-News reported Thursday. Even though the Texas soldiers are already staged in Illinois, “a court order issued nearly a month ago has blocked them from deploying to the streets or guarding a Chicago-area immigration facility,” the Express-News reminds readers. “In the meantime, [Northern Command officials say] the troops are training on deescalation, crowd control and use-of-force rules.”
Related: “Michigan National Guard chief: No troops needed in Detroit.”
Newly confirmed Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach is getting the band back together. The four-star general has selected Chief Master Sgt. David Wolfe as the service’s next top-enlisted leader, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reports. Previously, Wolfe was Wilsbach’s top enlisted advisor when the general led Air Combat Command.
Wolfe takes over the role from Chief Master Sgt. David Flosi, who announced his retirement last month following the death of his wife Katy. The service’s new top enlisted leader began his military career in 1992 with a background in missile security, elite guard duty, protective services, and space warning security. In an August press release, Wolfe also detailed he received non-judicial punishment early in his Air Force career.
“I didn’t exactly start my Air Force career on the right foot,” Wolfe said in the news release. “An Article 15 and a stint in correctional custody made it clear I needed to change course. It was a rough start, but it turned out to be exactly what I needed.”
Space Force astronauts? “Today, guardians go to space only in popular misconception, but tomorrow? There might be solid tactical reasons to put Space Force personnel in orbit, argues a new report from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, writes Defense One’s Thomas Novelly, here.
Additional reading:
At the president’s order, the Pentagon is drawing up plans for war in Nigeria even though military officials told the New York Times this week “U.S. forces are unlikely to be able to end a decades-long insurgency that has claimed lives across sectarian lines in Africa’s most populous country.”
Courses of action with the presumed highest likelihood of success include drone strikes “on the few known compounds in northern Nigeria inhabited by militant groups” and joint operations “with Nigerian soldiers to raid…rural hamlets in the country’s north,” Helene Cooper reported Wednesday.
A third and more serious option involves “mov[ing] an aircraft carrier group into the Gulf of Guinea” for a campaign of “strikes deep in northern Nigeria” using fighter jets and long-range bombers. Continue reading, here.
From the region: “Russia could buy leftover uranium from Niger, France warns,” Semafor reported Friday.
And lastly this week: China’s third aircraft carrier just entered service during a ceremony at Yulin Naval Base on Wednesday. However, “security analysts and regional diplomats say tough challenges lie ahead before it can be made fully operational,” Reuters reported Friday from Hong Kong.
It’s an 80,000-ton, diesel-fueled carrier named CS Fujian, and it “brings catapult-launch capabilities to Chinese naval aviation,” USNI News explains. “The first two PLAN carriers, CS Liaoning (016) and Shandong (017), used Russian-styled short take-off but arrested recovery (STOBAR) designs. [But now] With the vessel’s three electromagnetic catapults, Chinese forces can sortie fighter jets with heavier payloads and larger aircraft—including the new KJ-600 airborne early warning and command aircraft.”
In recent sea trials, “the Chinese navy launched its new carrier version of the J-35 stealth fighter and an early-warning aircraft, the KJ-600, as well as a variant of its established J-15 fighter,” Reuters reports.
Expert reax: “Despite nine sea trials this year, they are working with almost entirely new platforms top to bottom,” which is why “I think it will be at least another year before it reaches full operational capability,” said Ben Lewis, of the open-source data platform PLATracker.
]]>
Experts see promise, risk in draft of Pentagon acquisition reforms. A six-page draft memo to military leaders is circulating ahead of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s planned Friday speech about acquisition reform, and experts, industry figures, and current and former procurement officials have thoughts.
Some see promise, like Arnold Punaro: “If fully implemented, these reforms will finally break the long-standing paradigm that has defined and constrained defense acquisition for decades…”
Others have concerns, like Todd Harrison, who says that the “time-indexed incentives” espoused in the memo are “a big shift towards holding contractors responsible for keeping to schedule, but it comes with some big risks. It may incentivize companies to deliver poor-quality products before they are ready for prime time just to stay on schedule and not be penalized for being late.” Defense One’s Thomas Novelly, Lauren C. Williams, and Patrick Tucker have many more reactions, here.
Who’s coming to hear Hegseth’s speech? A draft list of 34 attendees includes defense giants and younger startups, plus notable consumer tech companies like Facebook parent company Meta and consumer AI company Anthropic. Find that, from Tucker, here.
Boat-strike briefing fails to allay Hill concerns. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth briefed a group of lawmakers—a bipartisan one this time—in a bid to persuade them that the deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean are lawful. Emerging from the meeting, Democrats said the administration officials did not provide clear answers about the legal basis, scope or objective of the mission. The New York Times reports, here.
