THE SENATE’S TURN: Members of the Senate Armed Services voted 25-2 in favor of the committee’s markup of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act yesterday, hours after the full House passed its version of the bill by a vote of 351-66.

HAPPENING TODAY: President Trump helicopters over to Annapolis this morning to deliver the commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy graduation and commissioning ceremony. Also on the dais at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium will be Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, and Undersecretary of the Navy Thomas Modly. The ceremony will be streamed at 10 on www.defense.gov/live.

SINGAPORE SLUNG: Later in the afternoon, Trump is scheduled to huddle with his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and no doubt the two will discuss the future of the North Korea summit that Trump abruptly pulled the plug on yesterday over Pyongyang’s return to insults and bellicose rhetoric.

In a letter addressed to “His Excellency Kim Jong Un,” that Trump reportedly personally dictated, he alternately bemoaned the missed opportunity and warned Kim of military consequences. “I was very much looking forward to being there with you. Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump wrote in the letter released by the White House. “You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”

Trump did not close the door to rescheduling the Singapore summit, writing almost wistfully, “I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me. … If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write. … This missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in history.”

CALL ME, MAYBE: The news hit North Korea just as it has completed blowing up part of its nuclear test site at Punggye-ri, and it responded to Trump’s cancellation letter with a conciliatory announcement. North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan was quoted in the state-run Korean Central News Agency as saying “We express our willingness to sit down face-to-face with the U.S. and resolve issues anytime and in any format.”

IT WAS BOLTON: National security adviser John Bolton was instrumental in persuading Trump to withdraw from the Singapore summit, a sudden decision that NBC News claims blindsided Pompeo. The report says from the beginning Pompeo and Bolton have been at odds about how to proceed, and Trump’s abrupt decision pitted the men against each other.

A LOT OF DIAL TONES: Testifying on Capitol Hill yesterday, Pompeo said problems had been building for weeks. “Just for the record I have a fundamentally different view of how it came to be that we unfortunately can’t have a meeting between our two leaders on June 12th,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Beginning with the fact they could not get North Korean intermediaries to answer basic question or return calls. “We got a lot of dial tones,” he said.

Yesterday, a senior White House official described “a trail of broken promises” that gave the United States pause, including the North objecting to routine joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, canceling their meeting with South Korea, and failing to work on logistical preparations for the summit.

“The White House sent its deputy chief of staff, who leads White House planning in advance of presidential visits and his advance teams to Singapore. They waited and they waited. The North Koreans never showed up,” the official told reporters yesterday “The North Koreans didn’t tell us anything, they simply stood us up.”

A BOXER’S STANCE: In his first comments after the release of the letter, Trump said the U.S. military — which he called “by far the most powerful anywhere in the world” — is ready if necessary. “Hopefully, positive things will be taking place with respect to the future of North Korea,” Trump said, “but if they don’t, we are more ready than we have ever been before.”

At the Pentagon, Lt. Gen Frank McKenzie said that did not mean the U.S. was on a war footing, just maintaining its normal state of “high vigilance.” “Nothing has changed. We didn’t ramp up or down as word of this summit began to rise and, now, has ended.”

“We’re in a boxer’s stance. We’re ready to respond. We’ll see what develops over the next few days,” McKenzie said. “If any provocative actions occur from DPRK we’ll certainly — in concert with our allies and partners in the region — be ready for it.”

NORAD’S NEW BOSS: As Trump talked about the possibility of military action yesterday, a new U.S. general was put in charge of the military command responsible for monitoring missile launches from North Korea and other countries. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who attended a ceremony welcoming Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy in Colorado, said the safety of both the U.S. and Canada depend on the 24/7 monitoring by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD. It tracked the North’s flurry of testing intercontinental ballistic missiles last year as Trump and Kim traded threats.

“The NORAD team has the watch, and it is vital that sentinels stay always alert,” Mattis said. “The half billion people who depend on these commands, whether they are aware of them or not, are counting on this Canadian-American team.” NORAD can immediately detect any missile launches by North Korea, plot their trajectory, and determine if there is a threat to the homeland. Mattis described how O’Shaughnessy will be on the front lines of North Korean missile defense with a description of the work tracking the past launches by the outgoing NORAD commander, Gen. Lori Robinson.

“How many time did I hear your steady, clipped voice on the net, giving clear updates of missiles in flight, and ensuring our team was ready, ready for anything with only minutes for decision,” Mattis told Robinson during a speech at the change-of-command ceremony.

