Decades-old defense contractors are leaning into the Pentagon’s new focus on startups, entwining themselves with emerging companies that have the technologies or even the contracts they seek. “We’re making bets in advance on specific capabilities and then going back to the market to say, ‘Who are the founders, and who are taking novel approaches to building something that is unique and different and can be applied within a military context?’” said Brian McCarthy, Booz Allen Hamilton’s managing partner of ventures.

The trend reflects the Pentagon’s new urgency to expand the military’s industrial base and bring in more tech companies. A series of recent directives from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other administration officials have prodded the Pentagon to more aggressively pursue commercial technologies, enable lower-level commanders to make their own purchases, and to use simpler contracting methods that are friendlier to would-be contractors. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker has more, here.

Pentagon CTO wants AI on every desktop in 6 to 9 months. “We want to have an AI capability on every desktop—3 million desktops—in six or nine months,” Emil Michael, defense undersecretary for research and engineering, said at a Politico event on Tuesday. “We want to have it focus on applications for corporate use cases like efficiency, like you would use in your own company…for intelligence and for warfighting.”

Michael was handed oversight of the Pentagon’s main AI body—the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office—in August, after it was demoted from reporting to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg. (Michael was also appointed acting DIU chief after that office’s chief resigned a few weeks ago.)

CDAO will become a research body like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Missile Defense Agency, Michael said Tuesday. “To add AI to that portfolio means it gets a lot of muscle to it,” he said. “So I’m spending at least a third of my time—maybe half—rethinking how the AI-deployment strategy is going to be at DOD.” Nextgov’s Alexandra Kelley has more, here.

Nov. 10 is the start date for implementing the Defense Department’s new cyber and supply-chain security standard for the entire industrial base. That’s when Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 standard will begin to appear in DOD solicitations, almost six years after Pentagon leaders began talking about it. Washington Technology has a bit more, here.

Additional reading: 

• “Anatomy of Two Giant Deals: The U.A.E. Got Chips. The Trump Team Got Crypto Riches,” the New York Times reported Monday, adding that the deals are connected in ways that have not been previously reported;
• “Former GOP officials fear US strikes on alleged drug smugglers aren’t legal,” Politico reported Tuesday; 
• “Service academies to accept conservative alternative to SAT and ACT,” Politico reported Monday; 
• “Pentagon says troops can only be exempt from shaving their facial hair for a year,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday regarding “a condition that disproportionately affects Black men”; 
• And for your ears only, space policy and budget wonk Todd Harrison unpacked his latest report on “Golden Dome” during a discussion with James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday. You can hear that via CFR, here. 

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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 1939, the Soviets invaded Poland from the east—16 days after the Nazis invaded Poland from the west. 

Around the world

Developing: The Trump administration could soon send the first batch of weapons for Ukraine that have been paid for by NATO allies, Reuters reported Tuesday. 

The shipments fall under what’s called a Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL. And so far, there are only two shipments cleared, which are worth about $500 million each and reportedly include air defense equipment to help Ukraine defend against the constant onslaught of Russian drones and missiles. 

New: Taiwan showed off the first missile to be jointly manufactured with Anduril, Reuters reported Wednesday from Taipei. It’s called the Barracuda-500, which Anduril says has a range of more than 500 nautical miles and can carry a payload weighing more than 100 pounds. Reuters calls it “an autonomous, low-cost cruise missile.” 

Bigger picture: “Taiwan has set a goal of spending 5% of its GDP on defence by 2030, up from a target of 3.3% next year, and is keen for greater international support aside from the United States,” Reuters adds. 

Additional reading: 

• “Denmark to buy long-range precision weapons to counter Russian threat,” Reuters reported Thursday from Copenhagen; 
• And “Denmark leads large military exercise in Greenland, without US,” the wire service reported separately Thursday from Nuuk, Greenland. 

Trump 2.0

There has been “a fundamental, though little-discussed, change in the administration’s national security focus,” veteran White House reporter David Sanger reported Wednesday for the New York Times. To build his case, he points to the administration’s lack of an updated national-security strategy, which Defense One’s Meghann Myers reported in mid-August. 

At its core, the alleged shift concerns the administration’s draft NDS, which focuses on “defending the homeland” above any great-power threats from China or Russia. 

