Permanent fixes for the Boeing tanker have yet to be fielded.

President Trump just vastly expanded the role of the military in U.S. law enforcement across the country. On Monday, he signed an executive order creating a “quick reaction force” of National Guard troops tasked with “quelling civil disturbances” and “ensuring the public safety and order.”

The order calls upon Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to ensure troops in the National Guard of every state “are resourced, trained, organized, and available to assist Federal, State, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety” and directs the secretary to establish “a standing National Guard quick reaction force” for “nationwide deployment.” Hegseth will also work with adjutant generals to decide a number of each state’s Guard “to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes,” the order says.

Notable: State National Guard units are generally controlled by the state’s governor, except in emergencies, Jacob Fischler writes for States Newsroom. 

Also: “It is unusual…for National Guard troops to just live on standby waiting for the president to decide he wants to target crime in a city of his choosing,” the New York Times reports. “Guard troops train part time, often one weekend a month and two weeks a year, to respond to emergencies. They do not sit around waiting for the president to deploy them as a law enforcement arm.”

After threatening to send troops to Chicago on Friday, Trump took several swipes at Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Monday, calling him a “slob” and describing the city of Chicago as a “disaster” and a “killing field.” 

“A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator,” Trump said Monday. “I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person. And when I see what’s happening to our cities, and then you send in troops instead of being praised, they’re saying you’re trying to take over the Republic. These people are sick.” 

“Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago,” Gov. Pritzker told reporters at a press conference Monday in Chicago, alluding to weekend reporting from the Washington Post on Pentagon plans that have been weeks in the making. “This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against. And it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances. What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal, it is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”

“This is not about fighting crime,” Pritzker said. “This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city in a blue state to try and intimidate his political rivals,” he said. “This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey Stephen Miller searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections. There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection.”

Pritzker also noted the rate of violent crime is higher in Republican-dominated states than in those run by Democrats. “Thirteen of the top twenty cities in homicide rates have Republican governors,” he said. “None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top ten states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.”

Regarding National Guard troops, Pritzker said: “It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the guard, to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.” He also warned troops against protesting such deployments, noting “they can be court martialed, and their lives ruined, if they resist deployment.”

“The state of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have,” the Illinois governor said. “We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever in our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.”

Legal-expert reax: “Trump is trying to normalize the militarization of our country. This is where it starts, not where it will end,” said Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. “Trump is dropping the pretense of abiding by the rule of law,” she warned. “A national emergency here, an invasion there. No matter what the truth is, he makes it up as he goes along, shamelessly lying about crime going up, when it’s in fact going down, and accusing agencies that release the statistics that contradict him of fraud when he’s called on the lies.” 

“This isn’t just about Trump’s ‘crime emergency in the District of Columbia.’ It’s about the entire country,” Vance said Monday. “Force and intimidation are not strategies we associate with American presidents. Those are not constitutional prerogatives the Founding Fathers assigned to the president. That is how dictators operate. That is how Trump operates.”

Developing: Trump to nationalize defense firms? After shaking down Intel for a 10% equity stake in the company on Friday, Trump’s commerce secretary said there’s a “monstrous discussion” in the administration about partially nationalizing U.S. defense firms like Lockheed Martin. “Lockheed Martin makes 97% of their revenue from the U.S. government,” Howard Lutnick told CNBC on Tuesday. “They are basically an arm of the U.S. government,” he said. “But I tell you what, there’s a lot of talking that needs to be had about ‘how do we finance our munitions acquisitions?’” And those discussions are ongoing, he said. 

“Trump accused Kamala Harris of being a socialist, but the Biden Administration never nationalized companies,” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board warned Monday. “Why aren’t Republicans pushing back on Mr. Trump’s Intel deal?” they asked. “Not long ago it would have been hard to imagine a Republican President demanding government ownership in a private company, but here we are.”

Second opinion: “Hard to convince younger generations, but for decades, Republicans went on and on about how two of the worst things imaginable were (1) state intervention in the market and (2) DC using federal troops against US states; both so bad the people should be ready for armed rebellion in case it happens,” said University of Illinois international relations professor Nicholas Grossman. 

But are chips different? Ben Thompson, a tech-industry analyst based in Taiwan, writes in his Stratechery column that “chips generally, and foundries specifically, really are a unique case.” With the world’s most advanced chips made by TSMC on an island less than 100 miles off the Chinese coast, Thompson argues, U.S. national security demands extraordinary measures to onshore chipmaking. Read that, here.

