STILL AT IT AT 5 A.M.: The House Armed Services Committee markup of the National Defense Authorization Act began Wednesday morning and was still going strong at 5 a.m. this morning, with the most contentious issues resisting any bipartisan compromise in a marathon overnight session. The bill passed 33 to 24, and the session adjourned just before 7 a.m.
Democrats and Republicans on the committee remained sharply divided on the top-line for defense, the use of military funds for border security, the wisdom of deploying low-yield nuclear warheads on submarine-launched missiles, and the future of the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo.
As promised, ranking member Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, pushed to restore most of the $17 billion that committee Democrats, led by chairman Rep. Adam Smith, D-Texas, want to cut from the president’s $750 billion request, which failed by a vote of 27-30.
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., proposed an amendment to restore the funding for deployment of the low-yield nukes, which also failed, after a spirited one-hour and 18-minute debate Wednesday afternoon.
As Democrats stuck to their positions, Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, warned that resistance was futile because the Senate, which formally filed its version of the NDAA Wednesday would never go along with cuts that would weaken U.S. nuclear deterrence or slow the recovery from readiness shortfalls.
THORNBERRY’S PLEA: It was 5:36 a.m. before the committee finally got around to rejecting Thornberry’s amendment along party lines. Before the voice vote, Thornberry made a last-ditch effort to persuade Democrats to endorse a $750 billion bill.
“So, this vote is not on some hypothetical number. It is on specific capabilities and that’s what matters most,” Thornberry said. “It is also, I would suggest how this committee can be relevant when it comes to negotiations with the Senate, and whether we can engage at a level that the administration and the Senate Armed Services Committee have already agreed to.”
Chairman Smith responded with an argument he has repeated many times in the last 24 hours. “As we’ve seen with the battle over the wall, it didn’t take the Pentagon more than the blink of an eye to find $7 billion for this wall,” Smith said. “The Pentagon has a history of asking for money in many instances for programs that are not ready to spend that money yet. And if we give it to them, it discourages them from being efficient.”
BREAKING THIS MORNING: Two oil tankers have been damaged suspected attacks in the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz, a month after four tankers in the region were struck.
The Bahrain-based U.S. Navy 5th Fleet said in a statement, “We are aware of the reported attack on shipping vessels in the Gulf of Oman. U.S. Naval Forces in the region received two separate distress calls at 6:12 a.m. local (Bahrain) time and a second one at 7:00 a.m. U.S. Navy ships are in the area and are rendering assistance.”
Japan’s Trade Ministry says the two oil tankers reportedly attacked near the Strait of Hormuz carried “Japan-related” cargo. The reported attack came as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe was wrapping up a two-day trip to Iran.
Good Thursday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, written and compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) and edited by Kelly Jane Torrance (@kjtorrance). Email us here for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list. And be sure to follow us on Twitter: @dailyondefense.
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HAPPENING TODAY: Combat veterans Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, along with prominent veteran advocates address the new challenges of taking care of U.S. veterans and examine strategies to keep the nation’s promise to the men and women who have served in a Washington Post Live discussion this morning. The event, “The Changing Face of American Veterans,” also includes Patricia Kime, associate editor of Military.com; Bonnie Carroll, president and founder of the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors; and Michael Richardson, vice president of independence services and mental health at the Wounded Warrior Project.
TRUMP ON KOREA, ‘NOBODY’S DONE ANYTHING EXCEPT ME’: President Trump was still waxing rhapsodic about the latest letter he has received from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during Wednesday’s news conference with Poland’s president.
“He just wrote me a very nice letter, unexpected. And someday you’ll see what was in that letter. Someday, you will be reading about it, maybe in a hundred years from now, maybe in two weeks. Who knows? But it was a very nice letter. It was a very warm, very nice letter, I appreciated it,” Trump said, insisting that denuclearization talks were on track.
“I think we’re going to do very well with North Korea over a period of time. I’m in no rush, the sanctions are on, we got our hostages back, our remains are coming back,” he said.
