Navy delays Crozier call; Outbreak grows on USS Kidd; COVID economic losses mount; Afghanistan’s prisoner dilemma; Facebook’s automated future; And a bit more.

The U.S. Navy’s newest acting secretary wants a “deeper” investigation into Capt. Brett Crozier’s firing and whether the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt’s skipper should be reinstated. That surprise announcement came this morning, and follows a series of reports that Pentagon leaders (namely Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and the Navy’s top admiral) are divided over Crozier’s fate. Read more at Defense One’s running blog of coronavirus-related news, the Prognosis.

Full statement from Acting Secretary of the Navy James McPherson: 

• “After carefully reviewing the preliminary inquiry into the events surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, provided me with his recommendations. Following our discussion, I have unanswered questions that the preliminary inquiry has identified and that can only be answered by a deeper review. Therefore, I am directing Adm. Gilday to conduct a follow-on command investigation. This investigation will build on the good work of the initial inquiry to provide a more fulsome understanding of the sequence of events, actions, and decisions of the chain of command surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt.”

On another ship, a fast-growing coronavirus problem — this time onboard the destroyer USS Kidd. The number of confirmed cases among its crew leapt from 47 on Monday to 78 today, CNN’s Ryan Browne reports from the Navy’s latest figures. One out of every four sailors on the Kidd, which is docked in San Diego, have tested positive for the coronavirus. 

The Kidd “will be cleaned room-by-room, with access to each space restricted. The process is expected to take approximately two weeks, at which time the confirmed healthy sailors will return to the ship, and the off-going sailors will begin their quarantine,” the service’s Naval Surface Force Pacific said in a statement to the U.S. Naval Institute news on Tuesday.

And select members of the crew will undergo a voluntary study to learn about the spread of the virus. That blood serology work is going to be conducted by the Navy Bureau of Medicine and the CDC. “A similar study is underway aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt, which was the first deployed ship to suffer a COVID-19 outbreak,” USNI’s Sam LaGrone reports.

The economic damage is becoming more clear today as Reuters reports “The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter at its sharpest pace since the Great Recession,” with a 4.8 percent drop in GDP — which, according to the Wall Street Journal, is “a steeper decline than expected.” 

The New York Times’ headline: “U.S. Economy Shrank at Fastest Rate in a Decade, With Worse to Come”

What now? "Economists expect an even sharper contraction in GDP in the second quarter," Reuters writes, since "Most economists have dismissed the idea of a quick and sharp rebound, or V-shaped recovery, arguing that many small businesses will disappear." More here.

Food for thought. Review "Five Ways the U.S. Military Will Change After the Pandemic," according to Dave Barno and Nora Bensahel, writing in War on the Rocks Tuesday. Read on, here. Have other ideas? We’d like to hear them.

From Defense One

Global Defense Spending Decline Expected As Nations Deal with Coronavirus // Marcus Weisgerber: Experts see domestic projects taking priority over national security in the coming years.

The Flying Car Of the Future Looks to Flying Cars of the Past // Patrick Tucker: The Air Force is close to testing an experimental vertical takeoff prototype under its new program.

Pentagon Blasts Lawmakers’ Critique Of COVID-19 Response // Katie Bo Williams: Democratic lawmakers accused SecDef of leading a “disjointed and slow” response to the pandemic.

Zoom or Not? NSA Offers Guidance for Choosing a Videochat App // Mariam Baksh, Nextgov: The crypto agency has a list of questions for federal employees and contractors to ask as they choose a collaboration tool.

The Pentagon's Spectrum Defeat May Presage a Loss of Other Key Frequencies // Mariam Baksh, Nextgov: Rejecting appeals by Defense officials and their Congressional allies, the FCC approved a private company's use of spectrum near ones used by GPS.

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief from Ben Watson with Kevin Baron. Send us tips from your community right here. And if you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. On this day in 1944, 31-year-old nurse and journalist Nancy Wake parachuted into Nazi-occupied France to help coordinate resistance fighters and resupply drops in the Auvergne region ahead of D-Day. 

Turkey just sent a planeload of protective gear to the U.S., along with a letter from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to President Donald Trump which promised Turkey “will continue to demonstrate solidarity [with the U.S.] in every way possible.”
What was on the plane: “500,000 surgical masks, 4,000 overalls, 2,000 liters (528 gallons) of disinfectant, 1,500 goggles, 400 N-95 masks and 500 face shields,” the Associated Press reports today from Ankara, adding, “Turkey has sent similar medical equipment aid to a total of 55 countries — including Britain, Italy and Spain.”
For the record, Erdogan wants to ease some COVID-19 restrictions as soon as the end of May.
China is targeting a May 22 return-to-work date for lawmakers in the national legislature, AP reports today from Beijing. It’s still unclear, however, whether the roughly 3,000 delegates will VTC in or arrive in-person. A bit more to China’s crafted public messaging about reopening, here.