“What’s now playing out is the administration’s interpretation of domestic defense,” which started in February with an increase in troops deployed to the southern border, followed by the creation of a militarized border zone in April, Myers reported in August. Less than two months later, Trump ordered the military to support immigration enforcement in Los Angeles—a move that a judge this month declared a violation of law. And just last month, Trump ordered the National Guard to Washington, D.C., ostensibly to “fight crime,” but they’ve since been relegated to spreading mulch and picking up trash around the city as residents have stayed home and businesses have suffered. 

By the way, Senate Democrats want a congressional hearing on Trump’s deployment of the military to American cities like Washington, Los Angeles and Memphis. Dems on the Senate Armed Services Committee submitted their request to SASC Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth said Wednesday. 

“The American people deserve clarity on the short- and long-term implications for national security and responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars of this new focus on a mission usually reserved for law enforcement professionals,” the senators wrote to Wicker. They also note that “in many public statements since his confirmation, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has regularly prioritized the southern border over the Indo-Pacific, despite a bipartisan consensus that U.S. defense policy should focus on the complex security challenges in that region.”

“We call on the Department to explain to Congress and the American people how it plans to resource, execute and justify such a campaign,” the senators write, “and how doing so will impact military readiness, the U.S. military’s execution of core missions of deterring and preparing for war, public trust in our military, implications for servicemembers and their families across the United States and the safety of the American people.”

In addition, the administration has also greenlit a campaign of naval-based attacks in the waters around Latin America. Trump claims he’s so far authorized the military to destroy three boats transporting alleged drug traffickers, though the administration has not offered evidence to back up its claims—and some of those claims took on a different, suspect form when shared with lawmakers—and Pentagon officials have declined to elaborate on the alleged third destroyed boat. 

Second opinion: “No president can secretly wage war or carry out unjustified killings—that is authoritarianism, not democracy,” Democratic Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Monday. “These reckless, unauthorized operations not only put American lives at risk, they threaten to ignite a war with Venezuela that would drag our nation into a conflict we did not choose. The American people deserve to know what is being done in their name and why. Congress must demand answers, force transparency, and hold this administration accountable before it plunges us into another needless war,” he added. 

Expert reax: Trump “likes shooting at targets that can’t shoot back,” Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, told Sanger. Put simply, the president “sees the threat to the homeland as greater than the threat from China.” 

For your radar: “The mystery now is whether Mr. Trump will take the next step,” Sanger writes. And that would include, as he threatened this week after the shooting that killed Charlie Kirk, “using the investigatory powers of the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and other agencies—to implicate nongovernmental organizations and political groups for supporting those he calls ‘leftist radicals,’ and leverage the findings to designate some of them as domestic terrorists.”

Indeed, Trump said Monday he wants to designate several U.S.-based groups as domestic terrorist organizations. “We have some pretty radical groups, and they got away with murder,” Trump told reporters Monday at the White House, without elaborating or fielding any questions for clarification. His Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has been pointing a finger at Democrats for several weeks, claiming in late August that it is “not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.” 

Even “The threats of a crackdown have already taken a toll,” the Times reported Tuesday, citing “A culture of fear among prominent Democratic donors and groups concerned about retribution.” Meanwhile, “Liberal foundation leaders have been in close touch with one another in recent days, beefing up security and discussing a letter of solidarity as they await any Trump administration action.” 

Additional reading: “Prosecutors already have dropped nearly a dozen cases from Trump’s DC crime surge, judge says,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday. 

Developing: House GOP lawmakers want $30 million for increased personal security, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday “as many lawmakers say they have canceled events or changed routines” after Kirk’s death last week in Utah. 

One complication: “Party leaders such as [House Speaker Mike Johnson] currently have personal security details. That has fueled criticism from some colleagues that leaders don’t understand their fears,” the Journal writes. 

“Somebody’s going to get killed” if lawmakers don’t get a larger ensemble of protective officers following closely while they travel, Tennessee GOP Rep. Tim Burchett said. “Leadership’s got their protective bubble around them. They’re not accosted when they cross the street, and there’s no Capitol Police to be seen. They don’t see that. And it’s falling on deaf ears,” he said. 

For what it’s worth, Democratic Sen. Jon Fetterman was not terribly concerned about the issue when speaking to reporters Monday. “If somebody wants to take me out, it would be easy to just pop me,” the Pennsylvania lawmaker said. Read more, here. 

And lastly, in case you missed it: “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists,” according to a study published by researchers at the U.S. Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice in June 2024. The authors tallied 227 such far-right attacks that killed more than 520 people. “In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives,” the researchers said. 

