The D Brief: Navy’s big sub bet; Russia’s heavy casualties; Trump: Taiwan should pay us; USAF culture reboot? And a bit more.

The Navy is paying a consultant up to $2.4 billion to boost submarine production. Deloitte Consulting is to provide the labor, equipment, and materials to push U.S. production to three subs a year, according to a contract announcement released on Monday. The contract is structured as an initial year with four option years, writes Washington Technology’s Ross Wilkers.

What’s going on? The Navy has been buying two attack submarines per year for some time, but General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and HII in Newport News, Virginia, haven’t been able to deliver that quickly. Since 2022, deliveries have “been limited by shipyard and supplier firm workforce and supply chain challenges to about 1.2 to 1.4 boats per year,” the Congressional Research Service wrote in a report released on Tuesday. “The Navy and industry are working to increase the Virginia-class production rate to 2.0 boats per year by 2028, and subsequently to 2.33 boats per year, so as to execute the two-per-year procurement rate, replace three to five Virginia-class boats that are to be sold to Australia”— under the AUKUS submarine project—“and reduce the accumulated Virginia-class production backlog.”

The Navy also seeks to take delivery of one ballistic missile submarine per year of the new Columbia class. Find a bit more about the Deloitte contract, here.

U.S. Air Force culture needs a reboot. That’s the argument from Paula Thornhill, a retired brigadier general who teaches at Johns Hopkins’ SAIS, and from Lt. Col. Shane Praiswater, a test pilot, Ph.D, and leader of a B-21 Raider test group at Edwards Air Force Base. In recent conversations with airmen and in declarations by service leaders, the authors say, they’ve detected a pattern of passivity that threatens to sap war-winning innovation. Read that, here.

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1936, the Spanish Civil War began.

Developing: Officials from China and the Philippines are trying to establish new communications channels to handle tensions in the South China Sea, where the two nations clashed exactly one month ago near the disputed Second Thomas Shoal. Reuters has details. 

New: Top Republican senators just asked the White House for “a full list of military, diplomatic, and economic options” in order to “deter further escalation” by China toward the Philippines. The request, which was also reported Wednesday by Reuters, comes from Mississippi’s Roger Wicker and Idaho’s Jim Risch, the top Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, respectively. More, here. 

Taiwan chipmaker TSMC saw its stock drop about 2.4% on Wednesday after an interview with former president Donald Trump was published Tuesday by Bloomberg. 

“Taiwan took our chip business from us. I mean, how stupid are we?” Trump said in the interview, which was conducted in late June but only published this week. “They did take about 100% of our chip business. I think Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said, and—apparently oblivious to the nation’s democratic values—complained, “I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?”

One answer, from the Hudson Institute: “A significant disruption to Taiwan’s semiconductor industry could affect as much as $1.6 trillion, or roughly 8%, of America’s annual gross domestic product — hurting industries like personal electronics, automotives and telecommunications.” That’s from a 2023 report.

How did Taiwan become a chip powerhouse? The BBC explores and explains, here.

Taiwan’s reax: “Taiwan has steadily strengthened its defense budget and demonstrated its responsibility to the international community,” Premier Cho Jung-tai told reporters in Taipei on Wednesday. “We are defending ourselves and ensuring our security,” he added.

Ukraine and Czechia say they’ll open a small-caliber ammunition factory inside Ukraine at some indeterminate point in the future. The plan links Ukrainian state-run firm Ukroboronservice with Czech Republic ammunition maker Sellier & Bellot. Another Czech firm, Ceska Zbrojovka, “also signed a technology transfer deal for its CZ BREN 2 rifles to be built in Ukraine, finalising earlier plans,” Reuters reports. More, here. 

With an estimated 350,000 Russian troops killed or injured from Moscow’s Ukraine invasion, what is the outlook for Vladimir Putin’s military in the years ahead? Dara Massicot looked into the matter for RAND last summer, and her analysis was just published by the think tank on Tuesday. 

Massicot’s new report “surveys Russian military personnel policies during the first 18 months of their war on Ukraine,” which included “mismanagement, lies, loss, regeneration, [and] a strategy for the next generation of recruits,” she wrote in a short preview on social media Tuesday. 

One big takeaway: “Many of [the Russian military’s] pre-war pillars of recruiting and retention [of] a professional force have been severely damaged” since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she said. Those pillars include “discipline, good order, and perceptions of prestige”; they’ve all been undermined, she writes. Read the rest, here. 

By the way: One Russian opposition news outlet claims approximately 650,000 people who left Russia after the Ukraine invasion have not returned. That’s just 0.5 percent of Russia’s total population; but it’s the largest documented emigration from the country since the decade after the fall of Communism, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. 

Battlefield outlook: “Ukrainian forces continue targeting Russian air defense systems in occupied Ukraine and in Russia’s border areas to set conditions to field F-16 fighter jets following their anticipated Summer-Fall 2024 arrival to Ukraine,” ISW analysts wrote in their latest Ukraine assessment. 

But curb your expectations, because “F-16 deliveries to Ukraine will likely begin in small numbers,” ISW explained, “and materiel and training constraints will likely prevent Ukrainian forces from leveraging fixed-wing airpower at scale in 2024.” 

Additional reading: 

• “Russia and Ukraine conduct third prisoner exchange in recent months,” Reuters reported Wednesday; 
• “NATO summit a mixed success, even with decidedly less drama,” Defense One’s Sam Skove reported Tuesday. 

Lastly: The four-day Aspen Security Forum continues today, with planned discussions featuring Space Command’s Gen. Stephen Whiting and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse. That’s slated for 11:10 a.m. ET. Later in the afternoon, Defense Innovation Unit Director Doug Bush will join a panel discussion on the U.S. defense industrial base. That’s scheduled for 4 p.m. ET. 

Catch a livestream of forum events via their website or on YouTube, here.