‘IF THAT’S WHAT IT TAKES’: Questioned about reports that the White House is planning another reprogramming of Pentagon funds to pay for hundreds of miles of border barriers, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he’s ready to support the move, “if that’s what it takes.”
“The first priority of DoD is protection of the homeland,” Esper said in a joint news conference with Japan’s defense minister at the Pentagon yesterday. “The southwest border is a security issue and so we’ll see how things play out, but we remain committed to supporting the Department of Homeland Security in its mission.”
$7.2 BILLION AT RISK: According to internal planning numbers obtained by the Washington Post, President Trump is considering shifting $7.2 billion from military construction projects and counterdrug programs approved by Congress in this year’s budget, and use the money instead to pick up the pace of building new border barriers.
Last year, the Pentagon promised no construction projects would be cancelled or delayed, so long as Congress replaced the money sifted to border projects. But in the final budget passed in December, Democrats blocked any moves to pay twice for the same projects.
BIPARTISAN ANGST: There was a bipartisan backlash to the news, even as the White House did not confirm the plan. But the most vocal objections came from Democrats, such as Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of the Armed Services Committee.
“It’s outrageous that President Trump continues to raid military accounts to pay for his partisan pet projects. He is taking limited resources from our troops and military families and diverting them to pay for a wasteful and ineffective project that is more politically motivated than necessary for national security,” Reed said in a statement.
“If Congress allows President Trump to continue down this path, it will set a precedent that emboldens future presidents to disregard Congress and redirect military spending to questionable causes,” he said.
Republicans who were unhappy with the idea tended to blame Democrats for not adequately funding border security. “I wish they’d get the money somewhere else, instead of defense,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, “But I do support building the wall.”
KAINE GETS HIS 4 GOP VOTES: With the support of Indiana Sen. Todd Young and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine says he now has the 51 votes he needs to win passage of his resolution to limit President Trump’s military authority on Iran.
Kaine, a Democrat, has partnered with Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, to push the measure which also has the support of Sen. Rand Paul, giving Kaine the four GOP votes to ensure passage.
“Our resolution puts a simple statement before the Senate. We should not be at war with Iran unless Congress authorizes it,” Kaine and Lee write in a joint op-ed in the Washington Post. “If senators are unwilling to have this debate — because a war vote is hard or opinion polls suggest that their vote might be unpopular — how dare we order our troops to courageously serve and risk all?”
The timing of the vote is complicated by the expected beginning of the impeachment trial next week. “We believe we will get 51 votes that is needed to pass. And so we will work out the timing,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “We have to figure out how it intersects with impeachment but we believe that this resolution is the right way to go, it has the support of all 47 Democrats.
Republicans have complained the limits are an unconstitutional limit on the president’s authority as commander in chief to protect the nation, and should the measure pass the House and be sent to the president, it faces a certain veto.
Good Wednesday 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 Susan Katz Keating (@SKatzKeating). Email here with tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. Sign up or read current and back issues at DailyonDefense.com. 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: The so-called “Afghanistan Papers” will be the subject of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing this morning, featuring John Sopko, the Pentagon’s special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, or “SIGAR.” Spoko, a independent government watchdog, has issued regular quarterly reports as well as seven special “lessons learned” reports over the years and has been a consistent critic of overly optimistic assessments from U.S. commanders in the field.
In a letter to the Washington Post last month, Sopko took issue with some of the conclusion of the Post’s reporting, noting the truth of what was going on in Afghanistan was there in his agency’s public reports for anyone who cared to read them.
“Pointless spending. Corruption that corrodes Afghans’ confidence in their government. ‘Ghost soldiers’ on the rolls of the Afghan security forces. Rampant theft of U.S.-supplied fuel — much of it winding up in the hands of insurgents who kill Americans,” Sopko wrote.
Sopko also bristled at the suggestion his agency pulled its punches in the public reports.
“The Post’s series also claimed, ‘To avoid controversy, SIGAR sanitized the harshest criticisms from the Lessons Learned interviews,’ That’s absurd,” he wrote. “We’ve been criticized for many things. Avoiding controversy is not one of them. A simple Google search reveals hundreds of articles, spanning years, detailing how SIGAR routinely speaks truth to power and exposes mismanagement of reconstruction programs, often provoking the ire of generals, ambassadors and other high-ranking officials.”
DEMOCRATS DEBATE NATIONAL SECURITY: Here are some quick highlights from last night’s Democratic presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, in which all six candidates weighed in with their view on national security.
Joe Biden, former vice president: “I know what it’s like to send a son or daughter, like our colleague has gone to war in Afghanistan, my son for a year in Iraq, and that’s why I do it very, very reluctantly. That’s why I led the effort … against surging tens of thousands of troops into Afghanistan. We should not send anyone anywhere unless the overwhelming vital interests of the United States are at stake. They were not at stake there. They were not at stake in Iraq. And it was a mistaken vote.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.: “What we have to face as a nation is that the two great foreign policy disasters of our lifetimes were the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq. Both of those wars were based on lies. And right now, what I fear very much is we have a president who is lying again and could drag us into a war that is even worse than the war in Iraq.”