In Afganistan, a suicide bomber killed three civilians near a commando base in south Kabul today, AP reports from the Afghan capital. Fifteen others were wounded in the attack, “which took place a day after the country’s defense minister and the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan visited the facility.”
In case you’ve been distracted by the coronavirus, here are some things that remain constant:

• The Taliban are still attacking.
• The country’s political leaders — President Ashraf Ghani and former CEO Abdullah Abdullah — are still feuding, with no resolution in sight.
• Some Taliban prisoners have been released. That includes 550 to date of a planned 5,000 of the group’s prisoners Kabul is supposed to release, according to terms the U.S. struck with the Taliban in late February. The Taliban have freed just 60 of the planned 1,000 in that U.S. deal.

By the way: Afghan officials have decided to release 22,000 prisoners (who are not believed to be with the Taliban) because of fears the coronavirus could overwhelm the facilities, the New York Times’ Mujib Mashall reported Monday. That’s about 60 percent of the estimated 36,000 detainees Afghan authorities keep behind some kind of bars.

From the region: U.S. Marines have been knocking out some amphibious assault training on two Saudi islands, the service announced Tuesday from Karan Island. Find a dusty photoset from the experience over on DVIDS, here. The excitement picks up here, here and here. 
Find Karan Island on a map in this coverage of the joint U.S.-Saudi exercise over at The Drive.
Reminder: “Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team are also still in Kuwait following a no-notice deployment during the rapid increase in tensions between the United States and Iran in late December,” Army Times reported last week. And the plan is still to keep them in Kuwait “partially due to the coronavirus pandemic and partially because tensions are still intermittently flaring up with Iran.” 

Trump's demand for a border wall just snatched more of the military’s money for Europe. Politico reported Tuesday that Defense Secretary Mark "Esper restored $545 million for 22 military construction projects that were put on hold to pay for Trump's border wall," according to a letter he wrote to acting Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker on Monday. View that letter via McClatchy’s Tara Copp, here.
Russia gets a breather of sorts from this deal, too, since the Pentagon’s European Deterrence Initiative to deter Moscow now loses another $274 million to the southern border wall with Mexico, Defense News reported Tuesday. 
Some recent history: Recall that back in September, Esper “approved the diversion of $3.6 billion from 127 military construction projects to pay for barriers and fences in Texas, Arizona and California,” DN’s Joe Gould writes. Esper at the time “suggested European allies could help replenish $771 million for 40 projects across Europe” that now won’t be happening with U.S. money. Add the new $274 million the Pentagon is taking from that EDI money and you get nearly $1 billion in upgrades and repairs for “infrastructure for military aircraft, fuel and munitions storage” throughout Europe that the White House feels is less important than stopping immigration at America’s southern border. 
Another way to look at Esper’s instructions, via Defense One Tech Editor Patrick Tucker: “The DoD is moving more than $200 million from efforts in Europe to deter Russia (a country that has attacked the US) to Trump’s border wall to deter immigrants who have not attacked us.”
Related: The Pentagon may soon put National Guard troops in place of active duty ones down at the U.S.-Mexico border, CNN reported Tuesday.

Facebook is cutting two dozen people “whose duties included anticipating cyberattacks and preventing hackers from breaching the platform,” the New York Times reported Tuesday. In their place, Facebook said it’s investing in “automated detection” as it restructures and pursues “programs that can carry out many of the security duties previously accomplished by humans.” To that end, “The company has posted job listings on its internal site and in LinkedIn posts for engineers to build out systems that respond to security threats.” More here.
Bigger picture for Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg is “more actively and visibly in charge than he has been in years,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday in an updated profile of the 35-year-old tech tycoon and his 16-year-old company. 

And finally today: Watch the Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds as their pilots conducted a flyover of the NYC region on Tuesday. (Find an advanced flightpath, here; and an in-progress one, here.) “A total of 12 fighter jets, six of the Air Force's F-16C/D Fighting Falcons and half a dozen F-18 C/D Hornets — streaked over New York City and Newark starting at noon ET, before heading to Trenton, N.J., and Philadelphia,” according to NPR. 
Reuters captured footage from one fixed location and preserved it in a 30-minute video you can find on Twitter, here.