Trump’s Justice Department has removed the report from its website. Investigative reporter Jason Paladino noticed the omission and wrote about it on Friday. “Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States,” the authors warned in the report. “In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.” 

Fortunately, the study was archived, and can be found (PDF) here. 

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New campaign aims for a more integrated and comprehensive response to Moscow’s incursions, officials said.

Another deadly boat strike

President Trump ordered another attack on a boat in international waters, claiming that the strike killed three people who were “positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterroris…

Six F-35Bs were spotted landing in Puerto Rico on Saturday as the Trump administration continues using the military to fight drug trafficking around Latin America, Reuters and The War Zone reported Saturday. Four more are reportedly on the way. 

President Trump last week ordered 10 of the cutting-edge aircraft to the region just days after the U.S. military said its troops killed 11 people in a speedboat allegedly transporting drugs to the U.S., though no evidence has been provided to back up those claims, as the New York Times reported Wednesday following a Pentagon briefing on Capitol Hill. 

For what it’s worth, “the F-35s seen landing…have no unit markings on their tails. This could be [a] force protection/security tactic, but the reason isn’t clear at this time,” TWZ’s Howard Altman observed. 

There are already at least eight U.S. Navy vessels in the region, including a nuclear-powered submarine. “A second flight of four F-35s from MCAS Yuma is also headed toward Puerto Rico,” Altman reported, citing open-source flight trackers like this. 

New: Venezuelan officials say the U.S. Navy raided a tuna boat in Venezuelan waters on Saturday. Eighteen U.S. troops reportedly boarded the vessel during an “illegal” search that lasted around eight hours, the Associated Press reports, citing Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil. The nine fishermen onboard the vessel “were then released under escort by the Venezuelan navy,” AP writes.

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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 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 1916, tanks were first used in war at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette during the Battle of the Somme.

Around the world

Another Russian drone breached NATO airspace last week, prompting Romania to scramble two F-16 fighter jets after radar detected a Russian drone in Romanian airspace at about 6 p.m. local time. 

The drone incursion lasted 50 minutes, and didn’t cause any damage or casualties, Foreign Minister Oana-Silvia Țoiu said.  

“This is Russia’s second incursion into NATO airspace over the course of four days,” analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted in their latest assessment. It’s also the 11th incursion into Romanian airspace since Russia launched its full-scale Ukraine invasion in 2022, Romanian officials told ABC News. Reuters has a bit more. 

Update: Trump backed off his latest promise to sanction Russia further, writing Saturday online that he wants all NATO allies to stop buying Russian oil and place 50 to 100% tariffs on China first—then he said he’d be “ready to do major Sanctions on Russia.” The New York Times reports “The condition is almost certain not to be met, which Mr. Trump and his advisers know.”

Background: “The European Union had been heavily dependent on Russian energy before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. It has taken steps to reduce those purchases, but they have not disappeared entirely,” NPR explains. For example, behind China and India, Turkey is Russia’s third-largest importer of oil, followed closely by Hungary.

Panning out: “Trump has repeatedly threatened to punish Russia with new sanctions if it refuses to reach an agreement with Ukraine, but has failed to follow through as Moscow has ignored several deadlines,” Time magazine writes. 

Big-picture consideration: “Trump telegraphed great strength and vowed he could end Russia’s war against Ukraine with a single phone call,” Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson explained Saturday. “When he failed to get any buy-in at all from Russia’s president Vladimir Putin for his proposals, Trump threatened to impose strong new sanctions against Russia. This afternoon he backed away from that altogether,” she said, citing Saturday’s developments. 

Meanwhile for Ukraine, future attack drone swarms may come in the form of first-person-shooter drones produced in the country, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports. Those swarms could also come via new platforms Western defense companies are putting into the mix. But it’s also possible they’ll be a combination of both—old and new drones working together with minimal human interaction, according to a Ukrainian startup called Swarmer, which is pioneering software that can work with virtually any platform.  

The drones linked together via Swarmer’s software can “exchange the targets, or they can choose the appropriate payload. Different drones can use and carry different kinds of payloads for different targets,” founder Serhii Kupriienko told Tucker. “They can execute complicated scenarios like [target] discovery, and they can give you visual confirmation of the damage [after the strike]. It could be done by the group of drones.” Continue reading, here. 

