AFSOC held a long-planned exercise on St. Croix just days before the first U.S. strike on an alleged drug boat.

Seven months after telling Ukraine’s president, “You don’t have the cards right now” to fend off Russia’s ongoing invasion, U.S. President Donald Trump surprised observers when he said Tuesday on social media, “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”

Trump did not emphasize direct U.S. support to Ukraine, instead adding with an apparent note of indifference, “We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them.” He continued, “With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option.” 

“Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act,” Trump said, and concluded, “In any event, I wish both Countries well.”

Context: Trump’s pivot comes after Russian aircraft violated NATO airspace several times this month, including episodes involving Poland, Romania, and Estonia—as well as Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Norway, NATO said in a Tuesday statement. “Allies will not be deterred by these and other irresponsible acts by Russia from their enduring commitments to support Ukraine, whose security contributes to ours, in the exercise of its inherent right to self-defence against Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war of aggression,” the alliance’s North Atlantic Council said. 

Notable: “[T]here was no sign that Trump’s words would be matched by a change in U.S. policy, such as a decision to impose the heavy new sanctions on Moscow,” Reuters reports, writing that Trump’s new position “would ostensibly require Kyiv to expel Russian forces from 20% of its territory, including the Crimean peninsula Moscow has held since 2014, in what would be an extraordinary reversal.” 

Capitol Hill reax: “President Trump is delusional,” said Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, writing on social media Tuesday. “Without stronger US support, which Trump has refused to provide, Ukraine will die a slow death,” he said, alleging without elaboration, “Make no mistake: Trump is siding with Putin’s dictatorship over Ukraine’s democracy.”

Second opinion: “Over a month after inviting Putin to the United States with a red carpet welcome, President Trump has nothing to show for it and Putin is actively testing NATO’s resolve,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, in her own statement Tuesday. “President Trump has also yet to deliver on his campaign promise of quickly ending devastating conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere…America needs less bluster and more constructive action from this President to finally bring these conflicts to a close.”

European reax: “[T]he cards are clear for us. We know what we should be doing,” one official told Reuters. And Germany’s top diplomat said Tuesday, “We can achieve much more; not all European states have delivered what they promised Ukraine.” 

“It’s dawning on Trump, the fact that Putin has been stringing him along,” Jaroslava Barbieri of the Chatham House told the wire service. “I think Trump is also looking for an off-ramp to maintain this image of being an effective peace broker by trying to shift the blame to Russia and the Europeans.” 

Frontline dispatch: “To Understand Ukraine at War, Stop by a Gas Station,” Constant Méheut, Olha Konovalova and Brendan Hoffman reported Tuesday for the New York Times (gift link).

Update: Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries have dropped Russian fuel exports close to their lowest level since 2020, with Ukrainian drone attacks disrupting more than one million barrels of oil per day from Russia’s refining capacity, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. “Sixteen of Russia’s 38 refineries have been hit since the start of August, some of them multiple times, including one of Russia’s largest fuel-processing facilities, the 340,000 barrel-a-day plant at Ryazan, close to Moscow,” FT’s Chris Miller reports. 

Russia’s new war tax? “Russia’s finance ministry proposed raising the rate of value-added tax on Wednesday to 22% from 20% in 2026 to fund military spending in what would be the fifth year of the war in Ukraine,” Reuters reported Wednesday from Moscow. 

In an apparent first, Ukraine reportedly used hot-air balloons to attack targets in Russia. “They weren’t very precise,” a Russian defense official told Russia’s RBK Wednesday, who said the inflatable Ukrainian drones were spotted or shot down over several Russian regions after midnight Wednesday, including Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Rostov, Ryazan, Samara, Saratov regions, Crimea, and Moscow.

Britain’s top spy said recently that around 250,000 Russian troops have died fighting for Putin’s Ukraine invasion, and Moscow has taken “more than a million casualties” overall, according to Sir Richard Moore’s speech Friday in Istanbul. 

