U.S. STRIKES BACK: Airstrikes from U.S. and coalition forces have killed about 40 Islamic State fighters and taken out 15 vehicles and two truck bombs following the raid that killed a Navy SEAL yesterday, sources tell us. The more than two dozen airstrikes on Tal Askuf, Iraq, used F-15s, F-16s, drones and B-52s.
The top U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Col. Steve Warren will provide many more details on circumstances surrounding America’s third combat death in Iraq since the ISIS fight began when he briefs reporters at the Pentagon this morning at 10. You can watch Warren’s briefing live at defense.gov.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirmed that the U.S. special operator who was killed during the ISIS raid was Petty Officer 1st Class Charles Keating IV, the grandson of financier Charles Keating Jr.
Carter heads home today after wrapping up his meeting in Stuttgart, Germany, with 11 countries leading the efforts to, in Carter’s words, “deal ISIL a lasting defeat.” This fight is far from over. “That point was brought into stark relief by yesterday’s attack that unfortunately claimed the life of an American service member,” Carter said in his opening remarks. “All of our thoughts and prayers are with his family during this difficult time.” We’ll post the results of his meeting here.
At his news conference following yesterday’s EUCOM change-of-command ceremony, Carter said Italy would do the heavy lifting in Libya, but the U.S. would be expanding its level of effort there as well. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford said planning is already well underway
Also in Stuttgart, Dunford, who’s traveling separately, told Foreign Policy that the U.S. is weighing investments in space systems, cyber weapons and missile defenses to aid Eastern European nations against Russia. “Asked if the U.S. military presence in Eastern Europe would be expanded beyond the measures already taken over the past year, Dunford said, ‘I don’t think we’re done in that regard … We’ll have some other recommendations about how to go forward.’”
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YUGE NIGHT FOR TRUMP: Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee for president after Ted Cruz dropped out of the race last night following a disappointing result in Indiana, W. James Antle III writes.
If Trump wins, it’ll mean big changes for military transparency, since his generals won’t be allowed to appear on TV and talk about military operations, Gabby Morrongiello reports. “I don’t want our generals on television … I will prohibit them … I don’t want them saying things like, ‘Our nation has never been so ill-prepared.’”
George Patton and Douglas MacArthur, he said, would never “be on television saying how weak we are. Number one, they wouldn’t be on television because they’d be knocking the hell out of the enemy, they wouldn’t have time.”
Asked by MSNBC reporter Kasie Hunt if he would advise the businessman in foreign policy, Sen. John McCain replied that he would “advise anybody who asks.”
LOCO FOR OCO: Carter may have told traveling press that he “strongly objects” to the way the House funds the military for fiscal 2017, but Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said he doesn’t care. “I am determined to turn our readiness crisis around, even if I have to do it over the secretary’s objections,” Thornberry said, responding to Carter’s criticism.
Thornberry’s plan matches the president’s topline $610 billion request for fiscal 2017, but uses about $18 billion of the war chest for base priorities, leaving the overseas contingency operations funding short.
If you’re struggling to wrap your head around the funding breakdown, Avascent Analytics has an infographic here that compares the House Armed Services Committee-passed plan to the president’s budget request.
Previewing another fight expected in the NDAA, Ron Wahid, the CEO of strategic intelligence company Arcanum Global, writes in Defense One that the U.S. must stop buying Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines to get to space to end American support of Russia’s failing economy.
BUSINESS IS BOOMING: A report from Guggenheim Partners found that U.S. sales to foreign militaries in fiscal 2016 is projected to meet or exceed last year’s $43 billion. Lockheed Martin leads the large contractors in sales so far this year with $17.6 billion, more than half of the $29 billion sold through the end of April.
Yet Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., told us that she’s looking to speed up the foreign arms sales process, which the Pentagon has also acknowledged is too slow. The chairwoman of the House Armed Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee said she plans to hold two hearings on what is, for her, a “priority issue.”
HELOS TO TUNISIA: The Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced yesterday it approved the sale of 24 excess Bell OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters to Tunisia. In an announcement, the DSCA notified Congress that it had approved the $100 million deal, which covers helicopters, 10 AGM-114R Hellfire missiles made by Lockheed Martin and 82 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System rounds made by BAE Systems.
