US may reduce Syrian training effort; Navy, Marines will open all jobs to women; UK tells arms makers to think ‘export’; Rock Island Arsenal braces for budgetary siege; And a bit more.

The White House and the Pentagon are drawing up new plans for a “scaled-back” Syrian train-and-equip program, FP’s Dan De Luce reports. “Under the proposal that is still being drafted, the rebels would focus mostly on key tasks associated with air power and communications, playing a supporting role instead of leading combat operations...Although the idea of empowering rebels to help direct air raids is not new, previous plans had anticipated a broader combat mission for the force.” More here.
Ahead of a key Senate hearing today, a Pentagon inquiry into doctored intel reports refines its target(s). The Defense Department inspector general’s investigation into allegedly altered intelligence reports in the ISIS fight is now zeroing in on “senior intelligence officials who supervise dozens of military and civilian analysts at United States Central Command,” The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo reported Tuesday night. An analyst told NYT “that the complaints involve the highest-ranking officials in Centcom’s intelligence unit, run by Army Maj. Gen. Steven R. Grove.”
Expect to hear some cautious back-and-forth on the topic later today when Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of CENTCOM, testifies alongside the defense undersecretary for policy, Christine Wormuth, at the Senate Armed Services committee on the war against ISIS in just under an hour. Livestream it here.

While the Pentagon maintains its radio silence with the Russian military, the White House is finding itself in an increasingly tight negotiating spot as Moscow elbows its way into Middle East’s wars, NYT reports ahead of a UN General Assembly meeting later this month in New York, which Obama and Putin are both slated to attend. “While Mr. Kerry is an advocate of engaging, some officials in the White House and the State Department worry that a meeting in New York would embolden Mr. Putin, in effect restoring his stature as a major world player on one of the biggest stages.” More on that angle, here.
But Russia’s overt and covert global posturing is shaking up Pentagon budgetary prep, Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord told Bloomberg. “‘There will be changes’ to budget requests from the four branches of the U.S. military to emphasize threats from Russia, McCord said in an interview,” citing “Russia’s emergence as a sophisticated actor in cyberwarfare is one ‘key driver’ of the evolving U.S. strategy.”
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad pleaded his case for staying in power on Russian TV this morning, calling for “all political and armed factions in the country to unite in the fight against terrorist groups” before he would consider any sort of power-sharing agreement, AP reports.
In Assad’s view, virtually everyone but Damascus and its immediate allies (e.g., Russia, Iran) supports the kind of terrorism that’s destabilizing his country and sending tens of thousands of citizens fleeing Syria for a better life elsewhere. Assad fingered Turkey, the U.S., and Europe as a whole, and said the Syrian refugee crisis will continue until these parties end their “protection for terrorists.”
Meanwhile, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Moscow next week to talk about the Syrian crisis, Israeli officials said this morning.
And Russia, as current head of the UN Security Council, just called for a special session on the Middle East and North Africa, scheduled for Sept. 30, Reuters reports.
Australia has dropped its first bombs on Islamic State positions inside Syria. The strikes occurred on Monday and were delivered by a pair of F/A-18A Hornet fighter jets over the eastern part of the country, Defense Minister Kevin Andrews said this morning.
And rapid ISIS advances in Syria’s northern Aleppo province—coupled with intelligence reports warning of renewed jihadist calls to strike in Europe—have compelled France into joining the Syrian bombing campaign, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said this morning (though no bombs have been dropped yet).
“What is certain is that things have changed drastically,” Le Drian said. “It's true in Aleppo, but also on the Homs-Damascus line. Today Daesh has progressed in a way that it is threatening the Syrian resistance in Aleppo region, but also Lebanon if it manages to break through the Damascus-Homs axis.” More here.

Navy, Marines to open all jobs to women. More than a month before his deadline, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a Tuesday speech that he won’t ask for exemptions to keep any billets all-male. “Mabus has made up his mind: there’s no job in the Navy or Marine Corps that’s going to be off-limits to women,” writes Defense One’s Brad Peniston.
“That may have come as a surprise to the Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. Joe Dunford; Marine Corps Times reported Thursday that Dunford had met with the secretary on the issue but had yet to issue his recommendations. Defense Secretary Ash Carter asked the services to complete their reviews of obstacles to full gender integration and report back by Oct. 1.” Read the rest, with a link to Mabus’s full speech, here.

From Defense One

UK asks its arms makers to design for export. British defense companies, accustomed to making bespoke weapons for the MoD, are being urged to consider overseas requirements as well. “British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has a message for U.K. defense firms: If you want to boost profits, make sure you can sell your products overseas.”
“Fallon vowed that the Defence Ministry would champion U.K. companies to allies and will ‘lead on key, strategic export campaigns’ around the world.” Global Business Reporter Marcus Weisgerber has the story, here.