This afternoon, the Senate is to vote on a motion for a resolution that would direct the removal of U.S. armed forces from hostilities “within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.” Washington Examiner: “The measure backed by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Adam Schiff (D-CA) comes as the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford is steaming toward Venezuela, amid increasing indications President Trump is considering airstrikes against drug cartel targets.”
Paul: “These are small outboards with no fentanyl and no path to Florida. To kill indiscriminately is akin to summary execution!…Everyone should get a trial because sometimes the system gets it wrong. Even the worst of the worst in our country get due process.”
Also: Rep. Brian Mast, R-Mich., says the White House is drafting “concepts of operations” for military action against Venezuela, the former Army explosives disposal tech told Fox on Wednesday.
Legal input: “There is no obvious legal argument to support President Trump’s expanding campaign of strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. And the implications are even scarier,” national security law professor Steve Vladeck of Georgetown University wrote Thursday on Substack.
These U.S. military attacks “are, near as I can tell, blatantly unlawful as a matter of U.S. domestic law—and a quickly spreading stain on whatever is left of the executive branch’s commitment to the rule of law,” argues Vladeck, using five guiding questions to frame his response.
One notable consideration: Trump’s Pentagon has been attacking “boats that, to all appearances, lack both the ability and the intent to even reach the United States (or U.S. targets overseas), let alone to attack them,” which would seem to fly in the face of the president’s apparent claims of self-defense in authorizing these strikes, Vladeck explains.
Perhaps most concerning: “[I]f this President doesn’t have to justify what’s happening right now in the Caribbean and the Pacific, it’s terrifying to think of what other uses of force he and his successors wouldn’t have to justify next—in contexts far closer, both literally and metaphorically, to home,” Vladeck warns. “Extrajudicial killings should be reserved for extraordinary cases in which we are as sure as we can be that the target is who we think it is; where the law authorizes the use of force against them; and where there’s no other means of incapacitating them. Whatever else is happening in these strikes, it sure ain’t any of that.” Read the rest, here.
Q. Should the U.S. military attack Nigeria, as Trump suggested over the weekend, and attempt to institute regime change? Former football coach and Senate Armed Services Committee member Tommy Tuberville, R. Ala., says yes. Speaking to Fox on Wednesday, Tuberville was asked by John Harwood, “Would you support U.S. troops going into Nigeria?” Tuberville responded, “You bet I would. It wouldn’t be like going into Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran. This would be helping innocent people who could take back over the country.”
At least one key congressional leader is unhappy with SecDef Hegseth’s new bottleneck on Pentagon communications with lawmakers. CNN reported this week that Hegseth has forbidden military officials from discussing a wide array of subjects with lawmakers without prior approval. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., and ranking member of the House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, cited a notable precedent in his criticism of Hegseth’s clampdown on Wednesday.
“Looking back at history, the success of the U.S. nuclear submarine program is a direct result of unrestricted communication between mid-level naval officials and Congress,” Courtney said in a statement. “Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the originator of the nuclear submarine program, met directly with Senators and Members of Congress without permission from Navy brass to establish the nuclear propulsion technology for the U.S. submarine fleet. Over the objections of his superiors, he presented his iconoclastic ideas to key Congressional committees that overruled Pentagon leadership and funded his plan. Without Rickover’s direct communication to Congress, the U.S. would not wield the generational advantage we have in the undersea domain today.”
“This is just one of the many examples of where a free flow of communication with Congress benefitted our nation.” He continued, “Secretary Hegseth’s restriction of DoD experts and personnel to have these discussions with Members of Congress, committees, and staff will hamstring our historic collaboration and delay getting the men and women of our armed forces what they need.”
What Pacific forces say they need: The deputy commander of Pacific Air Forces said their recent REFORPAC exercise in the Pacific“identified the capabilities that we need to win in this theater.” Speaking at the AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference, Lt. Gen. Laura Lenderman said they were artificial intelligence, autonomy, machine learning; improved command and control capabilities; and resilient cyber networks “that can communicate securely in expeditionary environments and survive relentless attacks.” Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad has more, here.
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1971, the U.S. tested its largest underground hydrogen bomb on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.
Developing: The U.S. military is planning to stage some troops at a Syrian airbase in Damascus, Reuters reported Thursday—which is almost a year since dictator Bashar al-Assad fled the country, allowing former al-Qaeda branch leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (now referred to as Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa) of the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to take over.
“The base sits at the gateway to parts of southern Syria that are expected to make up a demilitarised zone as part of a non-aggression pact between Israel and Syria,” the wire service reports ahead of a meeting between Trump and al-Sharaa at the White House on Monday. Already a U.S. military C-130 has landed nearby to ensure the runways are suitable.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s very similar to other deals Trump officials have forged with Lebanon and Israel to have U.S. troops monitor tenuous ceasefire agreements involving the Israeli military in the region.
