Budget-day bottom lines; Kim Jong Un a ‘madman with nuclear weapons’; WH split on next Afghanistan steps; Meet the eagle that protects NATO HQ; And a bit more.
Want a military buildup? Wait a couple years. As telegraphed earlier this year, the Trump administration’s first defense budget proposal is about readiness, not rebuilding, Pentagon officials told reporters yesterday, just hours after the $639 billion defense spending request went to Capitol Hill. That total, which “includes a $574 billion “base budget” plus $65 billion to fight in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria and send more troops to Europe — tops the current year’s base-plus-OCO total by about $52 billion,” Marcus Weisgerber reports.
That’s far too little, according to Sen. John McCain and other GOP lawmakers; yet far too much, according to the 2011 Budget Control Act, which caps 2018 defense base spending at $549 billion. Taking note of this odd situation, McCain hammered the Trump administration yesterday for sending a budget proposal so controversial that it affords no obvious path to any legislative compromise that would help lift the caps.
Real quick now, some details from the budget that McCain declared “dead on arrival”:
The Navy would get $171.5 billion, up $6.5 billion from last year, including more money for maintenance but $1 billion less for shipbuilding. Reports USNI News: “The Navy intends to buy just one Littoral Combat Ship in Fiscal Year 2018 – in line with its previous long-range shipbuilding plans but not enough to keep the two yards currently building LCSs open and competitive in the upcoming frigate competition.” More, here.
The Air Force, meanwhile, is sensing a turn in fiscal fortune, enough to keep around three Cold War-era aircraft that were once to be retired so the money could go toward newer planes. The A-10, U-2, and F-15C will fly on, Weisgerber reports. “Lawmakers are likely to support the plan since they have routinely added funds to save the A-10 and U-2 from retirement time after time in recent years.” More, here. Bottom line for the Air Force: $183 billion, up from $171 billion last year, including “the biggest leap — up $5 billion from $20.2 billion to $25.4 billion” for research and development, Defense News reports.
And the Army? Its “base budget is $137.2 billion, up from $130.3 billion enacted in fiscal 2017,” money that will largely go to operations and maintenance, Defense News reports.
The budget also requests a new round of BRAC, the base closings that make sense to just about everyone except lawmakers whose districts they affect. Washington Post, here.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration remains intent on cutting the State Department’s budget by some 30 percent. LA Times, here.
From Defense One
Trump's Military Buildup Won't Begin Until 2019 // Marcus Weisgerber: Pentagon officials says they're working to fix readiness first, then grow the military.
Course Change: The US Air Force Now Wants to Keep the A-10, U-2, and F-15C // Marcus Weisgerber: In a reversal, the service will not retire three Cold War-era planes still making an impact on the battlefield.
Hey, NATO, Let's Move Those 50 US Thermonuclear Weapons Out of Turkey // Joe Cirincione: Why risk it? Even if NATO wants the nukes in Europe, Erdogan's unstable regime is 68 miles from Syria, the hottest conflict zone on earth.
Trump's First Defense Budget Has North Korea Written All Over It // Patrick Tucker: There's lots of money in the Pentagon's 2018 spending proposal to stop missiles of the sort that Pyongyang keeps launching.
Who Are the Shadow Brokers? // Bruce Schneier: What is—and isn't—known about the mysterious hackers leaking National Security Agency secrets.
The Civil Service's Preference for Hiring Military Vets Comes at a Hidden Cost // Gregory B. Lewis: The U.S. government has long shown a hiring preference for veterans. But because of the demographics of the U.S. military, this has limited the federal workforce's diversity.
Kim Jong Un Plans to Mass-Produce Ballistic Missiles // Aria Bendix: After a successful test launch on Sunday, the North Korean leader approved the deployment of medium-range ballistic missiles.
Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. #OTD1941: German warships sink HMS Hood, along with all but three of the battleship’s crew of 1,418. Got tips? Email us at the-d-brief@defenseone.com. (And if you’re reading this on our website, consider subscribing. It’s free.)
White House officials are reportedly split on the U.S. military’s proposal to send more troops to Afghanistan. “The Pentagon is pushing to reinforce the Afghan army with up to 5,000 more American troops,” The New York Times reports ahead of President Trump’s first NATO summit later this week in Brussels.
Where things stand: “The international security force assisting the Afghan army has about 13,000 troops, of which about 8,400 are American soldiers. Pentagon officials said that 3,000 to 5,000 additional troops, including hundreds of Special Operations forces, could be sent.”
The debate centers on “how Mr. Trump will reconcile the split between his war cabinet—led by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser, who both served in Afghanistan – and his political aides, among them his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who argue that a major deployment would be a slippery slope to nation building, something Mr. Trump has always shunned.”