READ THE DAMN REPORT: The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has issued its fourth “lessons learned” report. It is once again an indictment of all the mistakes that have been made, and all the way things have gone wrong since 2014, when the Obama administration tried to extricate the U.S. and leave an unprepared Afghan ministry to try to defeat the Taliban.

At a discussion of the report yesterday at the Brookings Institution, retired Gen. John Allen — former U.S. Afghanistan commander and counter-ISIS envoy, who is now the president of Brookings — asked SIGAR John Sopko what he would tell the president. Sopko’s answer was simple: “Get your staff to read the lessons learned reports that are already out there.” Sopko said one of the things he discovered was that there were plenty of insightful reports, including a USAID report from the 1970s, but nobody was reading them, and as a result were making the same mistakes over and over again. “We found that report and it laid out a lot of the issues we were finding, but no one had ever read it,” Sopko said.

Here’s the key takeaway of the current report, Stabilization: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan:

“Our analysis reveals the U.S. government greatly overestimated its ability to build and reform government institutions in Afghanistan as part of its stabilization strategy. We found the stabilization strategy and the programs used to achieve it were not properly tailored to the Afghan context, and successes in stabilizing Afghan districts rarely lasted longer than the physical presence of coalition troops and civilians. As a result, by the time all prioritized districts had transitioned from coalition to Afghan control in 2014, the services and protection provided by Afghan forces and civil servants often could not compete with a resurgent Taliban as it filled the void in newly vacated territory.”

But if you want to take Sopko’s advice, you can read the full report here.

IRAQ ELECTIONS BY THE NUMBERS: Speaking of reports, the Institute for the Study of War is out with an analysis of May 12 Iraqi elections and what the results say about the rising political power of former U.S. foe Muqtada al-Sadr.

“None of the electoral lists secured the 165-seat majority required to begin forming the next government. Preliminary results that Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court has yet to certify indicate populist Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his ‘Toward Reform’ list won the election with 54 Council of Representatives seats. The Iran-backed ‘Conquest Alliance’ led by Iranian proxy and Badr Organization Secretary General Hadi al-Ameri took second place with 47 seats, while the ‘Victory Alliance’ list led by current Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi – in power since 2014 – finished third with 42 seats. Sadr and other key powerbrokers are in negotiations to form a governing coalition that reaches the 165-seat threshold.”

The ISW analysis notes the election was marked by a historically low turnout rate and fraud allegations, and witnessed fewer security incidents than elections in previous years.

You can see a graphic of the results here.

IN SOMALIA, 10 MORE TERRORISTS DOWN: U.S. Africa Command has announced another airstrike in Somalia targeted al-Shabaab militants approximately 15 miles southwest of Mogadishu two days ago. In a press release, the command says the strike killed 10 terrorists but no civilians.

WHAT ABOUT THOSE COINS? The fate of limited-issue commemorative coins minted ahead of the Singapore summit is unclear after the June 12 event was scrapped Thursday. But a private shop is now selling thousands of similar souvenirs.

Only 250 of the controversial coins were ordered by the military’s White House Communications Agency from a private design firm. The WHCA, a division of the Defense Department, has since 2003 ordered coins to distribute to military members who travel overseas on presidential trips.

It’s unclear how many of the privately minted coins were actually distributed.

ROLLING THUNDER: This is Memorial Day weekend, and that means the annual Rolling Thunder event will be in evidence in the streets and highways around Washington. It begins tonight with a “Blessing of the Bikes” at 5 at the National Cathedral and candlelight vigil at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at dusk.

The big demonstration ride is Sunday, when thousands of motorcycle riders will stage at the Pentagon beginning at 7 a.m. for a noon departure. There’s also a concert Sunday night at the Capitol, and a Memorial Day Parade Monday on Constitution Ave.

THE RUNDOWN

Yonhap: Trump-Kim summit ‘not lost, but delayed’: USFK commander

Task and Purpose: The US Has Pissed Off Iran, China And North Korea This Week — And It’s Only Thursday

Associated Press: N. Korea demolishes nuclear test site as journalists watch

Defense News: Iron Man: USSOCOM one year from putting someone into powered exoskeleton

Business Insider: Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic has reportedly ‘increased tenfold,’ and the UK is struggling to keep up

UPI: Lockheed to provide ballistic tracking radar to U.S., foreign countries

Associated Press: China calls being uninvited by the US to a major naval exercise ‘unconstructive’

Military.com: Advanced Super Hornet, F-35 Face Stealth Dilemma

New York Times: Canceling of Trump-Kim Meeting Shakes Asia but Could Help China