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SPACE FORCE SUPPORT ILLUSORY: When it came time for the big reveal last week, it was left to Vice President Mike Pence to travel to the Pentagon to deliver a full-throated endorsement of President Trump’s dream of a separate-but-equal military service focused on space. Pence spoke as if the new Space Force was a fait accompli with only a few details to be worked out with Congress before it’s up and running by 2020. In his introduction of Pence, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis acknowledged space as a new warfighting domain and said the Pentagon’s space report to Congress was one of the steps necessary to implement Trump’s vision. But Mattis stopped short of endorsing a brand new branch of the armed forces. Mattis is now on a week-long trip to South America, and on the flight to Brazil yesterday reporters tried to pin him down. Asked directly if he favored a separate military service, Mattis declined to give a yes or no answer. “We’re in favor of warfighting capability organized along the lines of what the president has laid out, along those lines,” Mattis said, acknowledging it will be up to Congress to decide whether to create a Department of the Space Force, which he called “the normal legislative process.” “We’ve got to work up what the actual organization looks like,” Mattis said. “Of course they’ll organize it for efficiency and make sure it’s fit for purpose.” JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS: That kind of carefully nuanced endorsement of the direction, if not the final destination, has marked all the public comments of Pentagon officials, including the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “I wear this uniform, he’s the commander in chief, he’s asked us to do it, we’re going to do it. It’ll be the best product we know how to develop,” Air Force Gen. Paul Selva said last week after Pence’s announcement. But you could hear the reservations in his tone. “We’re standing up a team to look at the legislative proposal for what a separate service might look like, because that’s what the president has asked us to do, and it’s our obligation to deliver to him a set of legislative proposals that make some sense,” Selva said. At the same time, Selva seems to be questioning whether a separate Space Force is warranted when only about 18,000 uniformed military personnel are actually doing space work. That, he said, gets to the question of what the actual organization looks like. “If I knew the answer this instant, I would tell you.” Deputy Secretary Patrick Shanahan acknowledged that the major objection to creating what would be by far the smallest branch of the armed forces is the concern that a separate service is overkill. “People get an allergic reaction to adding overhead or unnecessary bureaucracy,” he told reporters last week. “So, you know, our challenge is … how do we concentrate the resources in the most effective manner and deliver real warfighting capabilities as soon as possible.” Shanahan said that concern is why Mattis wrote Congress last year opposing a more modest proposal for a Space Corps. “When he made those comments a year ago, right, the timing is very important because we were facing another [continuing resolution], we had budget caps … and we were going through significant belt-tightening exercises,” Shanahan said. If that was the rationale, the future defense budget outlook compared to a year ago is little improved. Congress struck a two-year budget deal this year to raise spending caps for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. As it wraps up the 2019 defense budget, lawmakers must hammer out another deal or caps imposed by the Budget Control Act could snap back into place just as the Pentagon is requesting Space Force funds. Shanahan said there is no price tag estimate but the military will likely need billions of dollars. CONGRESS NOT YET ON BOARD: While the Pentagon has no choice but to salute and smartly carry out the president’s orders, leaders in Congress remain highly skeptical. “I think creating a separate service with all of the infrastructure and the bureaucracy is not the way to go,” said Sen. Jack Reed on “Fox News Sunday.” Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, likes the Pentagon plan to elevate space to a unified combatant command. “One of the good models for this is a Joint Special Operations Command, which is multiple services, SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets, Air Force, special operators, they operate very unified, but there’s no new service with all the paraphernalia and bureaucracy of a new service. That’s the direction we should head.” Republican Sen. James Inhofe, who’s been chairing the committee in the absence of Sen. John McCain, has expressed similar reservations. SPACE REFORMS UNDERWAY: Congress already has a package of space initiatives aimed at moving toward a Space Force in the National Defense Authorization Act that Trump signs today. Space Force proponents such Rep. Mike Rogers, the House Armed Services subcommittee chairman, added provisions requiring a sub-unified space command under U.S. Strategic Command and detailed plans to revamp acquisition and develop a space cadre. “We think