The helicopters, DSCA said, “will improve Tunisia’s capability to conduct border security and combat operations against terrorists, including Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Libya, and Ansar al-Sharia, Tunisia (AAS-T). These helicopters will further modernize the Tunisian armed forces and increase its interoperability with U.S. forces and other coalition partners. Tunisia will have no difficulty absorbing this equipment into its armed forces.”
DCSA said the principal contractor will be determined through contract negotiations.
NO SALES TO IRAN: Three members of Congress sent a letter to Boeing this week asking the firm not to tell airplanes to Iran, Joel Gehrke reports. “Such commercial transactions would effectively subsidize the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, significantly augmenting the regime’s ability to sow the seeds of death and destruction around the globe,” Reps. Peter Roskam, Robert Dold and Randy Hultgren wrote. “We urge Boeing – in the strongest possible terms – not to do business with Iran until it ends its support for terror.” Boeing this month reportedly proposed selling new models of its 737, 777 and 787 aircraft to Iran.
THE WHITE HOUSE pushed back on the notion that because a Navy SEAL was killed in Iraq, it means that U.S. forces are taking the lead in the fight against the Islamic State, Susan Crabtree reports. “The president has made clear time and time again what their mission is,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. “Iraqi forces must fight for their own country. U.S. forces cannot be a substitute for those Iraqi forces.”
Also, it’s combat, but not “enduring combat,” Earnest said. “That phrase is what the administration used to describe the situation it inherited in Iraq, when 144,000 U.S. troops were on the ground there. Obama pledged a different strategy and his deployments to Iraq and Syria reflect that,” he said, Nicole Duran writes. “The phrase ‘enduring offensive combat operations’ is what the administration used to describe first invasion of Iraq, Earnest said. ‘Our strategy is a lot different — any impartial description of Obama’s strategy’ would conclude that, he said.”
“The White House’s Iraq delusion,” is how the Washington Post headlines a scathing repudiation of the Obama administration’s Iraq strategy. The WaPo Ed board argues Obama is putting too much faith in Prime Minister Haider al- Abadi, who it calls “a prime minister who has proved unable to govern the country or reconcile its warring factions,” and is in deep denial about another unpleasant reality, namely that “Iraq cannot survive under its present system of governance, which centralizes power in Baghdad.”
The criticism comes after Carter voiced confidence in Abadi, in response to a question from us on his way to Germany Monday.
GHOST SHIP SIGHTING: Check out this video of the Sea Hunter, an anti-submarine continuous trail unmanned vessel, arriving in San Diego on Sunday. The unmanned submarine hunter was built by Leidos and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
OUTSOURCING PROSECUTION FOR THE 9/11 ATTACKERS: Buzzfeed is out with a striking report on how the U.S. has outsourced the prosecution — and defense — of the 9/11 attackers. “The government has hired the same firm, SRA International, to serve both the prosecution and defense teams, sparking concerns of a conflict of interest that could undermine the integrity of one of the most significant terrorism cases in modern history. ‘Where did these people come from, how did they get selected?’ asked David Nevin, a lawyer for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ‘I have no idea. And that’s a problem, to say the least.’ The role of contractors in the Gitmo investigations raises questions about accountability at the notoriously secretive war court.”
VICTORY AGAINST TWITTER: The social media platform lost a court battle over national security letters, Rudy Takala reports, when a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Twitter. “Twitter filed the suit in 2014, alleging that the company’s First Amendment rights were being violated over national security letters. Those documents are used by the FBI to demand that companies hand over information about their users, and can include information like web browsing histories. They come with an automatic gag order that prevents companies from disclosing much information about their usage.”
In dismissing the case, California Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said: “The First Amendment does not permit a person subject to secrecy obligations to disclose classified national security information. Twitter has conceded that the aggregate data is classified. In the absence of a challenge to the decisions classifying that information, Twitter’s constitutional challenges simply do not allege viable claims.”
SIGN US UP (NOT REALLY): The Chinese military released an intensely hard core recruiting video yesterday, and it’s got us ready to enlist and then go patrol the Scarborough Shoals. Check it out here.
COSTLY CRUISE EXTENSION: One analyst estimated that the 30-day extension to the Harry S. Truman carrier strike group’s deployment in the Middle East could end up costing the military up to an additional $20 million due to schedules and plans that will now need to be changed to accommodate the ship’s arrival at homeport a month later.
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said that the friction caused by changing plans could result in about a 10 percent cost increase for the carrier’s post-deployment maintenance, which typically runs between $100 and $200 million.