Panning out: “The U.S. has been working for months to reach a security pact between Israel and Syria, two longtime foes,” Reuters writes. “It had hoped to announce a deal at the United Nations General Assembly in September but talks hit a last-minute snag.”
By the way: Israeli jets are still attacking alleged Hezbollah positions inside southern Lebanon despite a ceasefire signed last November, the Associated Press reported Thursday from Beirut. “Lebanon’s health ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and around 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire took effect…107 of those killed were civilians or noncombatants,” AP reports, citing United Nations monitors. “No Israelis have been killed by fire from Lebanon since the ceasefire,” AP adds.
Related reading: “Sudan’s paramilitary group said it agrees on truce proposed by U.S.-led mediator group,” AP reported Thursday from Cairo.
Meanwhile in the Pacific region, China tested a “mini drone carrier” at sea last week, according to footage aired on state-run television, The War Zone reported Wednesday.
The “size and configuration of the flight deck, especially a trapezoidal section on the starboard side toward the stern, as well as its markings, match up directly with the design of a ship that was launched at the Jiangsu Dayang Marine shipyard back in 2022…which is approximately 328 feet (100 meters) long and some 82 feet (25 meters) across, and has a small island on the starboard side toward the bow,” TWZ writes. More, here.
Elsewhere in the region, Japanese soldiers have been deployed to help reduce bear attacks in the northern region of Akita. “Since April, more than 100 people have been injured and at least 12 killed in bear attacks across Japan,” AP reports from Tokyo.
What will the soldiers do? The Defense Ministry plans for them to “set box traps with food, transport local hunters and help dispose of dead bears,” but they will not use their weapons to kill the bears, AP reports. Read more, here.
]]>
Operating with speed, scale, and agility in the Indo-Pacific is “probably the most challenging thing” the military does, PACAF commander says.
Another boat attack. The U.S. military killed two more people in an alleged drug-trafficking boat in an unspecified location off the Pacific coast of Latin America, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday with an 18-second video posted to Twitter.
“No U.S. forces were harmed in the strike, and two male narco-terrorists—who were aboard the vessel—were killed,” Hegseth said.
To date, at least 66 people have been killed in 16 strikes on 17 typically small boats. That includes nine vessels attacked in the Caribbean Sea and eight others on the Pacific side of Latin America.
Hegseth claims those in the boats are associated with a “Designated Terrorist Organization,” and that “NO cartel terrorist stands a chance against the American military,” he wrote online Tuesday. However, neither the White House nor the Defense Department has provided public evidence supporting their claims for any of the boat strikes, which the White House last week claimed are exempt from congressional oversight under the 1973 War Powers Resolution.
Panning out: “For Trump, the entire Western hemisphere is America’s,” former U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder wrote Tuesday for Politico. “For him, the biggest threats to America today are the immigrants flooding across the country’s borders and the drugs killing tens of thousands from overdoses. And to that end, his real goal is to dominate the entire Western hemisphere — from the North Pole to the South Pole — using America’s superior military and economic power to defeat all ‘enemies,’ both foreign and domestic,” Daalder explained.
Why it matters: “Overall, Trump’s focus on dominating the Western hemisphere represents a profound shift from nearly a century’s-long focus on warding off overseas threats to protect Americans at home,” the former NATO ambassador said. “And like it or not, for Trump, security in the second quarter of the 21st century lies in concepts and ideas first developed in the last quarter of the 19th century.” More, here.
Out in Hawaii, a former Trump acting SecDef said this myopia is degrading America’s ability to deter China. Chris Miller, who ran the Pentagon in the lame-duck months of the first Trump administration, says he expected more from the second, not less. “Where’s the leadership? We spend a trillion dollars a year on national security. We can do more than one thing,” Miller said during a panel at last week’s AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference. He shared the stage with Sean Berg, a former deputy commander of Special Operations Command Pacific, who said China “is already in phase three” of a war while “we still think of ourselves in phase zero: shaping.” Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad has more, here.
Related reading: “One Caribbean Leader Is Going All-Out for Trump Against Venezuela,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday regarding Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
Update: SecDef Hegseth’s Friday speech to defense industry leaders at the National War College in Washington is scheduled for 2 p.m. ET.
Admin note: “All media covering the event must be on the credentialed list,” the Pentagon announced in a message to reporters Wednesday. Read more about the Pentagon’s credentialed media list below the fold.
New: Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach was sworn in as the Air Force Chief of Staff this week. The service’s new top uniformed leader had previously led Air Combat Command and Pacific Air Forces.