Sequester threats have the U.S. military’s largest weapons manufacturing arsenal in a world of uncertainty. “As Iowa takes center stage in the 2016 race, the Rock Island Arsenal has stayed largely outside the spotlight,” Defense One’s Molly O’Toole reports. “Washington’s budget stalemate affects 7,500 employees at Rock Island Arsenal, which contributes more than $1 billion annually to the local economy and supports more than 50,000 active, reserve and retired military and civilian employees for 150 miles around.”
“Lawmakers have only 10 workdays to come up with a spending solution before the government shuts down. Republican leaders are planning for a short-term, stop-gap funding bill known as a continuing resolution. Rock Island’s managers, however, don’t know what to expect.”
The arsenal that manufactures and assembles some 300 military products, including springs and sights, gun mounts, recoil mechanisms, artillery carriages, Humvee shelter boxes, and long-range artillery howitzers. They even make the spikes on the White House fence. Read O’Toole’s report in full here.

‘Countries of concern’ invited to DSEI. It’s hardly man-bites-dog news when countries with less-than-stellar human-rights records show up at international arms shows. But Quartz’s Aamna Mohdin notes a special irony when the government lists other states as “countries of concern,” then invites more than a dozen of them to its largest defense exposition. Of the 61 countries invited to the Defence and Security Equipment International Exhibition (DSEI) in London, “14 are authoritarian regimes and four are on the British government’s own ‘countries of concern’ list. The event is supported by the UK’s ministry of defense and export promotion agency.” Read the piece, here.

For sale: underground hamster city for humans. An Estonian company has begun manufacturing mobile underground bunkers, the better to protect local infrastructure from its increasingly aggressive neighbor Russia. But other countries are buying them too. Weisgerber has the story.

In one week—on Wednesday, September 23—join DOD acquisition head Frank Kendall as he keynotes Defense One LIVE’s “The State of Defense Acquisition” in Crystal City, Va. Catch the full agenda and register for your spot right here.

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Brad Peniston. Want to share The D Brief with a friend? Here’s our subscribe link. And please tell us what you like, don’t like, or want to drop on our radar right here at the-d-brief@defenseone.com.

This morning, Defense Secretary Ash Carter takes the stage at the Air Force Association’s Air and Space conference at 10 a.m. Livestream that one here.

The “national security” speech that hardly was. Republican front-runner Donald Trump took to the deck of the decommissioned battleship USS Iowa to talk sweepingly on veterans, Mexico, the Iran deal, and bolstering the U.S. military—though observers were hard-pressed to find anything resembling specific policy proposals.
On rebuilding the military: “We’re gonna make our military so big and so strong and so great and it will be so powerful that I don’t think we’re ever going to have to use it. Nobody’s gonna mess with us.”
On the Iran deal: “One of the dumbest deals and weakest contracts I’ve ever seen of any kind.”
On veterans: “We have illegal immigrants who are treated better than our veterans right now...We’re gonna create a whole new system, we're gonna take this system apart, and if they're not doing the job the veterans are going to go to private doctors, private hospitals.”
On border security: “There’s tremendous crime, there’s tremendous drugs pouring across the border…We’re going to build a wall.”
On his GOP competition: “I’m fighting some very nice people; they’re very nice people, even though I’m leading in the polls…They’re never going to do anything with these countries. They’re never going to be able to do it. It’s an instinct. It’s something that’s special. They don’t have it. Believe me, they don’t have it. It’s just going to be more of the same.”
Notably short on specifics. “The Republican front-runner gave no details on how he would pay for an expansion in the armed forces—or veterans’ health care—leaving his foreign policy agenda still mostly a blank slate,” AP reports.
“The roughly 12-minute speech,” Military Times’ Leo Shane III writes, “came less than 24 hours before the second GOP candidates debate and amid another surge in the polls by Trump. About a third of would-be Republican voters say they they’d back the business mogul, in spite of (or because of) his lack of any experience in public office.”
By the way: “CNN has run 2,159 pieces on Donald Trump since June 16. That equals 1 per hour...for 24 hours...for 90 straight days,” says WSJ’s Dennis Berman.

How to cover up a “dirty war” in Eastern Europe. The Daily Beast got their hands on an excerpt of a new report set for a Thursday release entitled “An Invasion by Any Other Name: The Kremlin’s Dirty War in Ukraine” from The Interpreter, a special project of the Institute of Modern Russia. The excerpt outlines “attempts by Russian civil society to get to the bottom of a ‘missing’ paratrooper company of Russia’s Pskov Airborne Troops Division, said to have been killed in action in Ukraine.”

Last-minute Bergdahl PR push. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s attorney wants the Army to release portions of its investigation into his disappearance, something he requested five months ago, he reminded folks now less than two days away from his client’s court appearance for an Article 32 investigation. Military Times has the story, with all the gritty details, here.

And finally today, a craft-brew company gives drinkers the chance to read the story of a fallen soldier on every can of beer. Dog Tag Brewing, based in Belgrade, Mont., and led by Marine veteran and public affairs officer Seth Jordan, is behind the remembrance effort—which not everyone in the military community is overjoyed about—and you can read all about it right here.