Ominous signs: “Something is materially different in our country this week than last,” writes historian and author Garrett Graff. “The president’s military occupation of the capital has escalated in recent days into something not seen since British troops marched the streets of colonial Boston—even though precisely nothing has happened to warrant it.” 

“Saying that our country has tipped over an invisible edge into an authoritarian state plainly is important—and easier than most in the media and pundit class will pretend it is,” he warns. “American fascism looks like the president using armed military units from governors loyal to his regime to seize cities run by opposition political figures and it looks like the president using federal law enforcement to target regime opponents,” Graff says, and emphasizes, “American fascism looks like the would-be self-proclaimed king deploying the military on US soil not only not in response to requests by local or state officials but over—and almost specifically to spite—their vociferous objections.”

“Armed soldiers patrol the streets of the nation’s capital, with more cities apparently to come,” media watchdog Dan Froomkin wrote Monday in a piece he titled, “We have become an authoritarian state, and our top newsrooms are in denial.” He elaborated: “Immigrants who have done nobody any harm are abducted and disappeared by masked agents. The state is seizing stakes of national companies. Election integrity is under attack. Political opponents are targeted with criminal probes. Federal judges’ orders are ignored. Educational institutions are extorted into obedience. Key functions of the government are politicized and degraded. Expertise and science are devalued.”

“Every outrage is just one more thing Trump has done, rather than the ever-mounting evidence of a corrupt dictatorship,” Froomkin warns. “And our dominant media institutions won’t call him out. Rather, they obscure reality under a haze of incremental stories, each one presented as if what is going on is fairly normal. As if it’s just politics…The coverage is a play-by-play as the burners click upward, rather than a check to see if the frog is still alive, which it is not.” 

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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. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1920, the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was certified, giving women the right to vote.

Around the Defense Department

New: The Pentagon’s DIU director Doug Beck has resigned, Reuters reported Monday. According to the wire service, three sources said “officials at the Department of Defense had previously raised concerns about political donations made by Beck to Democrats.” Beck had been in the Defense Innovation Unit position since 2023. 

Background: “The DIU was launched in 2015 to speed up the U.S. military’s adoption of technology coming out of Silicon Valley. The unit, which last year received close to $1 billion from the National Defense Authorization Act, primarily grants contracts to smaller startup companies with less-proven track records with the goal of transitioning them to larger contracts across the Pentagon.” More, here. 

New CNO vows new “engine of naval dominance.” It’s “the foundry”: the Navy’s shipyards, training centers, shore facilities, weapons production lines, and logistics networks, Adm. Daryl Caudle said as he assumed command of the service at a Washington Navy Yard ceremony on Monday morning. “For too long, we’ve treated this interconnected network of force generation as background noise. No longer…From reducing maintenance delays to ensuring spare parts and ordnance flow on time, the foundry will become the engine of naval dominance.” Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams has more, here.

The 34th CNO fills a job left vacant for six months by Hegseth, who fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti without explanation in February. 

Navy to consolidate several acquisition offices into a Rapid Capabilities Office. “The NRCO will serve as the single accountable organization spanning all naval warfare domains, responsible for the rapid assessment, execution, fielding and transition of urgent solutions within a three-year timeframe to ensure U.S. maritime supremacy,” SecNav John Phelan ordered in an Aug. 19 memo obtained by Breaking Defense. Read on, here.

Speaking of acquisition shakeups: RIP, JCIDS. Pete Newell, former leader of the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, applauds Hegseth’s Aug. 20 memo in which he orders the Pentagon to “commence the disestablishment of JCIDS and direct the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) to cease validating Component level requirement documents to the maximum extent permitted by law.”

JCIDS 101: The Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, for those who don’t speak Pentagon, was established in 2003 and most recently updated four years ago to centralize the development of requirements and metrics for the military’s acquisition efforts.

Good riddance, Newell says: “We can continue a process that produces beautifully documented requirements for technology that is often out-of-date before it even reaches the hands of a soldier, or we can embrace a new methodology. The fundamental shift must be this: stop obsessing over requirements and start solving problems.” Read his thoughts at Defense One, here.

Developing: Trump wants a “War Department” instead of a Defense Department, and he said Monday he wants to officially change the name “over the next week or so,” he told reporters Monday at the White House during a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.

