HERITAGE’S ANNUAL MILITARY INDEX: Despite the Trump administration’s vaunted military build-up, the Pentagon is not ready to meet a key benchmark: Being able to fight and win two major wars simultaneously. That was among the bottom lines in the Heritage Foundation’s 2019 Index of U.S. Military Strength. The voluminous annual report by President Trump’s favorite think tank is being released at 9 a.m. today during an event with Sen. Joni Ernst, a Senate Armed Services subcommittee chairwoman, and a roster of experts. The think tank’s reports are worth watching as Trump has closely followed many of its previous recommendations on force size.

HAPPENING TODAY, CONFRONTING CHINA: Vice President Mike Pence is set to make an 11 a.m. speech on the administration’s policy toward China at the Hudson Institute. His remarks will be streamed live on the think tank’s website and come amid heightened military tensions, including harassment of a Navy vessel by a Chinese warship and cancellation of a diplomatic visit by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

In the prepared remarks provided by his office, Pence has a pointed message to Beijing that the U.S. will not stand down in the face of “reckless” harassment of U.S. ships conducting freedom-of-navigation missions in international waters.

“The United States Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows and our national interests demand. We will not be intimidated; we will not stand down,” he will say, according to the AP.

But much of his speech takes aim at China’s alleged efforts to undermine Trump by targeting his constituencies in the U.S. “China wants a different American president,” Pence will say.

SEE FOR YOURSELF: The Navy is not releasing any imagery of Sunday’s close encounter between the USS Decatur and a Chinese destroyer in international waters near the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, but a U.S. official confirms to me that four photos posted on the website gCaptain are authentic.

The Navy says the two ships came within 45 yards of each other as the Chinese warship tried to intimidate the U.S. vessel from sailing in waters within 12 nautical miles of the Gaven and Johnson Reefs, which China claims as its sovereign territory. Forty-five yards is roughly half the length of an American football field. It may be the angle of the aerial photos, but it sure looks as though at one point the two ships are a lot closer than that. The Decatur was forced to change course to avoid a collision. Judge for yourself. The website gCaptain bills itself as “the top-visited maritime and offshore industry news site in the world.”

BUSIEST COCOM TO BRIEF: Arguably the busiest U.S. combatant commander with two hot wars going on in his AOR, Army Gen. Joseph Votel will take time to brief Pentagon reporters from his headquarters in Tampa, Fla., at 9 this morning. U.S. Central Command includes Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, and it’s Votel’s job to oversee the war to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as well as the effort to drive the Taliban to the peace table in Afghanistan. Votel’s briefing will be streamed live here.

17 YEARS AND COUNTING: The Afghanistan war is about the reach a dubious milestone. On Sunday, the war will enter its 18th year. It was early on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2001, less than a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers announced the beginning of the military campaign against the Taliban.

“Today our forces have begun the initial part of military operations in the war against terrorism. About 15 land-based bombers, some 25 strike aircraft from carriers, and U.S. and British ships and submarines launching approximately 50 Tomahawk missiles have struck terrorist targets in Afghanistan,” Myers said. You can read the full transcript of that first briefing here.

RICIN ARREST: A former Navy sailor in Utah has been taken into custody by the FBI in connection with several suspicious mailings to the Pentagon, the White House, and Sen. Ted Cruz’s office, which were feared to have contained the deadly toxin ricin.

The suspect, identified by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Utah as William Clyde Allen, 39, was taken into custody yesterday in Logan, Utah.

The arrest comes after two envelopes addressed to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson tested positive for ricin at a Pentagon screening facility Monday, but were later determined to contain castor seeds, from which the ricin is derived.

Allen served in the Navy from 1998 to 2002 as damage control fireman apprentice, according to Navy records. According to Fox News, Allen put his return address on one of the envelopes, which led the FBI directly to him. According to a probable cause statement filed by authorities, Allen has confessed. Federal charges are expected to be filed against him tomorrow.

MARS SHUTTLE: Lockheed Martin, the contractor working with NASA to take humans to Mars, introduced a reusable moon shuttle on Wednesday that it envisions as a prototype for a vehicle ferrying astronauts between the surface of the Red Planet and an orbiting space station.

The so-called lunar lander concept that the Bethesda, Md.-based company unveiled at the International Astronautical Congress in Bremen, Germany, could take a crew of four people and 2,000 pounds of cargo back and forth between the moon and the Lunar Gateway module, an orbiting outpost NASA aims to build in the 2020s. It wouldn’t need to refuel on the surface.

POMPEO GEARING UP: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he’s anxious to get back to North Korea and kick the slow-moving denuclearization process into a higher gear. Pompeo will be in Pyongyang Sunday for his fourth meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “I’m very happy to be going back to get another chance to continue to advance the commitment that Chairman Kim and President Trump made back in Singapore in the second week of June,” Pompeo said at a State Department briefing yesterday. “I’m optimistic that we’ll come away from that with better understandings, deeper progress, and a plan forward, not only for the summit between the two leaders, but for us to continue the efforts to build out a pathway for denuclearization.”

