KOREAN WAR REMAINS REPATRIATED: To the sound of a somber drum roll, 55 small cases draped in the United Nations flag were carefully carried across the tarmac of Osan Air Base in South Korea today, the beginning of what the U.S. hopes will eventually be the return of thousands of remains of U.S. Korean War dead, promised by Kim Jong Un to President Trump at the Singapore summit last month.

HAPPENING TODAY: Members of the House of Representatives head out for their summer recess having passed the National Defense Authorization Act, and sending the $716 billion policy bill to the Senate. Senators will be sticking around for a sweltering August session under the orders of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

A vote is expected early next week on the NDAA after McConnell made a procedural filing yesterday. Sen. Jim Inhofe, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he expects a floor vote Tuesday. That could send the bill to President Trump at the earliest point in the legislative year in more than two decades.

DETERRING RUSSIA: The Pentagon would see a hike in authorized funding for its NATO operations in Europe and develop a new, smaller nuclear warhead under the NDAA. The massive bill, passed on a 359-54 vote, also provides more arms to Ukraine as it fights Russia-backed rebels and gives Defense Secretary Jim Mattis potential waivers to wean friendly countries off Russian dependence. The armed services committees sought to further counter Russia after the Pentagon released its new strategy this year naming it as a top adversary, and as Washington remains embroiled in a debate over whether Trump is going too easy on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The NDAA “advances implementation of the new national defense strategy so we can be better prepared against threats from peer or near-peer adversaries such as Russia and China,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry, the House Armed Services Committee chairman. “In fact, there are many, many provisions in this bill … directly related to countering the aggressive actions we have seen from each of those countries.”

The bill authorizes a $1.7 billion increase in Europe deterrence funding that provides Army tanks and armored brigades, and $250 million for more lethal aid to Ukraine such as the anti-tank Javelin missiles that the U.S. first supplied this year. “It was under the previous administration where we refused to arm the Ukrainians, now we are doing that. This administration is doing that,” said Rep. Bradley Byrne, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

McCASKILL TARGETED: Democrat Claire McCaskill, who is in a tough race to hold on to her U.S. Senate seat in Missouri — a state Trump won in 2016 — says Russian government hackers tried, but failed, to compromise her Senate computer network.

“Russia continues to engage in cyber warfare against our democracy. I will continue to speak out and press to hold them accountable,” McCaskill said in a statement last night. “While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Putin is a thug and a bully.”

According to a forensic analysis by the Daily Beast, McCaskill, an outspoken critic of Russia, was targeted by Russia’s GRU intelligence agency in August 2017 through an email phishing technique. According to the report, the attack was launched around the time Trump urged Missouri voters to “vote her out of office” with a rally chant.

SHIELDING MAGNITSKY: A new bill introduced by Sens. John McCain and Ben Cardin aims to protect Magnitsky Act sanctions on gross human rights abusers in Russia from being rescinded by Trump and his administration. The two senators, who authored the bill, say they are concerned Magnitsky could become a bargaining chip as Trump seeks better relations with Putin. “The Magnitsky Act remains the best mechanism to hold the Russian government accountable for its gross human rights abuses and provide justice to the Russian people,” McCain said in a statement. “Putin knows this and has been fighting against it for years. He will do anything to see the Magnitsky Act weakened — even asking President Trump to hand over a courageous human rights advocate and a former American ambassador for questioning by Russian authorities in exchange for ‘assistance’ in the Special Counsel probe.”

The Russian leader proposed a deal during the two leaders’ summit in Helsinki last week that would have sent Bill Browder, a key advocate of the law, to Russia for questioning. The two senators propose adding the Magnitsky Act to another set of wide-ranging Russia sanctions called Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA, that was signed by Trump last summer. It would give Congress a say over enforcing Magnitsky, and could make it difficult to repeal the act because CAATSA has wide bipartisan support. “As we did in CAATSA, Congress needs to assert its expectation that we will have a say in disapproving any administration changes to this watershed human rights legislation,” Cardin said in a statement.

TURKEY RENEGES, INFURIATING TRUMP: Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are threatening NATO ally Turkey with punishing sanctions after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly reneged on a fist-bump deal with Trump to release an American pastor detained on what the U.S. says are bogus terror and espionage charges.

“The United States will impose large sanctions on Turkey for their long time detainment of Pastor Andrew Brunson, a great Christian, family man and wonderful human being,” Trump tweeted Thursday. “He is suffering greatly. This innocent man of faith should be released immediately!”

STABBED IN THE BACK: The Washington Post has the backstory of Erdogan’s perfidy, outlining in detail how Trump brokered a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to trade a Turkish citizen imprisoned on terrorism charges in Israel for Brunson’s release. According to the Post account, Trump called Netanyahu from Scotland on July 14 after making the deal with Erdogan at the NATO summit in Brussels. The next day Ebru Ozkan, a 27-year-old Turkish woman, was deported from Israel and sent to Istanbul.

But then a Turkish court, instead of releasing Brunson, ordered him held on house arrest while his trial continues.