The military meets the skeptics: “Senior Pentagon officials are broadly supportive of the American commanders’ request for several thousand additional troops in Afghanistan, but they acknowledge they face persistent questions, if not outright opposition, to the plans from certain corners of the White House. In addition to the cost and the worries about nation building, critics doubt that President Ashraf Ghani will be any more effective than his predecessors in curbing the rampant corruption in his country that has siphoned off billions of dollars in American aid in the last decade.” Read the rest, here.
Raptors set to counter drones. Ahead of NATO’s Thursday summit in Belgium, that famous Dutch counter-drone system—an American Sea Eagle—“will be on standby in Brussels in case drones are flown in unauthorised airspace,” Dutch news agency ANP reported this week. See a video from PBS on the “system,” published last September, over here.
Views on NATO are improving on both sides of the Atlantic, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center. The takeaways: “Today, roughly six-in-ten Americans hold a favorable opinion of the security alliance, up from just over half in 2016.”
As well, “Majority support for NATO has also strengthened in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. And after a steep decline a year ago, most French again express a favorable view of the security alliance.”
How it breaks down in the U.S. “liberals (81%) are much more supportive of NATO than conservatives (48%). In fact, American liberals’ opinions of the alliance have improved 23 percentage points since 2016. Conservatives’ views are unchanged.”
Perhaps most noteworthy: “Donald Trump’s criticism of NATO resonates with his political base. Less than half of Republicans (47%) hold a favorable view of the alliance. The current 31-point partisan divide over NATO compares with only a 6-point gap in 2016.”
There’s also this: “a solid majority of Americans say the U.S. should militarily defend a NATO ally if embroiled in an armed conflict with Russia,” Pew writes. The Wall Street Journal has a bit more on that angle, and more on the results overall, here.
If not stopped, North Korea is on an “inevitable path” to a nuclear-armed ICBM, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart told senators Tuesday. “If left on its current trajectory the regime will ultimately succeed in fielding a nuclear-armed missile capable of threatening the United States homeland,” Stewart said.
“While nearly impossible to predict when this capability will be operational, the North Korean regime is committed and is on a pathway where this capability is inevitable.”
Adds Reuters: “John Schilling, a missile expert contributing to Washington’s 38 North think tank, estimated it would take until at least 2020 for North Korea to be able to develop an ICBM capable of reaching the U.S. mainland and until 2025 for one powered by solid fuel.” More here.
Said Japan’s top military officer: waiting on North Korea to develop a nuclear-armed ballistic missile “is something we cannot be optimistic about.”
Writes Stars and Stripes: “To guard against North Korea’s advances, Japan is upgrading its Pac-3 Patriot missile defense and its Aegis ship missile-defense systems...Japan is also considering deployment of the SM-3 Block IIA missile interceptor...U.S. contractor Raytheon and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are working jointly on the interceptor’s development.” Read the rest from Tokyo, here.
The object South Korea recently shot down coming from the North? It wasn’t a drone; rather, a balloon “probably” carrying propaganda leaflets from Pyongyang, AP reported Tuesday in a follow-up.
The Philippines appear to have leaked a transcript of a conversation in late April between President Trump and Philippine President Rody Duterte, The Intercept reported Tuesday evening after getting their hands on the document from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Some of what’s inside: President Trump labeled North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un a “madman with nuclear weapons”; Trump casually mentioned the U.S. has two nuclear-armed submarines in the region; Duterte said North Korea’s Kim is “playing with his bombs, his toys” and said that “his mind is not working well and he just might go crazy one moment”; and Trump praised Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem.”
The Washington Post reports, Trump “asked Duterte whether China has ‘power over’ Kim, the Philippines president responded: ‘Yes, at the end of the day, the last card, the ace, has to be with China. It’s only China.’” More from WaPo’s summary, here; or dive into the many pages of reporting The Intercept cranked out for the occasion, here.
Duterte to Russian President Vladimir Putin: We need “modern arms” to fight ISIS, and I think you can help. That short hit from Reuters, here.
UK on highest alert after Manchester attack. British Prime Minister Theresa May elevated the country’s threat level from severe to the highest rating, critical, on Tuesday. “The announcement,” writes the Washington Post, “clears the way for thousands of British troops to take to the streets and replace police officers in guarding key sites.”
May and her security team believe “that the attacker who carried out Monday’s bombing may have been part of a wider network that is poised to strike again,” WaPo writes. Story, here.
And happening today: The Stimson Center is hosting an 11:00 a.m. EDT event to dive into the “strategic implications” of President Trump’s first budget. Stimson is also using the occasion to release a new report, “Overseas Contingency Operations: The Pentagon’s $80 billion Loophole.” More information, as well as a livestream for that event, here.