WHO’S RAISING THAT FLAG? So the lone Navy corpsman featured in the famous Joe Rosenthal photo of the flag raising on Iwo Jima may be a mistake of caption identity. James Bradley, son of John “Doc” Bradley and author of “Flags of Our Fathers,” said he believes the new theory that his father isn’t in the photo, Anna Giaritelli reports.
One Marine, meanwhile, is pushing back on Rep. Walter Jones’ campaign to rename the Department of the Navy as the Department of the Navy and Marine Corps, according to the Marine Corps Times. Lt. Col. Eric Dent, a spokesman for the commandant posted on Facebook, “Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of a Dept of the Marine Corps. Just can’t stomach the add’l expense of another secretary level staff right now, especially when we need more $ for Marine things…guns, ammo, bombs, gear, people, guns, trucks, aircraft, and guns.” Yes, he mentions guns three time. He’s a Marine.
IN CASE YOU REALLY HATE LIFEBOATS: Here’s a new video of sailors aboard the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Momsen lighting up a lifeboat while underway in the Pacific.
THE RUNDOWN
UPI: Raytheon speeds up drone deliveries
Bloomberg Government: Boeing KC-46 Tanker $3b Production Decision Slips to June
Defense One: The Futuristic Aircraft That May Replace the Black Hawk Will Fly Next Year
USNI News: LCS-4 Deployment Will Evaluate Ship Capabilities Ahead of 2018 Frigate Downselect
UPI: U.S. Army orders small arms ammunition
Stars and Stripes: Researchers looking to extend howitzer’s range to more than 40 miles
Reuters: Islamic State seeks news blackout in Mosul as Iraqi army nears
Task and Purpose: Mind-Controlled Drones Are Now Real, And They Could Transform The Battlefield
UPI: Newly developed EOD robot delivered to Army
The National Interest: Is It Time for U.S. Aircraft Carriers to Visit Taiwan?
Defense One: How Traffic to This YouTube Video Predicts ISIS Attacks
Sky News: IS Files Reveal Assad’s Deals With Militants
Fox News: USS Cole commander blasts transfer of Al Qaeda Gitmo detainees to Saudi Arabia
War on the Rocks: The catastrophic success of the U.S. Air Force
Breaking Defense: Iron Man, Not Terminator: The Pentagon’s Sci-Fi Inspirations
Navy Times: John McCain’s Navy pilot son taunts social media racists
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | MAY 4
11 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, talks about the future of war. csis.org
11:30 a.m. Pentagon Courtyard. Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work delivers remarks at the DoD Spirit of Service ceremony and concert.
THURSDAY | MAY 5
3:30 p.m. 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW. The Brookings Institution hosts an event where analysts will look at America’s role in the world’s foreign policy. brookings.edu
FRIDAY | MAY 6
9 a.m. 1150 17th St. NW. Scholars from the Army War College discuss how to make the Army organizational structure less bloated and more efficient. aei.org
MONDAY | MAY 9
2:30 p.m. Russell 232-A. The airland subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee holds a closed mark up of its portion of the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. armed-services.senate.gov
TUESDAY | MAY 10
9:30 p.m. Russell 232-A. The Senate Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee holds a closed mark up for the fiscal 2017 NDAA. armed-services.senate.gov
10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, talks about the state of defense acquisition. csis.org
11 a.m. Dirksen G-50. The SASC Personnel Subcommittee holds an open mark up for its piece of the fiscal 2017 defense policy bill. armed-services.senate.gov
2 p.m. Dirksen G-50. The SASC Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support holds an open mark up for its piece of the fiscal 2017 NDAA. armed-services.senate.gov
3:30 p.m. Dirksen G-50. The SASC Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities holds an open mark up on the fiscal 2017 defense policy bill. armed-services.senate.gov
5:30 p.m. Russell 232-A. The SASC Strategic Forces Subcommittee holds a closed mark up on its piece of the NDAA. armed-services.senate.gov
5:30 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Bob Schieffer hosts an event with State Department officials on how to break the Islamic State’s brand. csis.org
WEDNESDAY | MAY 11
9:30 a.m. Russell 222. The Senate Armed Services Committee begins three days of 12-hour closed mark ups that will wrap up on Friday on the fiscal 2017 defense policy bill. armed-services.senate.gov