In May, the U.S. military’s intelligence agency estimated that 170,000 Russian troops had died, while some 530,000 more had been wounded, Mike Eckel of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty noted on social media Sunday. 

Happening today: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is visiting the U.S. for meetings with world leaders and high-level officials during the UN’s General Assembly this week in New York. Rutte also has a dinner planned with Secretary of State Rubio this evening followed by a scheduled address to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy on Thursday.

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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 with 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 1968, prime-time news show “60 Minutes” debuted on CBS. 

Around the world

“What kind of world do we choose to build together?” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres asked attendees from around the globe during his remarks Tuesday at the UN’s annual General Assembly in New York City. 

The UN, which formed from the ruins of World War II, was established in a spirit of “cooperation over chaos, law over lawlessness, peace over conflict,” Guterres said. But 80 years later, “we have entered an age of reckless disruption,” when “the principles of the United Nations…are under siege,” he warned. 

In the days ahead, UN members can choose “a world of raw power—or a world of laws,” he said. “A world that is a scramble for self-interest” and “where might makes right—or a world of rights for all.”

Trump’s message to world leaders: “Your countries are going to hell” because of lax immigration policies, the U.S. president said during his hourlong Tuesday address before the General Assembly. “It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders. You have to end it now. It’s — I can tell you. I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell,” he said. 

POTUS: “You’re destroying your countries. They’re being destroyed. Europe is in serious trouble. They’ve been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody’s ever seen before. Illegal aliens are pouring into Europe, and nobody’s doing anything to change it, to get them out. It’s not sustainable.”

“I’ve been right about everything,” Trump told the UN as the New York Times reports he spent much of his time “making and repeating a slew of misleading and false claims” about U.S. manufacturing, renewable energy, electricity prices in the U.S., and Sharia law in London. CNN annotated select portions of the speech in a separate fact check, here. 

Historian’s reax: “The speech was a dark fantasy of narcissism and Christian nationalism that struck at the heart of the very concept of the United Nations,” Heather Cox Richardson wrote after Trump’s UNGA remarks. His speech also “depict[ed] a fantasy world in which he had single-handedly saved the world,” with Trump boasting that just last year, “our country was in deep trouble. But today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close.” 

Also: One senior foreign diplomat at the UN texted Ishaan Tharoor of the Washington Post, “This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?”

China’s missiles on parade: showpieces or showstoppers? John S. Van Oudenaren and Peter Singer judge five of the weapons debuted earlier this month: new ICBMs, hypersonic missiles, and SAMs. Read that, here.

Iran is rebuilding its missile sites, but lacks crucial rocket-fuel mixers, AP reports off its analysis of satellite photos. “Reconstituting the missile program is crucial for the Islamic Republic, which believes another round of war with Israel may happen. The missiles are one of Iran’s few military deterrents after the war decimated its air defense systems — something that Tehran long has insisted will never be included in negotiations with the West.” Read on, here. 

Additional reading: 

• “After mechanical challenges, UN says Trump’s team to blame for nonworking escalator and teleprompter,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday; Reuters has similar coverage; 
• And “Why Can’t Russia and China Agree on the Power of Siberia 2 Gas Pipeline?” Sergey Vakulenko asked Monday for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

Around the Defense Department

Has Space Force cracked the code on faster acquisition? Acquisition reform legislation may be on the way, but Space Force officials say they’re ahead of the curve. “A lot of the concepts and ideas and structure and authorities and processes, we’re already doing,” Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, leader of Space Systems Command, said in an interview on the sidelines of the AMOS conference in Hawaii. 

The service is amid an organizational transformation, aligning acquisition programs with mission areas under units it calls systems deltas. The change, along with the commercial strategy signed in 2024, has changed how the service’s program executives and program directors look at acquisition and commercial providers, Garrant said. Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad reports, here.

Space Force leaders are prepping a threat guide to shape plans and procurement. The document—“a game changer”—will outline expected enemy trends through 2040, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said Tuesday at Air & Space Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference. Defense One’s Tom Novelly has more from Saltzman’s speech, here.