“We’re just going to do it,” Trump said when asked if he has considered lawmakers’ opinions on the matter. “I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that. I don’t think we even need that,” he said. CBS News has a bit more on the history of the U.S. military’s name changes, which have been established by Congress.

Russia’s Ukraine invasion, cont.

The Pentagon has blocked Ukraine from attacking Russia with U.S.-provided long-range missiles, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. That includes all ATACMS, or Army Tactical Missile Systems, in a ban that’s been in place since the spring, U.S. officials said. As with many of the Trump administration’s decisions regarding Ukraine, the Pentagon’s #2 civilian Elbridge Colby is said to be behind the ban, which officials called a “review mechanism.” 

“The review gives Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth final say over whether Ukraine can employ the [ATACMS], which have a range of nearly 190 miles, to strike Russia,” the Journal writes.  

Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian oil refineries, knocking an estimated 13% of Russia’s fuel production offline, the Journal reported separately on Monday. “As a result, several regions, including Russian-occupied Crimea and parts of Siberia, have implemented rationing at gas stations,” Yaroslav Trofimov and Georgi Kantchev write. 

“These strikes don’t have a direct impact on the military activity, but they do impact the Russian economy,” former Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin said. “And the Russian economy already has problems, so even a small push can create bottlenecks and multiply problems inside that system.”

Latest: “Ukrainian drones on Sunday set ablaze the strategic Ust-Luga facility on the Baltic Sea, a few days after the Druzhba pipeline that supplies Russian crude oil to Belarus, Hungary and Slovakia was disabled. More than a dozen Russian refineries have been hit over the past month, some several hundred miles from the border, as Ukrainian drones became more potent and more numerous.” More, here. 

Commentary: What Western security guarantees for Ukraine might look like. After President Trump’s high-level meeting at the White House last week with President Zelenskyy and several European leaders, attention has turned to what security guarantees for Ukraine might look like if a peace deal is reached, Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute writes for Defense One. 

The most effective way to guarantee Ukraine’s long-term security is NATO membership, he writes. “But in the short term, President Trump has repeatedly stated that he does not support this idea, nor will he agree to U.S. troops on Ukrainian soil. With this political reality in mind, policymakers should consider a layered approach to guaranteeing Ukraine’s security,” Coffey advises. “No single measure is sufficient, but together they would provide the most robust protection currently possible.”

Step 1: Establish a civilian monitoring mission that can patrol both sides of a line of occupation, should a peace agreement leave Russian troops on Ukrainian soil.

Step 2: Formalize an ensemble of European governments willing to send troops to Ukraine to serve as a deterrent and as a visible demonstration of their commitment to its sovereignty. Several countries, including the UK, France, Canada, and Türkiye, have suggested they could contribute forces.

And “The third layer involves America,” Coffey writes. Exactly how? Read on, here. 

Here’s Trump on security guarantees: “We haven’t even discussed the specifics,” he told reporters Monday. The president was asked, “You rule out boots on the ground in Ukraine, but how would air support as part of a security guarantee be any different?” He replied, “Well, you don’t know what security guarantee is because we haven’t even discussed the specifics of it, and we’ll see. Number one, Europe is going to give them significant security guarantees and they should because they’re right there, but we’ll be involved. From the standpoint of backup, we’re going to help them. And I think if we get a deal and I think we will, but if we get a deal, you’re not going to—I don’t believe you’re going to have much of a problem.” 

Additional reading: 

• “Ukraine Will Receive First Of Thousands Of New U.S. Made Standoff Missiles In The Coming Weeks,” the War Zone reported Monday;
• “US and Russian officials discussed energy deals alongside latest Ukraine peace talks,” Reuters reported Tuesday from London;
• And “A Peace Deal for Ukraine Could Test German Reluctance to Deploy Troops,” the New York Times reported Tuesday from Berlin.  

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Developing: As many as 1,700 National Guardsmen from 19 states are expected to mobilize for President Trump’s immigration crackdown, Fox reported this weekend, citing defense and White House officials. 

Guard units are expected from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. Their assistance with Homeland Security officials is currently expected to run through mid-November. 

The soldiers are expected to assist with “personal data collection, fingerprinting, DNA swabbing and photographing of personnel in ICE custody,” an official told Fox. 

The president is threatening to widen his military deployments to more U.S. cities in the coming weeks, including New York as well as Baltimore, and Chicago, whose states’ governors, Wes Moore and JB Pritzker, are rising leaders in the Democratic party. 