Pompeo continues to says that if Kim is sincere, the complete denuclearization of the North could be done in three years, and says that’s not his estimate, but what Kim told South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in at their last meeting. “My comment about 2021 was not mine. I repeated it, but it was a comment that had been made by the leaders who’d had their inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang,” Pompeo said. “They’d talked about 2021 when they were gathered there. So I was simply reiterating this is a timeline that they were potentially prepared to agree to.”

LIGHTEN UP MIKE: Pompeo should soften his negotiating stance in the next round of talks with North Korea, according to South Korea’s top diplomat. South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha wants Pompeo to agree to North Korea’s call for an “end-of-war declaration” that would mark a significant symbolic milestone on the path to a formal end to the Korean War, which is officially in an armistice.

Pompeo has avoided taking that step, but Kang believes the declaration should be made in exchange for North Korea keeping a promise to dismantle a nuclear site.

RUSSIA’S SYRIA S-300 DEPLOYMENT: Pompeo hinted at a possible U.S. response to Russia’s deployment of the S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. “Having the Russians deliver the S-300 into Syria presents greater risk to all of those in the affected areas and to stability in the Middle East. We consider this a very serious escalation,” he said yesterday. “I’m certainly not going to comment on our intention on how we will address that.”

UNHAPPY DIPLOMAT: If officials serving Trump don’t agree with his policies, they should do the honorable thing and resign, writes James Melville, former U.S. ambassador to Estonia, in an opinion piece in today’s Washington Post. “I have no sympathy or understanding for those who remain in government service while claiming to be ignoring or otherwise violating their instructions,” he writes. “I certainly don’t understand an anonymous op-ed proclaiming some right to fight a rear-guard action behind the president’s back. That approach is devoid of integrity and seems cowardly to me.”

That said, Melville was harshly critical of Trump’s transactional approach to U.S. allies, and his America First policies. “This spring, I reached the point where I could no longer support President Trump’s policies and rhetoric regarding NATO, our European allies and Russia,” Melville writes. “Arrogance does not suit us well. ‘America First’ is a sham,” he said. “I had no choice but to resign,” which he did in June after 33 years in the Foreign Service.

“Trump’s habit of denigrating our allies and their leaders while lauding Putin and other authoritarians is no way to lead. It placed me in an untenable position in Tallinn whenever I was asked, as chief of mission, to explain our intentions.”

TREATY TERMINATED: Trump is terminating a little-known “treaty of amity” between the United States and Iran, Pompeo announced yesterday. “This is a decision frankly that is 39 years overdue.”

Pompeo took that step following a dispute in the International Court of Justice, in which Iran tried to convince the tribunal to order the United States to continue providing sanctions relief under the 2015 nuclear deal. The Trump administration has rejected the court’s authority over the matter under any circumstances; the theory of Iran’s case relied on the existence of a decades-old friendship pact that Pompeo emphasized is obsolete.

MORE TERROR TO COME: Pompeo is also warning that Iran will intensify attempts at terrorism and other attacks against the United States in the coming weeks. “Clearly, they see our comprehensive pressure campaign as serious and succeeding,” Pompeo told reporters at the State Department. “We must be prepared for them to continue their attempts to hit back, especially after our full sanctions are reimposed on the 4th of November.”

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has become one of Trump’s staunchest supporters in Congress, is advising Trump to knock it off with the mushy public pronouncement of affection for North Korea’s brutal dictator.

“Enough with ‘I love you,’” Graham said at an event in D.C. “This love crap needs to stop. There’s nothing to love about Kim Jong Un.” Graham’s comments come after Trump said last week he and the North Korean leader “fell in love” during their correspondence about the denuclearization of the peninsula after the two met in Singapore over the summer.

THE RUNDOWN

Washington Examiner: UK: Russian spies behind the supposed ISIS ‘Cyber Caliphate’

Roll Call: Tim Kaine Sounds Alarm About Trump’s View of ‘Collective Self-Defense’ Powers

The Hill: Study of Syria policy included in aviation bill

Washington Examiner: John Bolton calls for investigation into secret Iranian nuclear site

Bloomberg: Pentagon Touts Relief After Five Years of Budget Restrictions

Foreign Policy: The New Cold Front in Russia’s Information War

USNI News: Adm. Foggo Warns of Russian Submarines Challenging U.S. Defenses

Business Insider: Japan and the UK are teaming up for the first time to gain an edge on China

Breaking Defense: Army Wants Revolutionary Scout Aircraft For $30 Million

CNN: Pentagon unveils new video featuring cartoon pirates, ice cream cones

Army Times: The Green Beret accused of trying to smuggle 90 pounds of cocaine into the US is headed to trial

Military Times: A staggering number of troops are fat and tired, report says

Defense News: Chinese armed drones now flying over Mideast battlefields. Here’s why they’re gaining on US drones