RTX, Shield AI to make the “brains” for the Air Force’s robot wingmen, Aviation Week reports: “The RTX mission autonomy software suite will be integrated into the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) YFQ-42, and Shield AI’s Hivemind-branded system will control the Anduril YFQ-44, sources tell Aviation Week.” More, here.

CENTCOM has a new “innovation task force.” Led by U.S. Central Command’s chief technology officer, the new Rapid Employment Joint Task Force is meant to outfit deployed forces with cutting-edge capabilities, the command announced on Tuesday.

Double-reversal on DACOWITS: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has decided to eliminate the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, just three weeks after sending a memo directing the 75-year-old advisory group to continue operating.

Hegseth now believes the group is “advancing a divisive feminist agenda,” Pentagon spox Kingsley Wilson said Tuesday.

Context: “The former Fox News host, who has previously questioned the role of women in combat, has also shut down a program that boosts the number of women in peace building and conflict prevention efforts, calling it “woke” and “divisive,” Politico reports.

And lastly, here’s the latest reax to the Pentagon’s demand that journalists report only what officials tell them: 

• NYT’s David Sanger: “Coming amid a broader push by the administration to clamp down on criticism of Mr. Trump, the scope of Mr. Hegseth’s effort stunned news organizations, which are considering how best to keep the policy from coming into effect, including potential legal challenges.”
• Military Reporters and Editors: “MRE condemns in the strongest possible terms any attempt by this Pentagon or any other entity to curb the press’ freedoms and leave the American public in the dark on what its military is doing at home and abroad,” writes the non-profit journalists’ organization. “The Secretary of Defense and the military are accountable to the American people. A hollowed press corps in the Pentagon will only ensure that fewer answers are provided to the public about how the government spends its taxpayer dollars, where America’s sons and daughters are deploying on behalf of our country and the welfare of military families.” 
• Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.: “This is an ill-advised affront to free speech and freedom of the press. This goes beyond attempting to suppress criticism—Mr. Hegseth’s goal appears to be eliminating a critical check on government corruption, unlawful practices, and the misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Additional reading: 

• “America Is Blowing Up Boats and Asking Questions Later,” the New York Times editorial board warned in a commentary published Wednesday; 
• “Veterans who lack citizenship fear being swept up in Trump’s deportations,” AP reported Wednesday; 
• And “Navy issues instructions for reporting improper social media use,” Navy Times reported Monday. 

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The document will predict future threats, so the service can better prepare for them.

The document will predict future threats, so the service can better prepare for them.

China’s accumulation of military facilities and partnerships beyond the Indo-Pacific region mean U.S. forces must innovate more urgently, air and space intelligence officials said Monday. 

“The China challenge is not just a challenge for INDOPACOM,” Lt. Gen. Max Pearson, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, said during a panel discussion at AFA’s Air, Space, and Cyber conference. “In addition to the support base in Djibouti … the PLA continues to pursue military installations, [cooperative agreements], and partnerships in a lot of places. I mean, we’re seeing this across Asia, in the Middle East, Africa, across the Pacific. And we’re seeing the PLA partnering with others: strategic bomber patrols with Russia, naval patrols with Russia, as well as exercises—PLA, Russia and Iran.” 

Meanwhile, the Chinese navy launched next-generation fighter and early warning aircraft on test flights from its Fujian aircraft carrier Monday, weeks after Beijing rolled out new weapons at a giant military parade earlier this month.

Related: “Marines showcase ship-killing NMESIS missile system in Japan,” as part of island-defense exercises, Task & Purpose reported Sunday.

Anduril blames CCA delay on push for ‘semi-autonomous’ first flight. The Air Force had anticipated that Anduril’s prototype collaborative combat aircraft, dubbed YFQ-44 Fury, would fly this summer, but only General Atomics’ rival YFQ-42A actually took off. “The goal is to also get to a semi-autonomous first flight, which means takeoff and landing will be done via push of a button,” Anduril vice president Diem Salmon told reporters at the AFA show on Monday. A General Atomics spokesman noted that their YFQ-42A is also designed for semi-autonomous flight, although its August test did not use it. Defense One’s Thomas Novelly has a bit more, here.