A Chicago deployment is already being planned inside the Pentagon, where the Washington Post reports military strategists have spent the last several weeks mapping out how to help Trump’s “crack down on crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration, in a model that could later be used in other major cities.” Indeed, “I think Chicago will be our next. And then we’ll help with New York,” Trump told reporters on Friday. 

Illinois Gov. Pritzker objected to the development Sunday evening, writing on social media, “There is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalizing the [Illinois National Guard], deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active duty military within our own borders.”

“Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he’s causing families,” Pritzker wrote. “We’ll continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state, and protect Illinoisans.”

Earlier that day, Trump threatened to “send in the ‘troops’” to Baltimore “and quickly clean up the Crime.” He also alleged on social media Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s “record on Crime” is “a very bad one, unless he fudges his figures on crime like many of the other ‘Blue States’ are doing.” 

So Moore invited Trump to join him in a walk through Baltimore in September “at a date of your choosing,” according to a letter sent Thursday (PDF). Moore also touted improved annual crime statistics for the city since taking office in 2023. But as illustrated by the federal takeover of the D.C. police on Aug. 11 despite crime at a 30-year low, the Trump White House does not recognize statistics that don’t fit its framing of Democrat-run cities. 

“As President, I would much prefer that he clean up this crime disaster before I go there for a walk,” Trump replied to Gov. Moore’s invitation on social media.

In case you missed it: Trump vowed to patrol Washington by foot last Thursday alongside troops and police. But “after addressing officers and military personnel who delivered hamburgers and pizza, no patrol was carried out and he returned to the White House,” Politico reminds readers. 

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott didn’t close the door to federal assistance; but he did say “additional resources” could be helpful for the city’s ATF, DEA and FBI field offices. However, he cautioned on social media Friday, “if Trump wants to roll into Baltimore purely to stage a photo op and spew racist narratives about Black-led cities, I speak for the vast majority of our residents when I say: ‘We are not interested,’ as part of a list of ‘commitments’ the city wants to see from the Trump administration.”

Trump’s son, Donald Jr., said he wants to expand the federal takeover of cities “to Portland, [and] Seattle, [and] the other craphole cities of the country,” he said Thursday in an interview with Newsmax. 

Second opinion: Trump is using the military to “intimidate Americans in our own communities,” said Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

Update: National Guard troops in Washington will now be armed with either M17 pistols or M4 rifles, defense officials said over the weekend. Reuters has a bit more. 

• By the way, M17s have been known to fire without anyone pulling the trigger. 
• And check out “Scenes from D.C. as National Guard patrols start carrying weapons,” via Axios in photos on Sunday. 

“Phony emergency,” is how the American Civil Liberties Union describes Trump’s Guard deployments and federal takeover of Washington. “The president relied on a phony emergency as an excuse to overstep his power, and now we have a real emergency—the threat of an unnecessary and disorienting flood of armed military forces on D.C. streets,” Monica Hopkins of the ACLU said in a statement. 

“No matter what uniform they wear, federal agents and military troops are bound by the Constitution, including our rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, due process, and safeguards against unlawful searches and seizures,” she said, and stressed, “If troops or federal agents violate our rights, they must be held accountable.”

Related: New research shows white Republicans found accusations of voter fraud against a fictional Black city considerably more believable than accusations against a fictional white city, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. And as other studies have shown, “white Americans with higher existing racial bias were much more likely to believe fraud accusations than others,” Kevin Morris and Chelsea Jones write. 

Why it matters: “[T]hese lies are grounded in, and reinforce racist attitudes and tie into white America’s long-standing fears of real multiracial democracy,” they write and warn, “As Trump and other influential voices seek to push untrue narratives about Americans of color, we should be vigilant to how this work might seed the next Big Lie and further erode democratic values.”

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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. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1950, President Truman ordered Army Secretary Frank Pace to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a labor strike during the Korean War.

Around the Defense Department

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth fired Defense Intelligence Agency chief, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, whose “initial intelligence assessment of U.S. damage to Iranian nuclear sites angered President Donald Trump,” the Washington Post and Associated Press reported this weekend. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia told the New York Times that Kruse’s firing was linked to that Iranian strike assessment. “The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” Warner said. 

Hegseth also fired Navy Reserve chief Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore and Rear Adm. Milton Sands, the head of Naval Special Warfare Command. “No reasons were given for their firings, the latest in a series of steps targeting military leaders, intelligence officials and other perceived critics of Trump, who has demanded loyalty across the government,” AP notes. 

