Today’s D Brief: Hearing set for SecDef pick; Guards' wildfire work; CNO’s new dashboard; Women ended Army’s recruiting skid; And a bit more...

SecDef confirmation hearing set for Jan. 14. Pete Hegseth, who is Donald Trump’s announced nominee to succeed Lloyd Austin as U.S. defense secretary, will go before the newly GOP-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Hegseth’s testimony will follow weeks of less formal attempts to win senators’ consent for a nominee who “has never made national-security policy, served in a senior military role, worked in defense acquisition, or led an organization larger than a nonprofit advocacy group,” as Defense One put it last month. 

GOP senators have expressed concerns about Hegseth’s history of heavy drinking, though some have pronounced themselves mollified by his promise not to drink on the job in the E-ring. Still others are concerned about sexual assault allegations (he denies them) and reported marital infidelities.

Democratic senators are expected to focus on Hegseth’s contention that women should be ejected from combat roles and his embrace, as Politico put it, of “an aggressive form of Christianity that is at war with the military’s nonpartisan and pluralistic culture.” 

The SASC has also requested records that may shed light on Hegseth’s reported ejection as leader of a Koch-backed nonprofit group amid allegations of financial mismanagement. Committee members are also still awaiting the results of an FBI background check into the nominee.

What are Hegseth’s chances? “The only time a nominee by a new president was rejected by a Senate vote occurred in 1989, when George H.W. Bush nominated John Tower, a former senator from Texas, to be his secretary of defense,” CNN wrote in November. “Tower was undone by stories of his excessive drinking and what press reports at the time referred to as ‘womanizing.’”

No hearing date yet for Gabbard. White House and Senate Intelligence Committee Sen. Tom Cotton had hoped to schedule for next week the confirmation hearing of former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s choice to run the U.S. intelligence community. But that has been delayed, in part because Gabbard’s own FBI background check has yet to be delivered, CNN reported on Tuesday.

The ODNI pick lacks experience in intelligence or running large organizations; she has also been noted as “an apologist for both the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin,” wrote Tom Nichols, a former U.S. Naval War College professor.

Also: Commander in chief-to-be avoids jail time. Trump, the first felon to be elected president, was sentenced on Friday, seven months after a jury found him guilty of all 37 charges related to falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. Justice Juan Merchan “imposed a so-called unconditional discharge of Mr. Trump’s sentence, a rare and lenient alternative to jail or probation” and said that only his electoral victory had shielded him from punishment, the New York Times reports, here.

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Bradley Peniston with Lauren C. Williams. 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 1954, the U.S. Navy established its nuclear-power training school at New London, Connecticut.

Army’s recruiting skid ended largely because more women enlisted, Military.com reported Thursday after reviewing data provided by the service. “Nearly 10,000 women signed up for active duty in 2024, an 18% jump from the previous year, while male recruitment increased by just 8%,” the report said. “The numbers mark the continuation of a trend reported in a Military.com investigation that found a yearslong Army recruiting slump was centered around men, while female recruiting numbers have remained relatively strong.” Read on, here.

Navy’s shipbuilding plan would be costlier than service officials say, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In his most recent analysis, CBO’s Eric Labs writes that the “2025 plan would cost 46 percent more annually in real terms (that is, adjusted to remove the effects of inflation) than the average amount appropriated over the past 5 years. CBO estimates that total shipbuilding costs would average $40 billion (in 2024 dollars) over the next 30 years, which is about 17 percent more than the Navy estimates. CBO’s estimates for the 2025 plan range from 8 percent to 16 percent higher in real terms than its estimates for the three alternatives in the Navy’s 2024 plan.”

Bottom line: “Including the costs of operating and maintaining those ships, buying new aircraft and weapons, and funding the Marine Corps, the Navy’s total budget would need to increase from $255 billion today to $340 billion (in 2024 dollars) in 2054 to implement the 2025 plan.” Read the report, here.

CNO has a new data dashboard. Instead of juggling readiness and other reports from around the Navy, Adm. Lisa Franchetti can now pull up a digital dashboard to find exactly what she’s looking for. Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic executed it last year, feeding data uploaded from around the fleet into a landing page with clickable graphics for topics like maintenance or manning, then a search function to look for specific commands.

“Previously, the CNO was receiving multiple reports from multiple Navy organizations” including Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, and PowerPoint slides, Claire Ameen, a data scientist for NIWC Atlantic, said in a release. “We are helping to automate that process and trying to decide on one authoritative data source so that the CNO has current figures at all times.” D1’s Meghann Myers has more, here.

ICYMI: The Navy has been creating other such dashboards as part of its contribution to the Pentagon’s connect-everything JADC2 effort.

Lastly this week: California National Guard forces are helping to fight the huge wildfires—and to forestall looting—in and around Los Angeles. Deployed units include troops equipped for security and aircraft fitted to dump water on the blazes, which are among the state’s most destructive ever, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters this morning. But high winds are preventing the aircraft from doing their job, she said: “Right now, we can't even get assets up in the air because the fires are so bad and the winds are so bad.” (As well, a Canadian firefighting aircraft was grounded after it collided with a drone operated by a civilian photographer in violation of emergency no-fly orders.)

Meanwhile, “Armored vehicles were seen on the 210 freeway late tonight traveling towards the Eaton Fire that has torn through Pasadena and Altadena the past several days, forcing thousands to evacuate and burning homes and other buildings to the ground,” Deadline reported on Thursday. NBC News reported that “at least 150” troops were deployed for various tasks, including setting up checkpoints to control access to affected areas. 

Have a safe weekend, and we’ll see you on Monday.