ICYMI: F-47’s first flight expected in 2028, a year earlier than officials had previously suggested. Novelly reported off Monday’s keynote by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, here.

Update: The U.S. Army released the names of four soldiers who perished in an MH-60 helicopter crash Wednesday in Washington state. They include: 

• Chief Warrant Officer Three Andrew Cully, 35, from Sparta, Missouri;
• Chief Warrant Officer Three Andrew Kraus, 39, from Sanibel, Florida;
• Sgt. Donavon Scott, 24, from Tacoma;
• And Sgt. Jadalyn Good, 23, from Mount Vernon, Washington. 

All four were assigned to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, based at Joint-Base Lewis-McChord, just outside Tacoma. It’s unclear how the crash occurred, but officials from Fort Rucker’s Army Combat Readiness Center have been sent to investigate, Stars and Stripes reports. 

Additional reading: 

• “West Point is violating the First Amendment with a crackdown on professors, lawsuit says,” the Associated Press reported Monday from New York;
• And “Military commissaries could be privatized under Pentagon plan,” Task & Purpose reported Monday.  

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Welcome to this Tuesday 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 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 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federalized the Arkansas National Guard to support and protect the integration of Little Rock Central High School.

Americas

First indication of evidence from Trump’s war on drug cartels? U.S. and Dominican Republic officials have pulled 13 bales containing more than 370 packages of “suspected cocaine” from the waters of the Caribbean Sea near a site where the U.S. military recently destroyed a boat suspected of trafficking drugs, several outlets—including the New York Times, Associated Press, and the Wall Street Journal—reported Monday (gift link). 

Video of the recovered packages can be seen in a Sunday press conference from Dominican authorities, here. 

It’s unclear when the boat was destroyed, but President Trump has claimed to have ordered the military to attack at least three such alleged drug-trafficking boats this month—the first on Sept. 2, the next on Sept. 15, and the latest on Sept. 19. 

Context: “Human rights groups have said the strikes on the boats amount to extra judicial killings, and on Friday two Democratic senators introduced a resolution in Congress that seeks to block the administration from carrying out further strikes,” AP writes. 

“The speedboat was en route to the Dominican Republic and those on board planned to use the country as a bridge before smuggling the drugs to the U.S.,” the Journal reports, citing officials from the Dominican Republic’s National Directorate for Drug Control. The newspaper did not disclose how the officials made that determination, nor did Dominican officials share any new information on those on the boat when they were killed by the U.S. military. 

A new report says China’s military diplomacy is taking off in Latin America. That includes an increase in students from the region “enrolled in Chinese military colleges, which was more than five times the number in the United States starting in 2020,” researchers from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies write in a report published Monday. 

Russia, meanwhile, has leaned more on its “soft power” in the region, since the majority of its military is bogged down in a Ukraine invasion that has turned into a grinding war of attrition. 

Still, “For now, Washington remains the preferred defense partner for many [Latin American] countries,” the report says. But more could be done, like “Working with Major Non-NATO Allies like Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia to streamline arms procurement processes and encourage greater interoperability with U.S. forces can help to minimize the appeal of Beijing or Moscow’s offers.” Read the rest, here. 

Less than two weeks after Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of attempting a coup in 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department on Monday announced sanctions against Viviane Barci de Moraes—who is the wife of Alexandre de Moraes, the Brazilian Supreme Court justice who oversaw Bolsonaro’s prosecution. 

Trump’s State Department alleges Justice Moraes “weaponize[d] courts, authorize[d] arbitrary pretrial detentions, and suppress[ed] freedom of expression” in Brazil.  

Brazil’s POV: The U.S. sanctions are “a new attempt of undue interference in Brazilian internal affairs,” Brazil’s government said in a statement. It also alleges “the U.S. government tried to justify the adoption of the measure with falsehoods” in an effort to “politicize” and “distort…the Brazilian judiciary’s efforts to defend democratic institutions and uphold rule of law.” 