Additional reading: 

• “Air Force Top Enlisted Leader Says Service Oath Isn’t Made to ‘Any Individual’ Amid General’s Retirement,” Military-dot-com reported Friday; 
• “In Trump’s Second Term, Far-Right Agenda Enters the Mainstream,” notably the description of migrants as “invaders,” the New York Times reported Saturday;
• ICYMI, “Trump’s rhetoric about DC echoes a history of racist narratives about urban crime,” via AP two weeks ago;
• “Foreign Diplomats Are Worried About the Rule of Law in Trump’s America,” Politico reported Monday;
• “Pentagon terminating JCIDS process as part of larger acquisition reform: Memo,” Breaking Defense reported Friday; 
• And “The Army wants AI to aid in vehicle repairs,” Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reported Friday.

Around the world

Ukrainian sharpshooters in prop-driven training aircraft are downing Russian drones. With Western interceptor missiles so scarce and costly, the country’s defenders have found success going after Orlan and Zala reconnaissance drones, and Shahed explosive drones, with riflemen firing from the back seats of Soviet-era Yak-52s. The two members of one particular aircrew “have flown around 300 combat missions as part of the 11th Army Aviation Brigade and downed almost half the unit’s total of 120 drones eliminated” in the past year, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

Factoid: “Last month, around 11% of all long-range drones launched by Russia got through Ukraine’s air defenses, according to data analyzed by the Center for Information Resilience, a U.K.-based open-source investigations organization.” That’s in part because of unceasing innovation by the Russians, who have begun equipping drones with rear-facing cameras to detect pursuing aircraft and missiles. Read on at the Journal, which has pictures of the planes and crews, here.

P.S. Russia’s doing it too. In May, The War Zone reported on Russia’s efforts to equip its own Yaks with small arms and sensor pods for the counter-drone mission. 

S. Korean president to meet Trump at White House today. Lee Jae-myung told reporters on the way to his first summit of the new administration that he is pushing back against U.S. efforts to enlist Seoul’s help in focusing on China. “This is not an issue we can easily agree with,” Lee said, as reported by NPR.

Background: “The U.S. has some 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea. For about two decades, it has called for “strategic flexibility” to deploy them to meet security challenges away from the Korean Peninsula. And it wants South Korea’s support, including potentially sending troops to other countries and regions. South Korea has previously sent soldiers to assist the U.S. in Vietnam and Iraq. But it considers North Korea, not China, its main threat, and does not want to get dragged into a conflict with China over, for example, Taiwan,” writes NPR, here.

CSIS: North Korea has a secret missile base near China. A base in Sinpung, 17 miles from the Chinese border, likely houses a brigade-sized unit equipped with six to nine nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles and their mobile launchers, according to a report issued last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

“These missiles pose a potential nuclear threat to East Asia and the continental United States,” the report said. “Current assessments are that during times of crisis or war, these launchers and missiles will exit the base, meet special warhead storage, transportation units, and conduct launch operations from dispersed pre-surveyed sites.” 

The report cites informed sources, as well as declassified documents, satellite images and open-source information, according to the WSJ.

And lastly: Taiwan plans a big defense-spending hike under U.S. pressure. Reuters: “Taiwan plans to boost defence spending by a fifth next year, surpassing 3% of gross domestic product, as it invests billions more in new equipment to better face down China and convince the United States it takes seriously calls to bolster its military.”

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Inside the Pentagon plan to Americanize drone warfare. Years of talk about rapidly scaling up drone forces have produced interesting prototypes and lively experiments with relatively small numbers of drones—but no clear sense of how the United States would conduct the kind of sustained drone warfare pioneered in Ukraine. A combination of recent developments, tech breakthroughs, and policy changes suggests that could soon change.

The T-REX event in Indiana brought together drone makers, AI, data, and communications software companies to show off not just how well new autonomous drones can hit targets, but also next steps for mass, coordinated drone warfare. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker was there, and pulls the strings together in this report.

The Army is equipping its Black Hawks to launch drones. Helo maker Sikorsky will make software and hardware upgrades under a $43 million contract that will also give the venerable rotorcraft a “more powerful engine, airframe enhancements and a main fuel upgrade,” reports Defense One’s Meghann Myers.

Black Hawk crew will be able to launch and operate drones in flight, part of a larger push toward so-called “launched effects,” one of the cornerstones of the Army Transformation Initiative.

