The D Brief: NATO’s Baltic problem; Denmark ups military spending; MADIS vs. drones; And a bit more.

Developing: SecDef Hegseth reportedly paused all new Army contracting, pending a review. The review, which is specifically looking for diversity, equity and inclusion provisions in requirements, could take as little as 10 days, two sources told Bloomberg, but could last months.

Update: Bloomberg's reporting is inaccurate, the Defense Department later clarified. An email shared Tuesday with Defense One, on Department of the Army letterhead addressed to “industry partners,” claimed that Army Contracting Command – Detroit Arsenal received guidance Friday to “put an immediate hold on all new solicitations and contract awards.” The guidance found its way into contract solicitations posted on the Systems for Award Management website, including a request for proposals for Guantanamo Bay detainee support services that now shows a crossed-out section citing a “Secretary of the Army Directive Pause all Contracting Actions.” More, here.

Sixty-four migrants were deported to Guatemala on a U.S. Air Force cargo plane Monday, Reuters reported. Hours later, two planes of deported Colombians landed in the country, after a previous refusal to allow landing prompted President Trump to level sanctions at the country, including restriction of visas to the U.S. for Colombians.

Randy and Elon: Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George secretly met with Elon Musk in the days leading up to Trump’s inauguration, the Washington Post reported Monday. A spokesman for George downplayed the meeting, saying that senior military officials “often meet with defense industry leaders,” and that the meeting was “focused on issues related to maintaining the most capable army in the world.”

Additional reading: “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott deploys hundreds more troops to Texas-Mexico border,” CBS News reported Tuesday.

Review Trump’s latest executive orders for the Pentagon, published Monday and noted in our newsletter. The four teased by SecDef Hegseth concern banning transgender personnel from serving in the military, banning diversity initiatives across the department, reinstating personnel who refused to take a COVID vaccine, and the promise to pursue a missile defense system for the U.S. based on Israel’s Iron Dome.

About that “Iron Dome for America” executive order: RTX CEO Chris Calio is interested. “I suspect in the US, you're going to probably need to evolve that to address different types of potential threats, perhaps longer-range strikes, protection of infrastructure—but again, layered integrated air and missile defense systems are core to us,” Calio said during the company's earnings call Tuesday. “It's the bedrock of Raytheon,” he added, and called it “a significant opportunity for us” and “something right in our wheelhouse.”

For what it’s worth, Raytheon has teamed with Iron Dome maker Rafael to market the Iron Dome system here stateside for the past nearly 15 years. 

While the administration targets wasteful spending, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee is looking to pour more cash into the Pentagon, Breaking Defense reported Monday, with an extra $200 billion to reform acquisitions and move on on President Trump’s push for that American “Iron Dome.” The current defense authorization bill totals about $895 billion.

$60 billion in the couch cushions? The Pentagon could fund some of its new priorities by unburdening itself of flailing weapons systems, according to a report from the Quincy Institute. Canceling the F-35, the sixth generation strike fighter and the Ford class aircraft carrier program would save billions, they say. 

ICYMI: Trump fired the three Democrats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that helps balance U.S. counter-terrorism efforts with concerns about civil liberties. (We’d discussed the PCLOB in a recent podcast about the future of U.S. surveillance authorities.) The firings were announced late last week, but were not made official until Monday. The Hill has more.

Second opinion: “The President’s decision to eviscerate the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is outrageous and short sighted,” said Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Not only does the Board serve as a critical check on government surveillance powers, it allows American companies to move data effectively around the world. This decision is bad for privacy, bad for personal freedoms, and bad for businesses,” she said. 

Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson and Meghann Myers, with Audrey Decker. 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 1915, Congress created the Coast Guard as a branch of the armed forces. 

Ukraine and Europe

NATO dispatched ships to another damaged undersea cable in the Baltic Sea on Sunday. There, they found three Russian ships, and all three “are now being investigated as part of a probe into suspected sabotage of the fiber optic cable,” the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. 

Rewind: NATO announced a new Baltic observation mission for these kinds of scenarios just last month. Frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, and a small fleet of naval drones were tasked with “protect[ing] critical undersea infrastructure and respond[ing] if required,” alliance officials said at the time.

One of the Russian ships was detained Sunday by the Swedes for further investigation, the Journal reports. The ship’s owner blamed bad weather and said his crew is innocent. The owner of one of the other ships—Norwegian-flagged cargo ship Silver Dania—agreed to have it towed into port for further inquiry. 

But a Barbados-registered tanker known as Pskov is so far not complying, and its “captain has declined requests to halt its course,” vowing to continue on to its destination in St. Petersburg. While the ship is under U.S. sanctions for allegedly transporting Russian oil and gas, “One of the Latvian officials familiar with the investigation said that the Pskov was twice inspected externally from afar and that its anchor and hull showed no apparent damage,” according to the Journal. 

Speaking of the Baltics, Lithuanian and Estonian officials say they plan to spend at least 5% of their nation’s GDPs on defense, the Financial Times reported Monday. For Lithuania, that’d be about double what the small nation currently spends. Estonia currently devotes about 3.7% of its GDP toward defense. 