Typhon missile debuts in Japan, drawing China’s ire. Monday’s appearance of the U.S. Army’s newest intermediate-range missile system in an exercise in Western Japan “underscor[es] Washington and Tokyo’s growing willingness to field weapons that Beijing has condemned as destabilising,” writes Reuters. That follows the launcher’s 2024 deployment to the Philippines, “a move that drew sharp criticism from Beijing and Moscow, which accused the U.S. of fuelling an arms race.”

Expert reax: “In the past, these deployments would have been nixed by DC and Tokyo bureaucrats out of fear of the Chinese reaction. You can see that’s less of an issue than it was, say five years ago,” said Grant Newsham, a Japan Forum for Strategic Studies research fellow and retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel who worked alongside the Japanese military. Read on, here.

From the region: “Australian government pledges $12B to nuclear submarine precinct ahead of PM’s US visit,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported Saturday. 

Around the Defense Department

Drone boats, new landing craft get Army Pacific tryouts. “Robot boats. Counter-drone systems. A prototype Army landing craft. A million dollars in cash prizes. It’s all part of the Army’s effort to overcome logistics challenges in the Indo-Pacific and get new technology in the hands of soldiers more quickly,” writes Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad, reporting from Honolulu. Read on, here.

What does the White House’s “Department of War” push mean for the Pentagon’s networks? Officials aren’t quite sure. The short-notice and so-far-unofficial change has IT leaders scrambling to rename networks and services—and avoid unfortunate rebrandings such as “DOWNet” for the nascent DODNet network. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams has more on the uncertainty, here. 

Trump 2.0

After declaring nine “national emergencies,” Trump on Monday threatened to declare a tenth—this one doubling down on the “crime emergency” declared for the District of Columbia. The reason? The mayor said last week that its police would not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

“If I allowed this to happen, CRIME would come roaring back,” the president wrote on his social media platform Monday morning. “To the people and businesses of Washington, D.C., DON’T WORRY, I AM WITH YOU, AND WON’T ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN. I’ll call a National Emergency, and Federalize, if necessary!!!”

Rewind: Just last month, Reuters reminds readers, Trump ordered “the metropolitan police department under direct federal control and sent federal law enforcement, including members of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to police the streets. It is unclear when their mission will end.”

It’s also not clear just what role ICE has played in arrests during the takeover, the Washington Post reported Sunday in an analysis of arrest statistics.

Reminder: Trump offered false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify the National Guard’s deployment to D.C. and a takeover of the local police. 

Related reading: “How Trump’s Crime Crackdown Muted Other Parts of D.C. Life,” via the New York Times, reporting Thursday.  

A study finds more than 100 court cases in which the Trump administration has undermined the “presumption of regularity,” a legal doctrine that prescribes a benefit of the doubt for the U.S. government—or, as the study’s half-dozen authors write for Just Security, an assumption that Justice Department officials act inside the courtroom “with procedural regularity and with bona fide, non-pretextual reasons.” 

Among the findings: 

• Judges said they did not trust information from the Trump administration in more than three dozen different cases, including allegations of “false sworn statements, contradictions with the record, refusals or inability to answer basic questions,” and more; 
• Courts found administration officials acted in either an “arbitrary” or “capricious” manner in more than 50 cases; 
• And courts found administration officials did not comply with judges’ orders in at least 15 cases involving an explicit violation of a court order—either through “willful disobedience, ignoring court-imposed deadlines, [and/or] refusing to provide court-ordered information.” 

Why it matters: In short, it breaks long-held norms that helped the executive branch move cases along. Or as the authors write, “since the presumption of regularity is based on the notion that agencies generally follow regular procedures, what happens if the baseline order of business is different? What if arbitrary and capricious conduct was instead widespread or pervasive?” In those instances, “The application of the presumption would lose the basis for its support,” and the administration may have to work harder to justify its allegations in court. 

Additional reading: 

• “Mass Firing of Probationary Federal Employees Was Illegal, Judge Rules,” the New York Times reported Saturday; 
• “Judge extends temporary measures protecting Guatemalan children from deportation,” the Associated Press reported Saturday; 
• “Right-winger films Pritzker’s home, stokes concern by asking followers to ‘take action’ after Kirk death,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday; 
• “Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade apologizes for saying mentally ill homeless people should be executed,” AP reported Sunday; 
• “Denver school shooting suspect posted online about mass shootings and neo-Nazi views, report says,” AP reported separately Sunday, citing this report from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism; 
• And ICYMI, “The school shooting industry is worth billions, and it keeps growing,” NPR reported last Monday. 