But how long will the UH-60 be central to the Army’s operations? Myers wraps up the signs of a decline in importance, here.

Developing: The U.S. military is “preparing target sets” for strikes against alleged drug cartels in Mexico, independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reported Thursday. 

“The strikes were discussed at a July meeting at NORTHCOM HQ in Colorado Springs led by Colby Jenkins, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations,” he writes. “Within days, Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, commander of NORTHCOM, hosted the two highest ranking Mexican military officials: Gen. Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, Secretary of National Defense, and Adm. Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, Secretary of the Navy.”

Targets allegedly include the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. “Direct attacks could also involve air and drone strikes,” Klippenstein writes. 

It’s unclear just yet how Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum would respond. She’s said recently she’s flatly opposed to U.S. troops on the ground inside Mexico. However, “Trump, military sources also tell me, is focused on results, willing to ignore law, rules, and even policy recommendations in his zeal to have ‘progress’ towards his goals with regard to national security,” Klippenstein says. More, here. 

• ICYMI: We discussed strikes against cartels in a recent podcast conversation with special operations author Kevin Maurer. Find that discussion, here. 

Also: Drug traffickers in Colombia allegedly used a drone to shoot down a Black Hawk helicopter carrying a dozen police Thursday morning, the Wall Street Journal reports. All 12 passengers perished in the attack. 

Notable uptick: “Since the first attack by drone in Colombia in April of last year, the military here says there have been 301 strikes with unmanned aerial vehicles,” the Journal’s Juan Forero reports from Bogota. “At least 22 soldiers and police officers have died in the attacks.”

The U.S. military says it killed an ISIS official during a raid in northern Syria on Tuesday. Neither militant was named, but Central Command officials described them as “a senior ISIS member and key financier who planned attacks in Syria and Iraq.” 

The Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister says the man killed was Saleh Nouman, who was allegedly spotted by Syrian forces “in al-Dana, but he fled to Atmeh—where a joint US airborne raid was planned.” Tiny bit more from CENTCOM, here. 

Additional reading: 

• “U.S. Navy Sailor Convicted of Spying for China,” the Department of Justice announced Thursday; read more at U.S. Naval Institute News or the San Diego Union-Tribune; 
• “B-1 bombers, NATO fighters fly over Latvia to show unified force,” Military Times reported Thursday; 
• “Another US military mini shuttle launches on a secret mission,” the Associated Press reported Thursday; 
• And in an update, “Pilot rescued after U.S. fighter jet crashes off coast of Virginia,” CBS News reported Thursday. 

Insider POV: Allvin’s surprise exit signals a pivot for the Air Force, not Hegseth pressure, sources say. On Monday, Allvin announced his plans to retire after serving just two years as the service’s highest-ranking officer, typically a four-year job. No reason was given in the Air Force press release that contained his announcement. Allvin’s abrupt retirement wasn’t driven by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but by growing frustration with the service’s priorities, multiple people familiar with the decision told Defense One’s Audrey Decker. 

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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. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1844, U.S. Navy officer George Francis De Long was born in New York City. In the fall of 1879, De Long led an expedition searching for a way to the North Pole via the Bering Strait. Nearly two years into the quest, his ship was crushed in an ice pack in the East Siberian Sea. De Long, 37, died of starvation about four months later.  

Deportation nation

The Pentagon is offering its civilians a chance to work for ICE. “Volunteers will serve in critical support roles up to 180 days at an [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] or [Customs and Border Protection] facility,” the online alert reads. The offer extends to civilians of “any grade,” and notes, “Travel, lodging, and per diem may be reimbursed by the receiving agency.” 

Work includes: “Data Entry” and “Operational Planning Support,” as well as various processing tasks such as helping agents with the “physical flow of detained illegal aliens from arrest to deportation,” and other logistical considerations “to improve efficiencies and the effectiveness of operations.”

There are no education requirements, and applicants must have worked at “their current agency for more than 90 days and are no longer in a probationary period.” 

Note: “Conditions at some locations could be austere,” and “Deployment locations are based on need and are not negotiable,” according to the bulletin. More, here. 

New: A judge has ordered Florida to stop expanding its “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center because “state officials never sufficiently explained why the facility needed to be in the middle of the Florida Everglades,” the Associated Press reports. “What is apparent, however, is that in their haste to construct the detention camp, the State did not consider alternative locations,” District Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida said in her 82-page order. 