“What we need to do is have an international coalition. We cannot keep acting unilaterally. As you know, the nuclear deal with Iran was worked on with a number of our allies. We have got to undo what Trump did, bring that coalition together, and make sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.: “We have a problem with a revolving door in Washington between the defense industry and the Department of Defense and the Pentagon. That is corruption, pure and simple. We need to block that revolving door, and we need to cut our defense budget.”
“We have one general after another in Afghanistan who comes in and says, you know, we’ve just turned the corner and now it’s all going to be different. And then what happens? It’s all the same for another year. Someone new comes in and we’ve just turned the corner. We’ve turned the corner so many times, we’re going in circles in these regions. This has got to stop.”
“No one has a solution and an endpoint. We need to get our combat troops out. They are not helping create more safety for the United States or the region.”
Pete Buttigieg, South Bend, Ind. mayor: “Ensuring that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons will, of course, be a priority, because it’s such an important part of keeping America safe. But unfortunately, President Trump has made it much harder for the next president to achieve that goal.”
“By gutting the Iran nuclear deal — one that, by the way, the Trump administration itself admitted was working, certified that it was preventing progress toward a nuclear Iran — by gutting that, they have made the region more dangerous and set off the chain of events that we are now dealing with as it escalates even closer to the brink of outright war.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.: “Afghanistan, I have long wanted to bring our troops home. I would do that. Some would remain for counterterrorism and training. In Syria, I would not have removed the 150 troops from the border with Turkey. I think that was a mistake. I think it made our allies and many others much more vulnerable to ISIS. And then when it comes to Iraq, right now, I would leave our troops there, despite the mess that has been created by Donald Trump.”
Tom Steyer, businessman: “What we are hearing is 20 years of mistakes by the American government in the Middle East, of failure, of mistakes. So the real question is judgment … So I would say to you this: An outside perspective, looking at this and actually dealing with the problems as they are is what we’re looking for now. I agree with Senator Warren. We are spending dramatically too much money on defense. The money that we’re spending there, we could spend in the other parts of the budget.”
“It’s very clear that if we’re going to do something with North Korea, we’re going to have to do it in concert with our allies, that meeting with him without preconditions is not going anywhere.”
TIME FOR F-35 JPO TO GO?: In a move to cut overhead on the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program ever, House lawmakers are considering shutting down the F-35 Joint Program Office, which oversees Lockheed Martin’s production of the stealthy fighter get, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The proposal is aimed at gains in “efficiency and effectiveness,” Monica Matoush, a spokeswoman for the Armed Services Committee, told Bloomberg in an email. Instead oversight of the program would be shifted to the three military services that are getting variations of the plane, under one iteration of the plan.
INDUSTRY WATCH:
Lockheed Martin will deliver 50 C-130J Super Hercules to the U.S. government through a C-130J Multiyear III award, which was finalized by the U.S. government last month. The award comes as a delivery order under an existing Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract awarded in August 2016.
David L. Calhoun has assumed the role of president and chief executive officer of The Boeing Company and one of his first acts was to send an email to all company employees, exhorting everyone to “work together to change our company for the better.”
“This is a crucial time for Boeing. We have work to do to uphold our values and to build on our strengths. I see greatness in this company, but I also see opportunities to be better. Much better. That includes engaging one another and our stakeholders with greater transparency, holding ourselves accountable to the highest standards of safety and quality, and incorporating outside-in perspective on what we do and how we do it,” he wrote.
DataPath, Inc., a leading provider of advanced and secure communications solutions, has been awarded a position on the U.S. Army’s $5.1 Billion Global Tactical Advanced Communications Systems II contract vehicle. The army expects work to occur through January 5, 2030.
Raytheon is developing a machine learning technology under a $6 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for the Competency Aware Machine Learning program.
General Dynamics will webcast its fourth-quarter and full-year 2019 financial results conference call on Wednesday, Jan. 29, beginning at 9 a.m. EST.