Reuters: “The new sanctions underline Trump’s use of financial penalties for political ends.”

Europe

NATO officials met Tuesday to discuss Russia’s violation of Estonia’s airspace on Friday when three armed Russian MiG-31 aircraft flew over the eastern European nation for more than ten minutes amid Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Estonia requested the alliance meeting, in accordance with Article 4, a move Poland also requested when a similar development involving Russian drones occurred less than two weeks ago. 

“Several other Allies—including Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Romania—have also recently experienced airspace violations by Russia,” NATO’s North Atlantic Council said in a statement Tuesday. “Russia bears full responsibility for these actions, which are escalatory, risk miscalculation and endanger lives. They must stop.”

“Allies will not be deterred by these and other irresponsible acts by Russia from their enduring commitments to support Ukraine, whose security contributes to ours, in the exercise of its inherent right to self-defence against Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war of aggression,” the council members added. 

Estonia calls on NATO to expand air patrols and other defense measures under the alliance’s new Eastern Sentry effort, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Monday from Tallinn. 

Germany’s 80-billion-euro rearmament plan mostly skips U.S. weapons, Politico reports off budget documents submitted to the German parliament. Just 8 percent of the total is slated to buy U.S.-made arms, with the lion’s share headed to European companies. “That’s a blow for Donald Trump, who has been putting pressure on European countries to continue buying U.S. arms despite the geopolitical turmoil emanating from the White House,” Politico reported Tuesday. More details, here.

Trump 2.0

President Trump wants to prosecute Americans who openly oppose fascism in a new executive order entitled, “DESIGNATING ANTIFA AS A DOMESTIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.” 

According to Trump, “Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and…uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals.” 

He also claims its members “obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists.” Trump’s new order directs federal agencies to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle” Antifa and its financial supporters wherever they can be found. 

For the record: Trump “issued a domestic terrorism designation that doesn’t exist under U.S. law,” the New York Times reported after the order was made public Monday. The Times calls the group “a diffuse and sometimes violent protest culture of left-wing activists who want to stop the far right” after taking “its name and iconography from the antifascist movement that opposed the Nazi Party and other far-right political parties in the 1920s and 30s.”

Another consideration: “Antifa does not have a leader that could be targeted, a roster of known members, bank accounts to freeze or a centralized structure,” the Times reports. The BBC has more, here. 

Related reading/viewing: 

• “ICE agents held 5-year-old girl outside Leominster home to get father to surrender, family says,” NBC Boston reported Monday; 
• “The Marine veteran behind this viral photo at the Chicago ICE protest,” via Task & Purpose reporting Monday; 
• And “Kim Jong Un’s Proposition to Trump: Let’s Talk—but Not About Nukes,” the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Why is there no Coast Guard commandant yet? At least partly because Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem lives in the commandant’s house and “she doesn’t want to get kicked out,” Ben Terris of New York Magazine reminded readers in a lengthy Monday profile of the Homeland Security Department under Noem, with an eye on her influential chief of staff and alleged romantic partner Corey Lewandowski. 

Reminder: Adm. Kevin Lunday has been acting commandant since Trump’s inauguration.

Reminder: Noem is “overseeing a massive influx of some $170 billion that Republicans set aside for combating illegal immigration, money that will go toward expanding DHS’s detention capacity to 100,000 beds (ICE is currently holding more than 58,000 detainees), increasing the size of ICE (in part by offering up to $50,000 in signing bonuses and eliminating the age cap on new hires), bolstering law-enforcement border support, and underwriting a propaganda campaign that has clogged social media with everything from Zero Dark Thirty–style PSAs to paeans to white-nationalist mythology,” Terris reports. 

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Air and Space Force intelligence chiefs warn of China’s global influence as military partnerships flourish.

A joint declaration from NATO on increased air defenses for Eastern Europe is expected tomorrow.