“Every Florida governor, every Florida senator, and countless local and national political figures, including presidents, have publicly pledged their unequivocal support for the restoration, conservation, and protection of the Everglades,” Williams wrote. “This Order does nothing more than uphold the basic requirements of legislation designed to fulfill those promises.” More, here. 

Related: AP also takes readers “Inside the facility where ICE is training recruits to take on Trump’s deportation goals” at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia.

Developing: ICE wants to spend millions of dollars on “custom, gold-detailed vehicle wraps” (see here) for its SUVs patrolling the nation’s capital, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Critics call it excessive and unnecessary. More, here. 

Big picture consideration: Republican lawmakers’ “Big Beautiful Bill” funds an unprecedented surge in federal law enforcement. But is that even possible? Eric Katz of GovExec tallied up many of the planned personnel changes and stacked those against past pledges to boost hiring. Consulting history, he found that “Even when some agencies previously received authorization and funding to hire, they failed to do so in significant numbers.”

“Potential bottlenecks include background checks and training capacity,” Katz writes. On the other hand, “Early returns show some positive signs for the administration. ICE recently boasted it has received 100,000 job applications. CBP has seen a surge in applicants. The rate at which applicants are onboarded, however, has barely moved.” Continue reading, here. 

One way to add more federal agents: Lower recruiting standards, as the F.B.I. has done in a change that is “alarming agents,” according to the New York Times, reporting Thursday. 

Trump 2.0

ODNI to shrink further under new reorganization plan. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which has already shrunk its workforce by about one-quarter this year, will lose another 200 workers in coming weeks under an “ODNI 2.0” restructuring, the U.S. spy chief said Wednesday.

The office had slightly less than 2,000 employees at the start of the Trump administration and now has around 1,500. The additional cut would bring the year’s total reduction to about 35 percent. In a press release this week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claimed the changes would “reduce ODNI by over 40%” by Sept. 30 and “save taxpayers over $700 million per year.” More, here. 

Also: On July 20, Gabbard ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to stop sharing information with the so-called Five Eyes allies, which includes the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, CBS News reported Thursday. “The memo also limited distribution of material regarding peace talks to within the agencies that created or originated the intelligence,” Jim LaPorta writes for CBS. 

Reminder: President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have long criticized the U.S. intelligence community, particularly after it concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Trump. And just last month, Gabbard issued a report that she said showed a contradiction between the IC’s internal assessments and public statements about Russian interference. But in fact, the public statement matched the internal assessments.

Related commentary: Former CIA Director Bill Burns wrote “A Letter to America’s Discarded Public Servants” this week in The Atlantic. In short, “You all deserved better” than to be downsized under the current administration.

One week ago, Trump met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to find an end to Putin’s Ukraine invasion. Seven days later, nothing has changed. But Trump’s effort stalled out in a mere four days, according to the Wall Street Journal, reporting Friday. 

What’s going on: “The failure to reach a diplomatic breakthrough stems in part from sharp differences in negotiating style between Putin and Trump,” the Journal writes. “The U.S. president, former aides said, has an improvisational approach that is heavily dependent on personal relationships.” However, “Putin is playing a longer game, calculating that Russia can gradually improve its position on the battlefield while the diplomats talk, even if it is at the expense of thousands of casualties on both sides.”

Expert reax: “We are where we were two weeks ago, we are where we were six months ago,” said Kurt Volker, who was Trump’s representative for Ukraine negotiations during his first term. “There’s never going to be an agreement. Putin will never agree.” 

Read more: 

• “Exclusive: Putin’s demand to Ukraine: give up Donbas, no NATO and no Western troops, sources say,” Reuters reported Thursday; 
• And “Proposed Ukraine land concessions are Putin’s trap, EU top diplomat Kallas says,” the BBC reported Friday. 

Lastly this week: “The Trump White House has launched an official TikTok account, despite [Congress’] TikTok sale-or-ban law and another looming deadline,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported this week. 

Additional reading: 

• “These workers built America’s nuclear arsenal. Trump hit pause on their medical claims,” Reuters reported Friday; 
• “Trump DOJ hired lawyer who compared Jan. 6 prosecutions to the Holocaust,” NPR reported Friday; 
• “State Dept. Unlawfully Withheld Visas Under Trump’s Travel Ban, Judge Rules,” the New York Times reported Thursday; 
• See also: “The Rise of Right-Wing Nihilism,” via David Brooks, writing Thursday for the opinion pages of the New York Times.

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