Yesterday’s sanctions threat came after what the Post called “a rancorous phone call” between Trump and Erdogan.

IRAQ’S ELECTION ‘DISASTER’: Kenneth Pollack, an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, is just back from Baghdad and has written a sobering reality check on the results of the recent parliamentary elections. “Simply put, the national elections held on May 12 were anything but the triumph of democracy that has been depicted by various journalists, officials, and experts,” Pollack writes. “In reality, the elections were a disaster.

“Virtually no one voted: The corrupt and discredited Independent High Election Commission claimed a turnout rate of 44.5 percent — already far below the 62 percent in the 2010 and 2014 elections — but the real number was probably no more than about 20 percent, and possibly as low as 12-15 percent. There was massive fraud, made more salient by the low turnout.  Consequently, the results of the election, and the government it will eventually produce, have little legitimacy in the eyes of most Iraqis.

“Finally, and perhaps most dangerous of all, the elections produced a badly fragmented parliament because most of those Iraqis who voted could not agree on which leader would be willing and able to fight for what they want: economic and political reform.”

PAKISTAN’S NEW LEADER: The U.S. has been notably unhappy with the lack of real cooperation from Pakistan in bringing the Taliban and other extremist Islamist groups to heel in Afghanistan. Sunday’s apparent election victory for Imran Khan (the election results are not official) is not particularly comforting. Khan, who is a national hero for his exploits on the cricket pitch, was labeled a Taliban sympathizer in a Washington Post editorial, which concludes that “Pakistan, which has been one of the most difficult countries for the United States to work with over the past two decades, is likely to become still more so.”

But Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center, has a different take. “For the Trump administration, the impact of a Khan victory isn’t as troubling as some may suggest,” he writes.

“Khan may be given to sharp anti-American rhetoric, and he has often criticized Pakistan’s partnership with Washington. But the Pakistani military, which wants a workable relationship with Washington, is likely to rein Khan in if he tries to blaze a more hostile path.

“At any rate, the US-Pakistan relationship has already been in bad shape for months. Its future trajectory is more likely to be shaped by the actions of the Trump administration and of the Pakistani military than by a Khan-led government.”

BRIEFLY NOTED: There’s been a lot of grumbling lately about the dearth of on-the-record official press briefings at the Pentagon under the Trump administration. Already relatively rare, the number has dropped to almost zero during the summer.

So we crunched the numbers and found the data do show that it’s not the imagination of cranky reporters. Chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White hasn’t held her “regular” Thursday briefing for eight weeks in a row now. And her deputy, Col. Rob Manning, is even less visible.

Manning, who cheerfully announces at his Monday off-camera gaggles that they regularly occur on the first business day of each week, has briefed reporters only eight out of 30 weeks this year.

By comparison, in the first six months of 2016, the last full year of the Obama administration, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook alone briefed 22 times, almost once a week.

NEXT TO GO: The latest rotational deployments for the winter of 2018, as announced by the Army:

• The 4th Infantry Division Headquarters at Fort Carson, Colo., to Afghanistan.
• The 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas, to South Korea.
• The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., to Afghanistan.

NATO’S KINGS, QUEENS AND DICTATORS? Trump said yesterday that NATO contains “a dictator or two,” and that those U.S. allies were first in line to boost military spending.

Trump did not identify which of the 29 NATO nations are led by dictators, but said he found them most receptive to his recent demand for a defense spending boost. “These are kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers — and a dictator or two, they were the ones that actually were able to pay the easiest,” Trump said during a speech in Granite City, Ill.

THE RUNDOWN

Breaking Defense: House OKs More Subs, Pumps $250M More Into Industrial Base

Defense News: Raytheon wants to drive Boeing’s Harpoon anti-ship missile into extinction

The Hill: Bipartisan House duo introduces bill to stymie potential US NATO withdrawal

Washington Post: Top Iranian general warns Trump that war would unravel U.S. power in region

AFP: Witness describes ‘terrifying’ US embassy blast in Beijing

Defense Tech: The Air Force Is Sending a Stealth Fighter to Europe. But Which?

Military Times: Company to pay $9 million after allegedly selling defective combat earplugs to US military

Defense One: Pentagon Accepting Bids for Its Controversial $10 Billion War Cloud

AP: Pence: US to Sanction Turkey Unless Pastor Freed

DoD Buzz: The Marines Are Harvesting JLTV Parts from Old Humvees

Roll Call: Pentagon Gender Gap Persists in Trump Era Even as Women Rise in Industry

Task & Purpose: Does POTUS Think The F-35 Is Literally Invisible? An Investigation

Foreign Policy: NATO Isn’t What You Think It Is

Business Insider: Putin is gaining from Trump’s attacks on NATO, a former US Army leader in Europe says, but Putin still has his own problems to worry about

Task & Purpose: Congress Limits Funding For M27 Automatic Rifles For Infantry Marines

Bloomberg: Army Command Hunt Included Juicy Lucys, BBQ, Philly Cheesesteaks

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