that had to be done regardless. That was done in anticipation of that [Pentagon space] report coming out just like it did come out. … It will fit in,” Rogers said. The Pentagon’s Space Force report released last week calls for a U.S. Space Command along with three other new organizations to develop space capabilities, space warfighters, and services and support. ONE MORE OBJECTION: The playful suggestion from Trump’s 2020 campaign organization, inviting people to vote on their favorite Space Force emblem, has drawn the ire of Democrat Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee. “It is extremely inappropriate for President Trump to politicize the U.S. military by having his campaign ask supporters to choose a logo for a proposed branch of the armed forces,” Smith said in a statement Friday. “Mixing organizational decisions about national security with private political efforts should not occur. President Trump has displayed a tendency to politicize U.S. national security and our men and women in uniform for his own benefit. That must stop.” A White House source told Axios that the administration was blindsided by the campaign’s move. “We had an objectively good roll out … and then the campaign does that and makes it all look like a joke,” the source said. “It was done with zero White House input. Campaign went rogue.” Good Monday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre), National Security Writer Travis J. Tritten (@travis_tritten) and Senior Editor David Brown (@dave_brown24). 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, TRUMP SIGNS NDAA: The long legislative road to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act comes to an end today. Trump, who’s on a working vacation at his Bedminster Golf club, travels to Fort Drum in upstate New York to sign the $717 billion policy bill. He will be hosted by Rep. Elise Stefanik, a House Armed Services subcommittee chairwoman, and the base’s 10th Mountain Division. Trump is scheduled to make remarks from a hangar at Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field at 2:30 as he signs the “John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019” into law. The legislation will temporarily suspend F-35 joint strike fighter sales to Turkey, a message from congressional lawmakers to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over his government’s detention of U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson, as Trump ratchets up steel and aluminum tariffs on Ankara. It also hikes support of the U.S. military presence in Europe to deter Russia and bars Chinese telecom companies ZTE and Huawei from doing business with the U.S. government. The NDAA authorizes a boost in 15,600 troops, aircraft numbers, and battle-force ship purchases, which stand at 13 including three littoral combat ships. But the policy bill is only half of the defense budget and Congress must still pass appropriations legislation to fund the priorities. The Senate is back from a brief recess this week and could take up its bill, which has been passed by committee. Sen. Richard Shelby, the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, has been working to try to get the defense spending bill on the floor for a vote for weeks. Time to make the fiscal year deadline at the end of September is running short. The House has passed its appropriations bill, and any Senate bill still faces conference committee negotiations between the two chambers. U.S. SAYS TALIBAN NOT IN CONTROL OF GHAZNI: That’s the word from the chief U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, where it’s Day 4 of a Taliban offensive against the key provincial capital. More than 100 people have died in the assault, mostly Afghan soldiers, in what is a major show of force by the Taliban just 75 miles from Kabul, the Afghan capital. The New York Times puts the casualty count higher, reporting Afghan government forces have lost more than 200 officers and soldiers in the fighting. “Ghazni City remains under Afghan government control, and the isolated and disparate Taliban forces remaining in the city do not pose a threat to its collapse as some have claimed,” Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, emailed me this morning. “That said, the Taliban’s attempts to hide themselves amongst the Afghan populace does pose a threat to the civilian population, who were terrorized and harassed by this ineffective attack and the subsequent execution of innocents, destruction of homes and burning of a market,” O’Donnell said. The fall of Ghazni would be a major victory for the Taliban, and would also cut a key highway linking Kabul to the south. But O’Donnell insisted that is not likely to happen. “Highway 1 is open and Afghan forces are occupying key checkpoints to maintain security,” he said. “And Afghan forces repelled an ineffective Taliban attack against the city prison, August 12, which remains firmly under government control.” O’Donnell described the continued fighting as “clearing operations” and said sporadic clashes with the Taliban continue, particularly outside the city. The U.S. has been providing advice and air power, and claims to have killed more than 140 Taliban since the assault began Friday. “Tactically, operationally and strategically, the Taliban achieved nothing with this failed attack except another eye-catching, but inconsequential headline,” O’Donnell said. “The fact remains that the Taliban are unable to seize terrain and unable to match the Afghan security forces or our enablement, retreating once directly and decisively engaged.” TURKEY DEFIANT AS LIRA PLUNGES: Turkey’s foreign minister is vowing not to capitulate to demands from Trump, even as the country plunges into financial turmoil after U.S. sanctions. Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday called on the United States to “remain loyal to ties based on traditional friendship and NATO alliance” with Turkey, according to the AP. Writing in the New York Times, Erdoğan accused the U.S. of “repeatedly and consistently” failing to “understand and respect the Turkish people’s concerns.” “Unfortunately, our efforts to reverse this dangerous trend proved futile,” wrote Erdogan. “Unless the United States starts respecting Turkey’s sovereignty and proves that it understands the dangers that our nation faces, our partnership could be in jeopardy.” “This relationship needs to be repaired,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Fox yesterday. “It’s in Turkey’s interest to have a good relationship with the United States and it’s and in our interest to have a good relationship with Turkey.” But he said first Turkey must release pastor Brunson and Turkish nationals who worked for the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. “In 2016, the military turned on the Turkish president. I can understand his concerns,” Graham said, but insisted Turkey’s plan to buy Russia’s premier missile defense system, the S-400, is unacceptable. “You can’t have the F-35 and the S-400 both.” MOON TO MEET KIM: South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in will meet for the third time with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in September, this time in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency is reporting. The agenda for the talks was not revealed, but North Korea is anxious to get a formal peace agreement ending the Korean War after 65 years of an uneasy armistice. Yonhap also quotes U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris as saying it is “too early” to move toward the declaration of a formal end to the war. CENTCOM ON INSIDER ATTACK REPORT: A military investigation was unable to confirm that a Syrian guard based with U.S. troops in that war-torn country intentionally shot a Marine, U.S. Central Command said. Its statement on the February incident appeared to dispute a report last week by the news outlet Task and Purpose that found the shooting was the first known “insider attack” in Syria. “The incident was investigated by a team led by a U.S. Marine colonel who was unable to conclusively determine if a U.S. Marine was shot intentionally by a Syrian Democratic Forces guard, or if he was shot as the result of a negligent discharge,” U.S. Central Command said. The Syrian guard shot a Marine in the legs on a joint base in the Middle Euphrates River Valley where U.S. forces are partnering with local Syrian forces to eliminate the remnants of the Islamic State terror group. A fellow Marine heard the shooting and witnessed the guard standing over his wounded comrade before shooting the Syrian to death, according to Task and Purpose, which interviewed troops involved who believed it was a deliberate attack. The military later awarded the Marine who shot the Syrian guard, and the wounded Marine eventually recovered. “The investigation also determined that a second Marine on the scene, believing himself to be in imminent danger, acted appropriately and proportionally to the threat he perceived,” the command said. “Those actions in the face of the perception of imminent danger, and the second Marine’s life-saving response to a fellow Marine’s injuries, led the lead investigator to recommend the second Marine to be commended for his actions.” MISSING MARINE: Search-and-rescue operations for a missing U.S. Marine off the Philippine coast have covered more than 6,700 square nautical miles over the course of two days since the Marine was reported missing. The Marine was part of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit on the USS Essex, an amphibious assault ship. He was reported missing at 9:40 a.m. local time on Thursday following “routine operations” in the Sulu Sea. MAJOR SECURITY BREACH: Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman on Sunday released what she said is a secret recording she made of her firing by chief of staff John Kelly while in the situation room. The recording immediately raised questions among national security experts as to how Manigault Newman was able to make the recording and whether she could face punishment. In the recording, Kelly says “some pretty serious integrity violations” prompted her firing as communications director for the White House Office of the Public Liaison. “We’re going to talk to you about leaving the White House,” Kelly tells Manigault Newman in the recording, which aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s come to my attention over the last few months that there’s been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues.” “This