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Update: President Trump avoids Chicago, opts instead to order National Guard troops to “fight crime” in Memphis next, he told Fox during an appearance Friday morning. “Memphis is deeply troubled. We’re gonna fix that just like we did Washington,” Trump said. “I would have preferred going to Chicago.”

In terms of violent crime, Memphis is nearly three times as dangerous as Washington, D.C., according to 2024 FBI crime statistics. Memphis recorded more than 15,000 instances with a population of 613,000 people last calendar year compared to 6,500 violent crimes in Washington, where more than 700,000 reside. Memphis ranked fourth in the nation for violent crime in 2024, behind New York City, Los Angeles and Houston. 

Reminder: Trump offered false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify the Guard deployment and his takeover of the D.C. police last month. 

Associated actions: “Trump’s announcement of a National Guard deployment comes just after [Tennessee Gov. Bill] Lee moved to send 50 Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers to assist the Memphis Police Department,” Fox writes. 

Worth noting: This National Guard order from Trump is not necessary because Tennessee’s governor is Republican and could have sent the troops to Memphis without presidential intervention, national security law professor Steve Vladeck pointed out on social media. “Unlike in blue states, there’s just no need for this; even if circumstances warranted, Governor Lee, who still commands the TN National Guard, could’ve just sent them in himself,” said Vladeck. 

Also, for now at least, “Chicago (and Illinois) won” in the showdown with Trump over presidential power, he added. 

Another thing: “The number of Americans missing work for National Guard deployments or other military or civic duty is at a 19-year high, adding disruption to a labor market that’s already under strain,” the Washington Post reported Sunday. Economist Justin Wolfers called that statistic “Pretty remarkable when we’re not at war—except against our own people.”

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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 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 1980, a military coup overthrew Turkey’s government, leading to the execution of 50 people and the arrest of nearly 500,000. 

Developing: Authorities in Utah believe they’ve captured the shooter responsible for killing right-wing activist Charlie Kirk on Wednesday. The suspect was reportedly captured around 10 p.m. local Thursday evening after his “father saw surveillance photos and worked with a pastor to encourage the surrender in Kirk’s killing,” the Associated Press reports. 

“Officials have identified 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Utah as the suspect in Kirk’s assassination. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said he is believed to have acted alone and that the investigation is ongoing,” AP writes. 

Robinson appears to have taken part in several activities online related to “​Groypers,” which is a white nationalist “far-right movement that had been critical of Kirk,” Reuters reports. 

Trump says he “couldn’t care less” about extremism from far-right Americans. The president was asked during his appearance on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning, “We have radicals on the right as well, we have radicals on the left…How do we fix this country?” 

Trump replied, “Well, I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble—but I couldn’t care less,” he said. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime, they don’t wanna see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in, we don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy, although they want men and women’s sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders.”

Related: SecNav warns U.S. sailors not to “display contempt” toward Kirk, adding in his X post that “any uniformed or civilian employee of the Department of the Navy who acts in a manner that brings discredit upon the Department, the @USNavy or the @USMC will be dealt with swiftly and decisively.” The Air Force secretary and National Guard issued their own warnings about public speech, but stopped short of overt threats.

Student shot at Naval Academy in cascade of events. On Thursday, a threat—later deemed not credible—was phoned into the school, which locked down its Annapolis campus. It’s not entirely clear what happened next, but NBC News reported that a law enforcement officer clearing the academy’s main building was mistaken for a threat by a midshipman, who “struck the officer with a parade rifle used for training.” 

Academy officials said the officer then shot the student, who was evacuated to the Shock Trauma center in Baltimore and is expected to recover. Read on, here, or at USNI News.

Additional reading: “Historically Black colleges issue lockdown orders, cancel classes after receiving threats,” the Associated Press reported Thursday. 

The Air Force’s second B-21 Raider has taken its first official flight, defense contractor Northrop Grumman and service Secretary Troy Meink announced separately Thursday. “With two B-21s now flying, our test campaign accelerates,” Meink wrote on X. 

The aircraft “took off from Northrop Grumman’s manufacturing facility in Palmdale, Calif.[,] today, and arrived at Edwards Air Force Base after completing a robust test flight,” Grumman said in a press release. 