Asked about his Tuesday statement that he would now allow the CIA to use Kim’s half brother as a source, Trump said he wasn’t banning spying. “No, it’s not what I meant. It’s what I said and that’s — I think it’s different than maybe your interpretation,” he said without further explanation.
And Trump repeated a claim he’s made before, that he pulled the U.S. back from the brink of what would have been “brutal” war with North Korea, and that he’s the only one who has made any progress toward peace. “They’ve been there a long time — the grandfather, the father, the son, and they’ve been there for a long time and nobody’s done anything except me.”
CARTER BEGS TO DIFFER: Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter is on a tour hawking his book “Inside the Five-Sided Box: Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon.” Carter is a longtime Korea hand, having worked on denuclearization issues since the 1990s.
In an interview on CNN yesterday, Carter noted that North Korea has played this game before. “We’ve had halts before in missile tests and nuclear tests and that’s very good, but our ultimate goal going right back to when they first made the pledge in 1992 to President Bush,” Carter said. “They’ve never kept the promise.”
Carter also noted that there have had pauses before in both 2006 and 2007. “It seemed we would have a pause, and then, the North Koreans exploded a nuclear weapon,” He said. “There was a pause on missile test in the late 1990s. There was something in 1994, where they pledged to begin to take steps towards completely get rid of their nuclear arsenal. So, we have seen things like this before.”
COULD NOT WORK FOR TRUMP: Carter who served mostly in Democratic administrations and was an acolyte of former Defense Secretary William Perry, said he could never work for President Trump. Not because he disagrees with every one of his policies, but because he says Trump has shown he doesn’t value the advice of the secretary of defense.
“Defense is serious. If you’re going to take a job with a president, you have to feel that you could help. Your first job as secretary of defense is to help the president,” Carter said. “I don’t see this president taking the advice of his secretary of defense. And therefore, I don’t see how, given what I know, I could succeed in helping President Trump, because he doesn’t naturally relate to his secretary of defense, in the way that, say, President Reagan did or my first boss, Caspar Weinberger, when he was secretary of defense.”
1,000 US TROOPS TO POLAND: President Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda fleshed out the expected announcement that the U.S. would be stationing 1,000 troops at a new base in Poland, which Trump described as a “world class” facility, built at Polish expense.
Trump hinted he might move the troops from Germany to Poland, and Duda confirmed the 1,000 troops would joining some 4,500 American forces already in Poland on a rotational basis.
“By having rotational presence, more soldiers can come to a country, be present there, look at a culture at the condition in place in a given country,” Duda said. “So, this is beneficial for this barely understood development of the armed forces.”
HOW MANY TROOPS?: “We have 52,000 troops in Germany. We’ve had them there for a long, long time. So, we’d be probably moving a certain number of troops to Poland,” Trump said at one point.
Trump, who is notoriously bad with numbers, misstated the number of U.S. troops in Germany. The actual number is 34,000, according to the U.S. European command, who should know.
FT. TRUMP?: Last time he was in Washington, Duda offered to name the Polish base after President Trump, in return for the increased U.S. troop commitment.
Asked about that, Trump said. “Well, that’s up to them. I have nothing to do with naming it Fort Trump. That’s all I need, Fort Trump. You people would have a field day with that, right? No, that’s up to them, they can name it whatever they want.”
F-35 FLYOVER: Trump and Duda stepped outside to watch a flyover of an F-35B, the Marine Corps version of the stealthy jet, who has the ability to take off and land vertically. Trump who had touted the flyover would be at a “high rate of speed,” seemed surprised that the F-35 did slow motion overflight.
“As it flew over the White House and actually came to a pretty — close to a halt over the White House. I always say what’s wrong with that plane, it’s not going very fast. But it’s an incredible — it’s an incredible thing when you can do that.”
On Wednesday, Poland agreed to buy 30 F-35As, the Air Force version of the plane.