He told airmen in a brief letter made public on Tuesday that their mission was simple: “to fly and fix so we are ready to fight.” That message mirrors concerns echoed by Congress last month who urged the then-nominee to reverse the decline in aircraft readiness.
Wilsbach also said the Air Force will “advocate relentlessly for programs like the F-47, Collaborative Combat Aircraft as well as nuclear force recapitalization through the Sentinel program and the B-21,” according to the letter. Notably, he did not promise to follow lawmakers’ direction on spending the $150 billion allocated in the reconciliation bill last summer.
Related: “Air Force adopts new grooming standards to align with Hegseth’s vision,” Military Times reported Tuesday.
Coverage continues after the jump…
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson, Thomas Novelly and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2006, and almost three years after his capture, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by the Iraqi Interim Government for crimes against humanity committed during his time in office, including the 1982 massacre of 148 people.
National Guard soldiers ordered to Washington, D.C., have had their deployments extended to at least February, CNN reported last Wednesday as a court case over the matter continues to play out pitting the White House against Washington’s attorney general.
Recap: Trump ordered the troops to the nation’s capital in early August, offering false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify the Guard deployment and his takeover of the D.C. police. The deployments—totalling more than 2,300 troops so far, including soldiers from DC, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia and Alabama—were initially slated to end in November. However, there were indications online suggesting U.S. officials were planning for a longer Guard presence in Washington, as Task & Purpose reported in mid-September. Meanwhile, “Soldiers, who largely have patrolled federal parks and Metro subway stations, have been spotted over recent weeks picking up trash in Washington or being heckled by city residents, including some who have played the ‘Imperial March’ from ‘Star Wars’ at them,” Task & Purpose reported Sunday.
ICYMI: “Trump’s National Guard deployments aren’t random. They were planned years ago,” NPR reported Monday.
AM dispatch from Washington: “National Guard troops patrolling DC made themselves useful this morning: Pushed a dead BMW out of traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue,” former State Department official Brian Finacune wrote on social media Wednesday. He added, “Not obvious to me however that this needed to be a military function.”
After booting nearly all of its professional journalists from the building, Trump’s Pentagon credentialed far-right activist Laura Loomer as a reporter—and she quickly began appealing for tips, which is prohibited according to the Pentagon policy she says she’d signed to obtain the credentials, Phil Stewart of Reuters pointed out in response to Loomer’s announcement on social media Tuesday.
About that updated Pentagon policy: It reads, “An advertisement or social media post by an individual journalist or media outlet that directly targets [Defense Department] personnel to disclose non-public information without proper authorization would constitute a solicitation that could lead to revocation” of press credentials, Stewart flagged.
Perspective: The Pentagon’s policy shop is a “Pigpen-like mess,” Arkansas GOP Sen. Cotton said during a routine nomination hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
Background: Austin Dahmer was ostensibly before the committee to answer questions about how he would tackle the job of assistant secretary for strategy, plans, and forces—a job whose title and responsibilities have changed in ways that the committee was only told about on Sunday night, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports. But because Dahmer has already been performing the duties of another high-level Pentagon official—and because SecDef Hegseth has restricted communication between the department and Congress, requiring every interaction be cleared through legislative affairs—a bipartisan group of senators took the opportunity to grill Dahmer on a host of recent department moves.
Sen. Cotton listed several concerns, including:
“I understand that media reports can be wrong, believe me, but it just seems like there’s this Pigpen-like mess coming out of the policy shop that you don’t see from, say, intel and security and acquisition and sustainment,” Cotton said. Asked why the policy undersecretary’s office, led by Elbridge Colby, has been at the center of so many controversies, Dahmer blamed “fake news” and “inaccurate reporting” while claiming ignorance of details. Read the rest, here.
Update: Saudi Arabia moved one step closer to buying 48 F-35 jets after Riyadh’s request recently advanced in the Pentagon’s review process, progressing from the policy shop and now to the secretary level, Reuters reported Tuesday.
Caveat: “[N]o final decision has been made and several more steps are needed before the ultimate nod, including further approvals at the Cabinet level, sign-off from Trump and notification of Congress,” Mike Stone of Reuters writes.
Reminder: The Saudis are Washington’s biggest arms buyer, and have been seeking to purchase F-35s for several years. More, here.
Additional industry reading: “Palantir’s Market Value Skyrocketed. See How Its Revenue Is Still Catching Up,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Developing: The ongoing U.S. government shutdown is now the longest in history, passing the prior record set during Trump’s first term. (AP, Axios)
Status report: Lawmakers signal some progress in bipartisan talks to end shutdown, Eric Katz of Government Executive reported Tuesday.
Related reading:
]]>