is a HUGE security violation. HUGE. Makes you wonder what other kinds of security breaches are occurring under this White House,” tweeted Laura Rosenberger, the director of the Alliance for Security Democracy. PARTING WORDS FROM A THOUGHTFUL PAO: I missed the retirement ceremony last week for Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, among the most respected public affairs officers I’ve encountered in my 25 years covering the U.S. military. As I was in Huntsville, Ala., talking to a group of public affairs officers on the military-media relationship, Davis was delivering his farewell remarks to a packed Pentagon briefing room, with Mattis sitting in the front row. Davis chose his words carefully as he lamented both the state of the media and the military public affairs. You can see his entire speech on YouTube, but here are some excerpts: On the media: “There has been a blurring of the line between fact and opinion in journalism … and a declining ability of consumers of news to differentiate between the two. News organizations facing competitive pressures reward speed over accuracy, exclusivity of information over that which comes from official or widely available sources, palace intrigue over the substance of issues, breaking news over in-depth reporting, and breathless ledes over content that fosters a deep understanding of and respect for both sides of an issue based upon a sober presentation of the facts. “Those on the business side of news have discovered that putting people in a studio yelling at each other is cheaper and gets better ratings than keeping bureaus open all around the world to actually gather news, and that baiting readers with flashy headlines to generate clicks yields more advertising revenue than thoughtful, sober journalism, while headlines are now curated for news feeds by algorithms rather than by thoughtful editorial judgment. And this has not happened in just the past couple of years. It has been going on for a while, and most of the journalists I know would be the first to lament it, often privately.” On the military: “On our side too there have been changes. The services have gutted their Public Affairs operations, under-investing in young people who are the seed corn of this profession, while military commanders have grown increasingly allured by strategic communication cells that seek to use information as a weapon, not as something to inform public understanding and informed discourse, but as a tool used to shape the battlefield. This is the way many of our enemies employ it, which is troubling, because it can run counter to our values.” Not the enemy: “The reporters I know do an admirable job in my estimation of shielding the coverage of military operations from these pressures they feel in their newsrooms. They went into journalism not for the money, and not for the glory. They went into it because they believe that it serves a vital function in our democracy. To call their work fake news is insulting. To call them the enemy of the people is dangerous — to them, and to the public that not only consumes news, but needs it to make informed choices in carrying out their civic duties.” RUNDOWN: AP: Taliban’s Political Stature Rises With Talks In Uzbekistan Fox News: Trump tariffs in retaliation for jailed American pastor send Turkey’s economy plunging Military Times: NORAD F-15Cs intercept suicidal pilot in dramatic chase near Seattle Bloomberg: The GPS Satellite Praised by Mike Pence for Space Force Is Delayed Yet Again Air Force Times: C-5M Super Galaxy fleet will fly well into 2040s Daily Beast: The Case for a Space Force: Thinking Big Reuters: U.S. House candidates vulnerable to hacks: researchers Business Insider: China’s aircraft carriers have a boatload of glaring weaknesses — but the next carrier could be a ‘huge step forward’ Defense News: New election security bill would require fast action from feds New York Times: Russia and 4 Other Nations Settle Decades-long Dispute Over Caspian Sea Breaking Defense: It’s Raytheon Vs. Dynetics/Lockheed For Army’s 100 kW Laser Defense One: Why NSA Has Its Eye on ‘Girls Who Code’ Stars and Stripes: US Military Lashes Out On Twitter After Beijing Warns Off Aircraft In South China Sea Navy Times: Contractor To Pay $2.8 Million For Overbilling The Navy |
CalendarTUESDAY | AUG. 14 7 a.m. 5701 Marinelli Rd. Global Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Symposium and Exhibition with Keynote by Lt. Gen. Reynold Hoover, Deputy Commander, U.S. Northern Command. ndia.org 6 p.m. 529 14th St. NW. “Austin Tice: Children of Syria” photo exhibit. press.org WEDNESDAY | AUG. 15 11 a.m. 46870 Tate Rd. NDIA Patuxent River Speaker Series with Col. David Walsh, Program manager for the Marine Corps Light/Attack Helicopter Program. ndia.org 12 noon. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Iran: Protests, Sanctions, and Regime Viability. hudson.org
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ADVERTISEMENT: NDIA invites you to attend the Army Science and Technology Symposium and Showcase August twenty first through twenty third at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in DC. Register today at http://www.ndia.org/ArmyScience |
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