The Rundown
New York Times: Russian Military Reports Cease-Fire in Syria
The Diplomat: U.S., Japan Aircraft Carriers Conduct Naval Exercise in South China Sea
New York Times: Philippines Blames Chinese In Boat Crash
NPR: As Polar Ice Cap Recedes, The U.S. Navy Looks North
Defense News: DoD has the tools to reform acquisition, and Thornberry wants to require their use
Real Clear Defense: The Wrong Fight Over Fighters: Understanding the F-15X Purchase
Calendar
THURSDAY | JUNE 13
9 a.m. 1301 K Street N.W. Washington Post Live discussion on “The Changing Face of American Veterans.” Speakers: Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., Air Force combat veteran; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, Army Iraq veteran and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate; Patricia Kime, associate editor of Military.com; Bonnie Carroll, president and founder of the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors; and Michael Richardson, vice president of independence services and mental health at the Wounded Warrior Project. www.washingtonpost.com/post-live
9 a.m. 1100 Longworth. House Select Intelligence Committee hearing on “National Security Challenges of Artificial Intelligence, Manipulated Media, and ‘Deepfakes.” Witnesses: Danielle Citron, professor of law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law; Jack Clark, policy director at OpenAI; David Doermann, director of the SUNY University at Buffalo’s Artificial Intelligence Institute; and Clint Watts, distinguished research fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute and senior fellow in the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. intelligence.house.gov
10:30 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Avenue N.W. Center for Strategic and International Studies conversation with John Gans, former chief speechwriter to Defense Secretary Ash Carter, on his book “White House Warriors, How the National Security Council Changed the American Way of War.” www.csis.org/events
6:30 p.m. Council on Foreign Relations discussion on the congressional agenda and U.S. foreign policy. Speakers: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; and Fareed Zakaria, host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN. Livestream at www.cfr.org/event/conversation-house-speaker-nancy-pelosi
5 p.m. 600 New Hampshire Avenue N.W. The Atlantic book discussion on “Inside the Five-Sided Box: Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon,” with author former Defense Secretary Ash Carter; and Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/live/events
5 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Avenue N.W. Center for Strategic and International Studies holds its Zbigniew Brzezinski Annual Prize Dialogue, with former Navy Secretary and former Sen. John Warner, R-Va. www.csis.org/events
MONDAY | JUNE 17
All week. The 53rd International Paris Air Show takes place from June 17 to 23 at the Exhibition Center of Le Bourget, just north of Paris. The U.S. has the largest international presence with some 350 aerospace and defense manufacturers and suppliers displaying the world’s most advanced aircraft, materials, components, products and services. www.siae.fr/en
TUESDAY | JUNE 18
8 a.m. 2401 M Street N.W. Defense Writers Group breakfast with Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. nationalsecuritymedia.gwu.edu
WEDNESDAY | JUNE 19
10 a.m. 529 14th St. N.W. National Press Club Headliners Newsmaker event with House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. https://www.press.org/events
11 a.m. 303 Cannon. The Sustainable Defense Task Force releases its new report “A Sustainable Defense: More Security, Less Spending,” calling for $1.2 trillion in Pentagon budget cuts over the next decade. Speakers: Salih Booker, president, Center for International Policy; William Hartung, Center for International Policy; Mandy Smithberger, Project On Government Oversight; and Neta Crawford, Boston University. www.internationalpolicy.org
THURSDAY | JUNE 30
1:45 p.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. Hudson Institute and NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division host an event to discuss the future of the NATO alliance. Speakers include Jamie Fly, German Marshall Fund; Amanda Sloat, Brookings Institution; and Nadia Schadlow, Hudson Institute. Hudson Fellow Peter Rough will moderate. www.hudson.org/events
MONDAY | JUNE 24
12:30 p.m. 529 14th St. N.W. National Press Club Headliners Luncheon with Army Secretary Mark Esper. https://www.press.org/events
THURSDAY | JUNE 27
7:30 a.m. 555 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. Defense One Tech Summit. Speakers include Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment; William Evanina,
director of the national counterintelligence and security center, ODNI; Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of national intelligence, ODNI; Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio; and more. www.defenseone.com
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Well, that’s up to them. I have nothing to do with naming it Fort Trump. That’s all I need, Fort Trump. You people would have a field day with that, right? No, that’s up to them, they can name it whatever they want.”
President Trump on whether Poland will name its new military base after him in return for the U.S. commitment to base 1,000 more troops to the NATO ally.