“The addition of a second B-21 to the flight test program accelerates the path to fielding,” outgoing Air Force Chief Gen. David Allvin said in a statement. “By having more assets in the test environment, we bring this capability to our warfighters faster, demonstrating the urgency with which we’re tackling modernization,” he added. 

Next up: Tests and analysis of the aircraft’s “weapons and mission systems,” including “An enhanced software package will demonstrate how Northrop Grumman will deliver seamless upgrades to the B-21 fleet, ensuring its mission capability and weapons evolve to outpace any threat,” the contractor said. 

See a photo of the aircraft in flight Thursday over California, here. 

New “Golden Dome” price tag warning: Veteran Pentagon budget and space policy analyst Todd Harrison just published a new, detailed accounting of costs and obstacles for President Trump’s ambitious, comprehensive missile defense shield for the U.S. he’s called “Golden Dome.” 

Background: The project’s goals were first publicly discussed by President Reagan in the early 1980s, but they couldn’t be achieved due to technical limitations and exorbitant costs. More recently, however, Elon Musk’s pioneering work at SpaceX to lower the cost of satellite launches has changed that calculus, and opened the door for current U.S. military officials to proceed with plans to knit together existing missile defense elements into one network of sensors and effectors, including yet-to-be-developed space-based interceptors. (Defense One’s Patrick Tucker explained these dynamics for us in a podcast last month.)

President Trump said the system could cost just $175 billion. But Harrison is not nearly so optimistic, warning Friday, “A system that protects against the full range of aerial threats posed by peer and near-peer adversaries could cost $3.6 trillion over 20 years, and even then, it would fall short of the ‘100 percent’ effectiveness the president claimed.” That’s at least partly because, as Harrison writes, “Even small shifts in objectives for Golden Dome can produce outsized changes in cost, and the largest cost driver by far is space-based interceptors.” Indeed, he continues, “the $175 billion price tag President Trump cited only affords a much less capable system that is no match for the quantity of missiles China and Russia possess.”

New speedboat-strike wrinkle. Following a briefing to members of Congress this week by Pentagon officials, the New York Times reported Wednesday that the “Venezuelan boat that the U.S. military destroyed in the Caribbean last week had altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it.”

Why it matters: “The boat turning around has raised more questions about whether it posed an immediate threat to the US that necessitated military action,” CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reports. Indeed, “Even if one accepted that premise for the sake of argument, [legal experts told the Times], if the boat had already turned away, that would further undermine what they saw as an already weak claim of self-defense.”

Several senators from both parties “have indicated dissatisfaction with the administration’s rationale and questioned the legality of the action,” the Associated Press reported Friday, noting the lawmakers “view it as a potential overreach of executive authority in part by using the military for law enforcement purposes.”

“Our armed forces are not law enforcement agencies. They are not empowered to hunt down suspected criminals and kill them without trial,” Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed of Rhode Island said on the Senate floor this week.

Many details remain murky. That includes “the administration’s evidence that [those on the boat] were gang members. One of the people familiar with the situation said some of those on the boat were affiliated, but not members, of Tren de Aragua,” according to AP. It’s also not clear if the boat was actually carrying drugs. 

Lastly: The nominee to be Joint Chiefs vice chairman vows more procurement reforms. Gen. Christopher Mahoney, currently the Marines’ assistant commandant, told senators at his Thursday confirmation hearing that he’s ready to continue the changes launched by SecDef Hegseth earlier this year. In particular, Mahoney vowed to cut the red tape that slows programs’ progress through the Joint Requirements Oversight Council.

“The JROC—the concept—I think, is completely valid. We have to get rid of some of the bureaucracy, and [current vice chairman] Adm. [Christopher] Grady has started down that road,” Mahoney said. “We have to make the process less burdened by paperwork and more sensitive to speed and product.” 

The ~100-day process sometimes swelled past 800 days, which a GAO report attributed largely to the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, which Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered shut down in an Aug. 20 memo. Defense One’s Meghann Myers explains that and more, here.

Related reading: 

• “Pentagon preps for end-of-year, zero trust blitz,” with plans for a new strategy, detailed guidance, and the review of sub-agencies’ own plans, reports Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams;
• “Cyber Command, NSA to remain under single leader as officials shelve plan to end ‘dual hat,’” The Record reported Tuesday.

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