“One key question, however, is where the money will come from,” Politico reports. Consider, e.g., that “This week, President Gitanas Nausėda said Lithuania would need to spend an additional €12 billion to €13 billion to reach its 2030 goals; in 2024, the country spent €2.1 billion on defense.”

Related: “Estonia eyeing more arms options after acquiring K9 howitzers from S. Korea,” Seoul’s Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday. 

Happening tomorrow: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is set to speak with European Council President António Costa at alliance headquarters in Brussels. There will almost certainly be lots to discuss, including Donald Trump’s mounting anger over Denmark’s refusal to negotiate the sale or transfer of Greenland. 

EU foreign policy chief: “We are not negotiating on Greenland,” Kaja Kallas of Estonia told reporters Monday in Brussels. “Of course we are supporting our member state, Denmark, and its autonomous region, Greenland,” she said, “but we shouldn’t also go into speculation about what-ifs, because this is not the situation right now,” Kallas added, according to The Hill. 

Her advice: “As the United States shifts to a more transactional approach, Europe needs to close ranks,” Kallas said. “We are stronger when we are united. That was the view that everybody shared” during meetings Monday. “It is not so that America does not have interests in Europe,” she said. However, said Kallas, “I think what is clear for everybody is that the new administration really speaks the language of transaction and that means negotiating always on different issues. So we need to speak that language as well.”

By the way: On Monday, Denmark “announced that it will increase military spending in the North Atlantic by the equivalent of $2 billion,” the  New York Times reports from Copenhagen. 

Involved: “The Danish government, along with the governments of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, will purchase three Arctic naval vessels to patrol the waters around the islands,” the Times reports. “They will also acquire two long-range drones and satellites to improve surveillance of the area.” 

The announcement follows word of a particularly contentious call last week between Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Trump. More on that, here. 

Related reading: “France floated sending troops to Greenland, foreign minister says,” Politico reported Tuesday from Paris. 

New: Russian authorities just issued a school textbook insisting it was “forced” to invade Ukraine in February 2022, Reuters reported Monday. The book is for students 15 and older, and “was edited by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Putin who headed a delegation that held unsuccessful peace talks with Ukraine in 2022,” according to Reuters. 

It’s worth keeping in mind, advises Oleksandr Danylyuk of London’s Royal United Services Institute, that “With the war in Ukraine, Russia is trying to prove the inability of the West to defeat Russia, the unwillingness of the US to protect Europe and, as a result, the pointlessness of NATO,” he wrote in an essay published Tuesday. 

“A country that has devoted virtually all of its national resources to the means of war has no alternative to war,” said Danylyuk. “If the only tool you have is a shotgun, the only business you can start is robbery,” he added. 

Pacific region

Insider threats. The Pentagon wants to do business without a wider range of companies, but it has a lot of homework to do when it comes to vetting those potential contracts for foreign influences, namely China, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker writes. 

Not for nothing, as China’s spy operations are multipronged. One intelligence official approached a Navy petty officer on a WeChat group on stock trading, according to reporting by CBS News, then started asking him for information about exercises and radar design. 

China also appears to be building a giant laser fusion research facility to get around a nuclear test ban, according to analysts who spoke to Reuters.

The Marines recently tested their new high-tech anti-drone system known as Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or MADIS, in Hawaii last week. “The system is intended to counter the smallest drone threats with a suite of countermeasures that include electronic jamming, an M240C machine gun, a 30 mm cannon like those found on the Army’s Apache helicopters and Stinger missiles,” Stars and Stripes reported Sunday. Read more, here. 

From the region: 

• “Taiwan creates blacklist of Chinese-owned ships,” Taiwan News reported Monday;
• “N. Korea test-fires strategic cruise missile,” Yonhap reported Sunday; 
• ICYMI: “South Korea President Yoon indicted for insurrection over martial law decree,” Yonhap reported Sunday; 
• “US deploys Typhon missile launchers to new location in Philippines,” Reuters reported Friday; 
• “Kim Jong Un Is Doing Everything He Can to Keep North Korea’s Youth in Line,” the Wall Street Journal reported Monday; 
• And “China Is Helping Supply Chemicals for Iran’s Ballistic-Missile Program,” the Journal reported Thursday. 

Lastly: Read how a big-deck amphibious assault ship crossed the Pacific without GPS. In February 2022, the navigation team of the USS Essex (LHD-2) decided to take warnings about the fragility of the GPS system to heart. A few miles out of Oahu, they shut down all electronic navigation systems on its bridge. (Instruments in CIC kept running as a backup.) 

“The bridge team shifted to navigating by celestial fixes plotted on paper charts,” write Walter O’Donnell and Caroline Stanton Chlaupek in a recent article in USNI Proceedings. “Five days and more than 1,800 nautical miles later, the Essex arrived off the coast of San Diego, California, on time and on track.” 

The co-authors, who helped navigate the Essex during its transit, take note of one other U.S. warship that has done something similar—and urge every crew to make GPS-denied transits a regular part of training. Read on, here.