The Rundown
Washington Examiner: ‘Top national security priority’: Trump official seeks to assure local leaders on election integrity
Washington Examiner: ‘We want to win the next war’: US Army will revamp cyber operations to counter Russia and China
Washington Examiner: VIDEO: New footage shows two Iranian missiles hitting commercial airliner
AP: Russia Says U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy Is To Contain China
New York Times: Plan to Cut U.S. Troops In West Africa Is Criticized
Breaking Defense: Navy CNO Fires First Budget Salvo: ‘We Need More Money’ Than Army, Air Force
WAVY.com: ‘Make FORD Ready’: Acting SECNAV Holds Leadership Summit After Issues With USS Gerald R. Ford
Defense One: Turkey Will Make F-35 Parts Throughout 2020, Far Longer Than Anticipated
Defense News: The Two U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ships Will Soon Share A Brain
Defense News: Congress boosts budget for US Army’s long-range assault aircraft to drive down risk
Seapower Magazine: Raytheon’s SPY-6 Radar Family Attracts Foreign Interest As U.S. Navy Readies For Deliveries
Military.com: Leonardo Will Provide Navy’s Next Training Helicopter
Military.com: 3-Star: We Must Combat Russian Attempts to Influence Troops Online
New York Times: South Korean Leader Mulls Tourist Visits to the North
Federal Times: Amazon Will Seek To Halt Work On DoD’s JEDI cloud
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | JANUARY 15
8 a.m. 2401 M St. N.W. — Defense Writers Group breakfast with Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy https://nationalsecuritymedia.gwu.edu
10 a.m. Rayburn 2118 — House Armed Services Committee hearing: “DOD’s Role in Competing with China,” with Michele Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Andrew Philip Hunter, Center for Strategic and International Studies; retired Rear Adm. Michael McDevitt, senior fellow, Center for Naval Analyses. https://armedservices.house.gov/hearings
10 a.m. 2172 Rayburn — House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing “U.S. Lessons Learned in Afghanistan,” with John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/hearings
10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. N.W. — Center for Strategic and International Studies discussion “The Prospects for U.S.-Russia Arms Control,” with Andrey Baklitskiy, visiting fellow in the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program; and Jeffrey Mankoff, deputy director of the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program https://www.csis.org/events
11:30 a.m. 1030 15th St. N.W. — Atlantic Council discussion on “Reflections on 25 years of U.S. Policy in the Middle East,” with Nabeel Khoury, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council; and Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/event
12 p.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. — Hudson Institute discussion on “The Future of Iran,” with former Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi; and Michael Doran, senior fellow at Hudson Livestream at https://www.hudson.org/events
12 p.m. 1135 16th St. N.W. — American Bar Association discussion on “key future challenges confronting the national security sector,” with Glenn Gerstell, general counsel of the National Security Agency https://www.americanbar.org/events
THURSDAY | JANUARY 16
8 a.m. 300 First St. N.E. — Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center forum on “National Nuclear Security Administration: The Cornerstone of Strategic Nuclear Deterrence,” with Energy Undersecretary for Nuclear Security Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. http://www.mitchellaerospacepower.org
8 a.m. 2799 Richmond Hwy., Arl. — Surface Navy Association’s 32nd National Symposium, with Adm. Christopher Grady, commander, U.S. Fleet Forces and commander, U.S. Naval Forces Northern Command; Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, commander, Naval Sea Systems Command; and James Geurts assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development, and acquisition. https://www.navysnaevents.org/national-symposium
9 a.m. 4301 Wilson Blvd., Arl. — Intelligence and National Security Alliance forum on “2020 National Security Legal Outlook,” with Jason Klitenic, general counsel in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. https://www.insaonline.org/event
9:30 a.m. SD-G50, Dirksen — Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to consider the nominations of James McPherson to be undersecretary of the Army and Charles Williams, to be assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations, and environment. https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings
10 a.m. 1775 Massachusetts Ave. N.W. — Brookings Institution discussion on “Impacts and Implications of the 2020 Taiwan General Elections,” with Jacques deLisle, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for East Asian Studies; Alexander Huang, director of the Tamkang University Institute of Strategic Studies and Institute of American Studies; Thomas Wright, director of the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe; Richard Bush, chair in Taiwan studies at Brookings; and Yun Sun, nonresident fellow at Brookings https://www.brookings.edu/events
3 p.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. — Hudson Institute releases the Afghanistan Institute of Strategic Studies’ 2019 Report, with Shoaib Rahim, senior adviser at the Afghanistan State Ministry for Peace; Yaqub Ibrahimi, research fellow at AISS; Nazif Shahrani, professor of anthropology at Indiana University; and Husain Haqqani, director for South and Central Asia at Hudson https://www.hudson.org/events
FRIDAY | JANUARY 17
10 a.m. 485 Russell — Middle East Policy Council conference on “U.S.-Iranian Confrontation: Domestic, Regional and Global Implications,” with John Limbert, former deputy assistant secretary of State for Iran; former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Kuwait Douglas Silliman; former U.S. Ambassador to Oman Richard Schmierer, chairman and president of MEPC; Suzanne Maloney, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy; Joyce Karam, Washington correspondent at The National; and Thomas Mattair, executive director of MEPC https://mepc.org/hill-forums
1 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. N.W. — Center for Strategic and International Studies discussion on “the growing security challenges posed by U.S. strategic competitors, with Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Air Force Gen. John Hyten; and Kathleen Hicks, director of the CSIS International Security Program. https://www.csis.org/events
WEDNESDAY | JANUARY 29
11:30 a.m. 1667 K St. N.W. — Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment discussion of new report, “Taking Back the Seas: Transforming the U.S. Surface Fleet for Decision-Centric Warfare,” with Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly. https://files.constantcontact.com
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The president always has the power to defend the nation from imminent attack. But even when the president acts unilaterally in response to an attack, that action must be brief and limited to addressing a specific threat. Any action beyond that scope requires an authorization by Congress … If the United States is to order our troops into harm’s way again, we should at least have an open debate about whether a war with Iran, or indeed any war, is truly in our national interest.”
Sens. Tim Kaine D-Va and Mike Lee R-Utah, writing in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
